Pinpoint Switchable Graphics Problem

[ajaffrey]

I just recommended a church buy a new Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop to run their worship software ProPresenter5 - which has minimum requirements of a 1GB discrete graphics card. The specs of the laptop exceed the requirements, however after setting up the laptop, the PP5 software won't run off the graphics card, it runs off the Intel HD integrated graphics. I did not know when I bought this laptop that it had switchable graphics!

Dell Inspiron 5559
Win10 Home
Intel Core i7-6500U CPU
16.0GB RAM
4GB AMD Radeon R5 M335 (installed latest driver 16.200.1035.1001 dated 7/8/16)
Intel HD Graphics 520 (driver 20.19.15.4454 dated 5/4/16) - the Intel site won't let me install its latest drivers because it says I have custom settings from Dell and could cause problems.

Here's my issue. I set PP5 to run off "Maximum Performance" in the Radeon Settings Configuration so it would run off the graphics card and not the integrated graphics. FYI - the laptop has to hook up to an external display system via the HDMI port to project the songs / worship elements. When I run PP5 off the graphics card, videos won't play through it. Images are fine but video backgrounds are not. This is an essential part of the software.
When I switch the software to default to "Power Saver" mode, it runs off the Intel Graphics and the videos work. Though I really don't think I'll get the best performance since the software requirements are for a dedicated graphics card.

I'm in contact with Renewed Vision Tech Support (the creator of PP5) and their solutions aren't helping any...uninstall and reinstall the program over and over again to see if it works. There is a place within the software to set preferences - and for video playback, I have it set to the Radeon Graphics Card. The conflict is when I go to their "About" section within the software, it compares their minimum requirements to what my computer system has. It lists my graphics as coming from Intel HD. So, for some reason the software isn't really recognizing / reading? / using? the graphics card.

My question to the experts here, is there a way to pinpoint the problem to find out if this a PP5 Software issue, a Win10 Operating System issue, or a graphics card issue? Is this something that can be solved, or did I just recommend to a small church to buy a $900 brick?

 

[webworkings]

Well it sounds like you have done all you can to resolve this, but the conflict between the device and the software is one of those, they never saw this happening, ones. Or they did and didn't bother with it, because it didn't happen often.

If there are two graphics cards on the device, have you tried disabling the one you don't want it to use? Not just in the program, but completely? Or is it a case of the one needs the other to work? Which is a serious design flaw in some laptops.

To be honest, were it me, I would return the device, siting the problems, and get one that will give you what you need, without the same flaws. If it was just purchased, the place it was gotten from should allow for an exchange to another device.