Optimus laptop

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2018 10:27 am Post subject: Optimus laptop

Did anyone succeed in having a working Optimus Laptop?

Now I have only i965 video card perfectly working loosing HDMI functionality.
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2018 11:41 am Post subject:

My Clevo W230SS laptop has Optimus hardware. You probably have a different model of laptop, but, in case it's of any help to you, I explain in another thread (see link below) how I got my Clevo W230SS laptop working (including HDMI) with the NVIDIA closed-source driver and the Intel driver. I don't use Bumblebee, though; I switch between either driver by running a script then logging out of the Desktop Environment (KDE, in my case) and logging back in again.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8114450.html#8114450
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A.S. Pushkin · Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2018 5:53 pm Post subject:

I've run across the Optimus name, but how does one determine if it is? I have a
MSI WS63 7RK, which has Intel i915 and Nvidia Quadro P3000. I've not been successful
in installing proprietary drivers, but though battery life is not great it works well
with the CAD application using Nouveau drivers.

I've not been able to prove tell if this is an Optimus laptop though.

Thanks
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2018 6:33 pm Post subject:

A.S. Pushkin,

Optimus is a label for one and a half graphics systems.
Its always intel and nVidia.

The intel graphics is the whole graphics system. Its the only chip that can refresh the screen, so its always used in Optimus.
Both GPUs share a pixel buffer. Either can draw images in the pixel buffer.

The advantages are lower cost and lower power consumption as there is no output video multiplexer.

If you can use the nvidia chipset without using the intel chipset, you don't have optimus.
Attempting to use the nvidia GPU alone will always result in a blank screen as the nvidia GPU is not connected to the display.

-- edit --

The specification for your system says

duane · Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2018 9:07 pm Post subject:

I've had prime working on my acer e15 for quite a while now, and the HDMI out works, but I'm pretty sure the intel driver is running that without the nvidia gpu. (xrandr --listproviders shows 0 outputs from nvidia.) All I have to do is use xrandr to mirror the display -- I haven't bothered with anything more complicated.

I can get the nouveau driver to use the nvidia chip for games, but I have to set the power mode on the nvidia chip manually to get any acceleration. It doesn't really give me much better framerates than the intel driver, and it runs a lot hotter, so I don't use it much. If I cared to use the proprietary drivers, it might work better.

There wasn't any setup involved with my system except to enable the kernel drivers.

Anton Gubarkov · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 65

I join the club with my Thinkpad P52 20M90019RT (to be exact about the hardware installed).

It has (in hybrid graphics mode)

Anton Gubarkov · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 65

I managed to start a PRIME version of gnome-session on nvidia in hybrid mode. HDMI and DP ports work as expected, I can connect external monitors/projectors.
The main issue was that I forgot to switch opengl implementation to nvidia.

I'm working on starting a gnome-session selectively on Intel and Nvidia without doing eselect opengl set. The ultimate goal is to integrate this selection into gdm session chooser.
I plan to run gdm on intel (always). When I login, I want to be able to choose between 2 sessions: pure intel (for long battery) or nvidia+prime (speed and external ports enabled).

I'm looking to set everything up in the /etc/X11/Xsession script. If anyone can provide insights on how to achieve it - I'd be grateful.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2018 10:10 pm Post subject:

Anton Gubarkov,

I don't see any sign of Optimus in your log. You only have one graphics card listed.

Anton Gubarkov · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 65

@NeddySeagoon, thanks for pointing out. My P52 allows 2 configs in UEFI - pure discrete and hybrid (i.e. optimus). The internal display panel is "re-wired" between intel and nvidia cards by UEFI. When in discrete mode, intel card cannot be seen on PCIe bus.

The log I attached was from pure discrete run.

I managed to run Gnome+GDM in both configs (with tweaking of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and eselect opengl) . The caveat in my case was incorrect setting of eselect opengl. When this setting does not match the main X server, I get blank screen.

