TL;DR
I purchased a laptop a couple years ago supposedly including an AMD Radeon R9 M290X but the AMD Radeon HD 8970M drivers work better. Theoretically, the R9 M290X is a slightly better card (according to sites like gpuboss) and I was wondering if I got an incorrect card in my PC, or if there is something going on in the background that I don't understand that is causing the M290X drivers not to work.
My specs and everything will be listed below my wall of text.
Hello, a couple of years ago, I purchased an Alienware 17 laptop. A year went by without many issues (as I was only playing games that didn't require to much in terms of GPU power). As I started playing games that required a more powerful system, I started noticing stuttering fps, and issues with world loading (mainly in games like Grand Theft Auto 5). At the time I also had the Raptr application installed on my computer. When I compared my system specs with Device Manager, it was clear that there was an issue with driver detection. In Raptr, it was stated that I had an AMD Radeon HD 8970M graphics card while it was an AMD Radeon R9 M290X in Device Manager (which is also the name of the card stated on the bottom of my laptop). I managed to download the drivers that were for the 8970M and the games I was playing on ran smoother than before, but the drivers would sometimes just revert back to the old M290X drivers. Looking at some different sites, it looks like the M290X, while only a little bit, is theoretically faster than the 8970M in terms of gaming ability. I don't know a whole lot about the technical stuff behind drivers and everything like that but I was curious if there was a way to maybe get a concrete answer on which card is in my pc.
The basic gist of the whole issue is that the R9 M290X drivers were causing my system to stutter but the 8970M drivers fixed the issue. A game I will use as the primary example is Grand Theft Auto 5 (as discussed in my wall of text). I used the same graphics settings on both drivers, but with the R9 M290X, there was a constant stutter when I started moving at higher speeds (possibly because of the incorrect drivers trying to render things). I play at a mix of setting on the game, ranging from normal to very high with fps averaging around 50. With the M290X drivers, I could see a rise (even if only a small one) in the average fps in less intense instances of gameplay and while I was not moving at high speeds (i.e Driving, flying).
PC type: Laptop (Alienware 17)
Display Adapter: AMD Radeon HD 8970M (listed as an AMD Radeon R9 M290X on the bottom of my laptop)
OS: Windows 10 Home 64 bit
Driver Version: Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition 18.2.1
Display Device: Whatever is on the laptop (Don't know how to check)
Motherboard: Alienware 0MPYM4 (Couldn't find BIOS version)
CPU: Intel Core i7-4710MQ CPU @ 2.50GHz
Power Supply: No Clue
Ram: 16GB
Below I will leave two pictures, one showing my Device Manager, and the other showing the bottom of my PC with the supposed specs.
I apologize for my ignorance towards how PCs run and I am grateful for any help I receive.
Thank you for your time.
