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fredldotme / prime-indicator

PRIME Indicator - indicator applet for NVIDIA Optimus laptops
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Switching to IGPU + powering off discrete GPU ? #1

Closed nifr closed 9 years ago

nifr commented 10 years ago

Can the discrete GPU be turned off using bbswitch after switching to the internal GPU in order to save power when on battery?

fredldotme commented 10 years ago

Yeah.. Well... That is the whole point.

nifr commented 10 years ago

Thanks for the quick response - that's what i suggested :)

But powering off the discrete card itself would still have to be done manually. right?

fredldotme commented 10 years ago

Well, the switching is actually done by the nvidia-prime package, which turns on/off the discrete NVIDIA GPU (using bbswitch) based on the preference the user selected, right before an X server is started. This indicator is merely a quick "switch+logout" tool which ships a special sudoers file to not require a password.

nifr commented 10 years ago

Now i'm a bit confused...

Actually i'm not too familiar with the low-level graphics driver internals but i spent countless hours reading articles and investigating about optimus on linux by now.

Many people state that using the nvidia-prime package results in the discrete card being always powered on.

quote: "Currently there is no supported way to switch off the discrete card. As a result, your system will probably consume more power and get warmer." https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/HybridGraphics#Known_issues

Am i correct that this functionality (and the bbswitch dependecy) has been added in a newer version of nvidia-prime ?

currently the official Ubuntu 13.10. repositories only include:

nvidia-prime 0.4.2 in saucy-updates nvidia-prime 0.4.0 in saucy

Edit: Found some hint in the changelog of nvidia-prime 0.5.0.

" Depend on bbswitch-dkms and upstart." https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/nvidia-prime/0.5

Would you be so kind to explain the steps needed to get the indicator and nvidia-prime 0.5.0 to run on 13.10 ? (if possible)

vstoykov commented 9 years ago

@nifr nvidia-prime package telss bbswitch to turn on/of discrete card based on selected prime profile. If you select NVIDIA (Performance Mode) then the discrete card is always on. If you swich to `Intel (Power Saving Mode) then the discrete card is off.

This is the limitation of the nvidia-prime package that you need to logout in order to swich on/off the discrete card. In contrast the bumblebee project tries to make it possible for the user to power on the discrete card only for applications he wants and to turn it off after that without logout.