Alright, not a big techy here so if the dumb questions come go easy on me. So when I go to "manage" and look at the display there is two things that come up "Intel(R) HD graphics family" and "Radeon (TM) HD 6470M" (suppose to have the Radeaon HD 6470m that was one of the big thing's I noticed and liked when I bought the computer) for some reason it seems like my computer doesn't run off the GPU (6470M chip), I tried playing some games on this and it has a hard time running them, Minecraft won't even work, it starts out fine then get's worst and worst then crashes. Kinda seems like the graphics is running off this "Intel HD" thing instead of the "HD 6470M".

Also when I right click desktop and go to screen resolution, the only option that comes up when I hit detect is the "Intel HD family", what's going on is my computer not using the 6470M?

Edit: Also went to http://www.systemrequirementslab.com, and looked up my specs for borderlands 2 this is what came up.

• Minimum 
• Recommended 

	CPU Recommended: 2.3 GHz Quad Core processor You Have: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40GHz		PASS Click here for the latest CPU drivers.
	CPU Speed Recommended: Info You Have: 2.4 GHz
	RAM Recommended: 2 GB You Have: 6.1 GB		PASS
	OS Recommended: Windows XP SP3/Vista/Win 7 You Have: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit		PASS Click here for the latest Windows drivers.
	Video Card Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 / ATI Radeon HD 5850 You Have: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family		Upgrade Suggested: Unfortunately, your Video Card does not meet this requirement. Click here to see some recommendations. Click here for the latest Video drivers.
Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card     Required You Have Pixel Shader version 3.0 4.1 Vertex Shader version 3.0 4.1 Dedicated Video RAM 512 MB 1.0 GB
	Sound Card Recommended: Yes You Have: IDT High Definition Audio CODEC		PASS Click here for the latest Sound Card drivers.
	Free Disk Space Recommended: 20 GB You Have: 342.3 GB		PASS

Driver issue... You should check the manufacturs website for new drivers.. or somewhere in-game that you can switch..

Tried installing new drivers I even went as far as uninstalling the whole graphics card and reinstalling it all over again, nothing. My computers just running off the on board gpu and I don't think it's ever ran off the 6470M. It explains why I couldn't play games like Portal and Crysis 2 even on medium.

Is this a desktop or a laptop? 6470M sounds like a mobile device.

laptop

Also just tried installing driver and it installs but doesn't say anything then when I look at the driver date it says 2011, but on the AMD website the driver was released in 2012. Windows also keeps saying it's up to date?

I have the same crap video card (Intel HD) that came with my computer. I tried playing GTA 4 with no luck considering I had to turn everything down to the bare min and it still sucked. I need to drop about 100-150 on a new card so I can actually game. My graphics card is the only thing holding me back it seems from the high end games. What do you guys think I should buy for 100-150? I was looking at MSI ATI Radeon HD7750 which is about 100 after rebate on Amazon. I never even knew I had to check my power supply to make sure it is compatible with the graphics card... I guess I'm a freaking computer noob now but I believe that card I was looking at doesn't require that much of a power supply (I'll check my power supply output in a little).

I also don't really understand the memory types on graphics card.  Do you have to match the same type of memory on your computer or is it okay to be different.  My computer memory is DDR3 so does that mean I gotta get a graphics card with that same memory type or can I just get any.  I assume any considering you are pluggin it into a PCI slot but I didn't know if it would mess with the computer if I got a graphics card with DDR5 while my main memory is DDR3.  As you can see... I'm a noob.  I've updated my graphics card before on different computers but I never bothered looking into the power supply aspect or worried about the different types of memory.   Looked it up and it doesn't matter like I thought.  So I guess the only thing I have to worry about is if my power supply can handle a high end graphics card (which I am only getting a semi budget one so I should be safe without having to put a new power supply in).

A lot of those combo Radeon/integrated laptops have a switch in the driver that has to be toggled to switch it to using the Radeon card. Usually the switch is triggered automatically when certain software runs, but it isn't always set this way on default. Check both the radeon driver settings and the integrated card settings.

If I open it up would it make a difference and would it void warranty?

You should be able to switch it in Catalyst Control Center. If you don't have that, start off by downloading it from AMD's website.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

Not an internal switch.  A software switch.  Don't open your laptop.  Like SNESboy says, check the catalyst control center.