I am having the full brightness issue, too. Changing the game to the dedicated graphic card just improved it a little (I noticed that the glare of the light sources where now barely visible, whereas they weren’t before), but still far from ok. I tried adding
mat_dxlevel 95
mat_fullbright 0
mat_hdr_level 2
to autoexec.cfg, aswell as installing the patch but neither did work for me.
My specs are:
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, x64-based
Version: 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Laptop Model: Dell Inspiron 7520
Processor Intel® Core™ i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz, 2501 MHz, 2 Cores, 4 logical processors
BIOS-Version/-Date: Dell Inc. A02, 17.05.2012
SMBIOS-Version 2.7
graphic-card: AMD Radeon HD 7730M / 2048 MB /
Memory: 6GB DDR 3
Thanks for working all this out!