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I have a Dell Studio xps 1640. It has an AMD Radeon HD 4600 series graphics card.

I looked up the common heat issues and it said that usually the graphics driver is to blame and once the proprietary is installed it gets fixed.

Ive tried to install the proprietary drivers from AMD and when I install Catalyst and reboot I can't get to my desktop anymore. Unity doesn't load and I am forced to uninstall the driver via the command line in order to get things working again. I think it is a common issue right now but any idea what I should do?

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  • did you try latest catalyst from AMD Site.. Sep 9, 2013 at 5:55
  • Ya I tried the Catalyst driver but My cards no longer supported and it just crashes Ubuntu to install.
    – rryder1
    Sep 9, 2013 at 14:44

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Very nice laptop which unfortunately gets hot in Windows and Linux, the mobility HD 3670 graphics doesn't seem to be supported any longer in the Ati binary driver for linux... Don't worry though, a lot of work has gone into the open-source variant which seemed to work for you and will get even better in October when Ubuntu 13.10 is out...

As for heat, you could try a few things to lighten the load like switching from a 3D intensive desktop (unity) to Xubuntu (xfce) or even lubuntu (lxde)... Also try installing Jupiter for power management which lets you turn off hardware you don't use and helps with power stepping... http://www.webupd8.org/2010/07/jupiter-ubuntu-ppa-hardware-and-power.html

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  • Ill try Jupiter. Yah its a great laptop but it does have heat issues even in windows sadly. Its a shame because its powerful but pretty much needs a freezing cold room to keep from overheating if you are doing anything intensive. They only reason I asked is just because it gets hot way faster in Linux even if you aren't doing anything at all. Just sitting on the desktop causes the fan to run and the whole laptop to get hot.
    – rryder1
    Sep 9, 2013 at 14:46

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