I can run Gnome+GDM on Intel (loosing my external outputs DP and HDMI) and use bumblebee to run demanding apps on nvidia but displaying the window on laptop screen. I get approx 12W consumption in idle since bbswitch does awesome job managing nvidia card power.
I can run Gnome+GDM in PRIME mode on nvidia, intel card driving internal display, nvidia card driving the main X server and also external monitors. Brightness control works as expected. I get 35W consumption in idle
I can run in pure discrete mode - I couldn't make internal screen brightness control work in this scenario. I get 35W consumption in idle

My goal now is to be able to switch between pure intel and PRIME on nvidia without much fuzz with files and eselect opengl.
When I'm connected to an external monitor, that monitor must have power to work, so I can get power too and do not care too much about my consumption.
When I'm on the road, I don't need external ports working and would like to switch to Intel+bumblebee mode to have longer battery.

My plan is:

configure GDM to always run on Intel card via wayland
configure 2 gnome sessions to run: a) on Intel card via X; b) on Nvidia card + PRIME

I have the working X config with 2 Server layouts that I can use to start X sessions from the terminal:

Anton Gubarkov · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 65

So I understood that gnome-session doesn't start any X server itself, it expects it is started by other means before gnome-session is invoked.

When I use startx, X server is started by startx script. When I use GDM, it is started by GDM.
I searched the source of GDM for traces of X server invocation. It turned out that the path to X server is determined by configure.ac at compile time

See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/blob/master/configure.ac at line 1123 ( at the time of writing)

Anton Gubarkov · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 65

I continue my journey into making Optimus work well for my Thinkpad P52.

I can't still figure out how to manage this without restarting my PC, however I managed to make the Xorg follow the configuration set in UEFI firmware without further involvement from my side. This is not a universal works-everywhere approach. It is just a hack that allows me to switch between Intel+Bumblebee and pure Nvidia configs.

I had to create 2 xorg configs for the scenarios: (I've put them into a lib subdir of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d to hide from Xorg)

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/lib/10-intel.conf

Code:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics UHD 630 (Mobile)"
# intel/sna driver is broken for CoffeLake. BusID is required for modesetting driver to work
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
Driver "modesetting"
Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
Option "DRI" "3"
EndSection

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/lib/10-nvidia.conf

Code:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia Quadro P2000M"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

I use lspci output to see if I have an intel (vendor 8086) VGA device (device class 0300) and if it is found, I switch opengl to xorg-x11 and ln -s the intel xorg config to lib/10-intel.conf cited above. I achieve this with this new systemd service file:

Code:

[Unit]
Description=switch opengl implementation between MESA and NVIDIA based on the presence of Intel integrated graphics
Before=display-manager.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
# the following line contains systemd-escape'd strings for sed to remove double-quotes from lspci output
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c 'if lspci\x20\x2dmn\x7csed\x20s-\x5c\x22--g|/bin/grep -F "0300\x208086"; then /usr/bin/eselect opengl set xorg-x11; /bin/ln -sf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/lib/10-intel.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-display.conf; else /usr/bin/eselect opengl set nvidia; /bin/ln -sf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/lib/10-nvidia.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-display.conf ; fi'
ExecStop=/bin/rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-display.conf
RemainAfterExit=true
StandardOutput=journal

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 11:49 am Post subject:

psycho · Guru Joined: 22 Jun 2007 Posts: 534 Location: New Zealand

I have an ancient Optimus netbook (an Eee PC 1215n) that was fully working many years ago (booted into the Intel driver, but could activate the Nvidia chipset too). I remember it required a *lot* of fiddling to get it working: X always used the Intel driver for the desktop, but specific applications could be launched via a script that used the Nvidia hardware to draw them (I think some kind of Optimus software server had to be running to handle them...it was a headache to set up but worked nicely once it was). It wasn't a vast improvement, but it made enough of a difference (maybe three or four times higher frame-rates or something like that) that I did used to do things that way for a while. In the end though I chose to save power by switching the Nvidia hardware off (not possible in the BIOS but there was a software tool to do it after booting) because I wasn't doing anything on the netbook that justified the Nvidia's shortening my battery life.

That was many years ago and I'm curious to see if things have improved since then...I could dig out the netbook and see how things work with recent kernels/drivers. Not sure how relevant it will be to your setup, but I imagine different Optimus machines might work similarly.

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 3:14 pm Post subject: