I think I have two graphics cards in my new laptop is that normal??

[Rock3t]

Hi.... really stupid question i'm sure, but I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 15 series laptop, not really with the intention of gaming but I do enjoy the occassional foray.... so I must admit I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the graphics card it came with as standard I was more interested in the processor (u7-6500U 3.1) and RAM (16GB)

Listed under device manager are two cards:

1. AMD Radeon R5 M335
2. Intel HD Graphics 520

Having looked through some of the articles on this site I can see that neither of these are going to make the top 100 graphics cards of today!! But i'm still interested to know why I seem to have two cards installed on my laptop. Is there any particular reason for this? Are they both so bad that the machine needs to have two for any chance of succesful gaming?

As a secondary question, if I were to buy a new, dedicated graphics card to boost the laptop performance, will it give me headaches trying to install if I already have two factory fitted? Which one should I replace?

Many thanks
Tom

 

[popatim]

The HD Graphics is integrated into the CPU and is used whenever it can to save power.
The M335 is the gaming card and most of the time it will be switched on automatically when higher performance is needed.

 

[Rock3t]

Ah, many thanks... that makes a lot of sense....

So, when I boot up Skyrim (downloaded from Steam website) and in the options menu under "Graphics adaptor and resolution" in the drop down option for Graphics Adapter the only option I am able to select is the Intel 520 option, this is because the game doesn't need to use the higher performance of the Radeon card it is quite happy with the integrated chip?