Hybrid power support on Linux?

[Einmaliger]

I am currently preparing to buy a new PC, and this is actually a decisive question for me: I only need a dedicated graphics card for the few times that I play games in Windows, so after playing them and still in Windows, I could turn off the card via the Windows Drivers. Now the question is, if I then boot into Linux, will the card still be offline (i.e. not consume any power), or does it always get activated at boot-up (and shut down by the Windows driver when set to deactivated)?

[lajnux7777]

By disabling the external gfx card under linux, one is already saving power equivalent to hybrid graphics. Sure, its not elegant but it works.

Is it reallt that simple? I would be very happy is an nvidia official could confirm this.
See, i would only need the built in intel card, as long as the nvidia discrete card wasn't drawing any power, so by not defining it in xorg.conf, does it stay "off"?
The notebook in question is a amilo xi 3650 with hybrid graphics.

[PeteSahat]

Hybrid Power has been the only reason why I bought a NVIDIA mainboard. So it's really disappointing to see it's not working under Linux. Looking at the prices now I'm actually thinking to buy an ATI graphics card instead.

Well, if the NVIDIA guys won't open their specs and are not that fast or don't have enough people to implement their killer-features on Linux, maybe the community can support them by posting "open"-documentation. Just joking ... but: http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Docum...smbus-protocol .. Come on, you can do it!

[gbin]

Originally Posted by AaronP

Hi Nico.Laus,

We currently do not have plans to support Hybrid Power on Linux. However, you should be able to configure X to use your motherboard GPU.

Does this apply to notebooks with soft switch like the Sony Serie Z ? From other posts it looks like this wonderful piece of machinery is totally unusable under linux just because of this.

Can you at least provide us a mean or even a clue to select a GPU or the other at boot time ? (I really really don't care about switching it live, I just want to have an usable system).

I upgraded my Sony SZ perfectly running under gentoo with both GPUs with a 2400 euros Sony Z just to discover that it is totally unusable because it has a software switch with no spec released with it !

If you don't want to support any driver for it, fine, but then please release the spec (and please don't call that IP, your main competitor does it too).

Thanks a lot in advance.

[avilella]

Does anybody know what are the current laptops with nvidia hybridpower or ati powerxpress?

The ones I've found so far are in this blog:

http://linux-hybrid-graphics.blogspot.com/

Sony Vaio Z-series (nvidia -- http://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series)
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo XI 3650 (nvidia)
BenQ Joybook S42 (nvidia)
Lenovo ThinkPad T500 (ati)
Lenovo ThinkPad T400 (ati)
ASUS M51Ta (ati)
Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Sa 3650 (ati)
MSI PX211 12'' (ati)
HP Pavilion tx2500 (ati)

Anyone?

[Tinyboss]

Dell Studio XPS 1340

Comes with either 9200+9400 or 210m+9400 (all nV parts).

As it is, I can only use the integrated GPU under Linux...the nice 210m with 1/2 gig of memory is sitting powered off, nothing I can do. It's miserable.

[avilella]

Can you submit, if you haven't done it already, your DSDT.dsl file as an attachment to this bug report?

http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/312756

To compile your DSDT information, install if you haven't already the acpidump and iasl tools:

sudo apt-get install acpidump iasl

Then run the following commands:

sudo acpidump > acpidump.txt
sudo acpixtract acpidump.txt
iasl -d DSDT.dat
ls -l DSDT.dsl

This will create a DSDT.dsl file that you can attach to the bug report. This information will allow the developers to fully implement the hybrid graphics features for Linux.

Finally, for posting the information in the bug report, you can check the laptop and graphics card model identifiers with these commands:

sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
sudo dmidecode -s system-version
lspci -vnnn | perl -lne 'print if /^\d+\:.+(\[\S+\:\S+\])/' | grep VGA

Thanks for your help!

Originally Posted by Tinyboss

Dell Studio XPS 1340

Comes with either 9200+9400 or 210m+9400 (all nV parts).

As it is, I can only use the integrated GPU under Linux...the nice 210m with 1/2 gig of memory is sitting powered off, nothing I can do. It's miserable.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Originally Posted by avilella

Can you submit, if you haven't done it already, your DSDT.dsl file as an attachment to this bug report?

http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/312756

To compile your DSDT information, install if you haven't already the acpidump and iasl tools:

sudo apt-get install acpidump iasl

Then run the following commands:

sudo acpidump > acpidump.txt
sudo acpixtract acpidump.txt
iasl -d DSDT.dat
ls -l DSDT.dsl

This will create a DSDT.dsl file that you can attach to the bug report. This information will allow the developers to fully implement the hybrid graphics features for Linux.

Finally, for posting the information in the bug report, you can check the laptop and graphics card model identifiers with these commands:

sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
sudo dmidecode -s system-version
lspci -vnnn | perl -lne 'print if /^\d+\:.+(\[\S+\:\S+\])/' | grep VGA

Thanks for your help!

I have the same laptop (Dell Studio XPS 13 with the G 210M) and I have added my DSDT.dsl to that bug page. Thank you for the info and the link.


I think I'm going to switch back to Windows 7 until they fix this..... I really hope the Linux community gets this issue fixed soon.

[avilella]

This Dell laptop has a _DSM ACPI call that will switch on/off the card. There is already example code in Sony Vaio laptops to do that in Linux, so it should be fairly trivial to add support for these Dell models.
See Matthew's email below:

> Hi again,
>
> In this occasion not providing a working module, but just a grep to
> show 5 different laptop
> models that use an almost identical ACPI call to report on the
> discrete nvidia graphics switch:

The NVIF interface is not the correct one to use. There's a _DSM method
on the Nvidia PCI device that will call the appropriate methods. nouveau
should support this in the current kernels - right now it'll just set
the graphics to whatever state the BIOS has programmed. A module
parameter to change the default might be interesting.

If you want to do this with the nvidia binary driver, you'll need to get
nvidia to add support.

Originally Posted by Dr. Funkenstein

I have the same laptop (Dell Studio XPS 13 with the G 210M) and I have added my DSDT.dsl to that bug page. Thank you for the info and the link.


I think I'm going to switch back to Windows 7 until they fix this..... I really hope the Linux community gets this issue fixed soon.

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Originally Posted by avilella

This Dell laptop has a _DSM ACPI call that will switch on/off the card. There is already example code in Sony Vaio laptops to do that in Linux, so it should be fairly trivial to add support for these Dell models.
See Matthew's email below:

So you're saying that some developers might be able to get the Hybrid SLI working for the Dell Studio XPS 1340 in the near future? I hope so, I know Dell sells a version of the Studio XPS 1340 with Ubuntu pre-installed, and it's sold with the 9500M G using Hybrid SLI, so hopefully this will get more people working on a proper fix (that will also work on my G 210M).

[avilella]

It's definitely easier for the nvidia linux developers since they've got all the information
needed. It's a bit more difficult on the open-source side of things,
but we can switch off the graphics card via acpi and then rely on the
integrated card when on battery. In the same way, we can use acpi
calls to switch it back on and use the nvidia binary drivers for best
3D performance.

According to the linux-acpi devs, we should be able to easily have the
switching code into nouveau in the near future.

[randomas]

All I can say is that I have an asus ul30vt with a g210m nvidia hybrid system and so far there's been no way of getting it to work in linux, unfortunately the card is still working and drawing power. There is however a solution and someone wrote a kernel module to turn it on saving about 4w of power.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8587236