A couple weeks back, I contacted AMD to let them know I was working on a notebook review—a Clevo P170EM from AVADirect with HD 7970M graphics. Much to my surprise, when I received the notebook I discovered it used AMD’s Dynamic Switchable Graphics, now rebranded as Enduro. It has been just over a year since my last look at the technology, where things were so bad that I felt most users would be better off if they had only discrete AMD GPUs and no switchable graphics—or they could simply buy NVIDIA Optimus enabled laptops.
My initial experience with the P170EM wasn’t horrible, but I did discover rather quickly that one of my biggest concerns—the ability to update drivers—was still MIA, not to mention the Enduro UI seemed largely unchanged. As luck would have it, AMD let me know that they were working to address both problems and that they could provide me updated drivers as well as the first look at what their latest iteration of Enduro brings to the table. Armed with the new drivers and some initial testing, it looks like Enduro may finally be turning into the Optimus competitor we’ve always wanted. What has changed during the past year, and when will these changes become publicly available? Read on as we put AMD’s latest to the test.
