NVIDIA Optimus and Linux - Are You Burning Power For No Reason? 

use "watch -n1 sensors" or "watch -n1 nvidia-smi" instead of running these commands again and again...

You can completely disable the card with: echo "OFF" > /proc/acpi/bbswitch

It works out of the box on non Debian Distros. Manjaro works perfectly

I found some kernel module options for power management. Here is an excerpt from the Nvidia manual for NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement.(you can place these lines in a text config file /etc/modprobe.conf and /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf) Option "NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x00" With this setting, the NVIDIA driver will only use the GPU's built-in power management so it always is powered on and functional. This is the default option, since this feature is a new and highly experimental feature. Option "NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x01" With this setting, the NVIDIA GPU driver will allow the GPU to go into its lowest power state when no applications are running that use the nvidia driver stack. Whenever an application requiring NVIDIA GPU access is started, the GPU is put into an active state. When the application exits, the GPU is put into a low power state. Option "NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02" With this setting, the NVIDIA GPU driver will allow the GPU to go into its lowest power state when no applications are running that use the nvidia driver stack. Whenever an application requiring NVIDIA GPU access is started, the GPU is put into an active state. When the application exits, the GPU is put into a low power state. Additionally, the NVIDIA driver will actively monitor GPU usage while applications using the GPU are running. When the applications have not used the GPU for a short period, the driver will allow the GPU to be powered down. As soon as the application starts using the GPU, the GPU is reactivated. It is important to note that the NVIDIA GPU will remain in an active state if it is driving a display. In this case, the NVIDIA GPU will go to a low power state only when the X configuration option HardDPMS is enabled and the display is turned off by some means - either automatically due to an OS setting or manually using commands like xset. Similarly, the NVIDIA GPU will remain in an active state if a CUDA application is running. Option NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement can be set on the command line while loading the NVIDIA Linux kernel module. For example, modprobe nvidia "NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02"

You can fully disable the Nvidia GPU by editing ACPI tables. Although, you will have to use a custom bootloader that lets you inject SSDT's like Clover

2:31 pop! os has nvidia support, there's separate iso for that even actually very useful, since i use artix and don't want to change anything (except configuring gpu)

Even on 2022, it still doesn't work. So moral of the story is if you have a hybrid GPU setup, don't waste your time and install Windows. Optimus Manager is still buggy. Prime run isn't working properly either

great video, lots of useful information and exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Why not just power off the pcie device from the kernel? Pretty standard thing to do if you never plan to use the Nvidia card

I’ve never had good experiences with any power management, I’ve had the same problem with older NVIDIA GPUs but also even with iGPU only machines power management ruins my day. The most common problems I’ve had are with sleep modes, both on Linux and Windows I’ve had many problems with S3 power state not being entered correctly even with Windows on a Microsoft Surface! They would either just stay in S0 forever and waste the battery or never come back from S3 until the battery slowly discharged. That sort of fault makes a laptop completely useless if you’re rolling the dice every time you turn it off, modern Windows disguising ‘shutdown’ as ‘hibernate’ doesn’t help either. I’ve also had power management problems with Windows Phone 10 not correctly turning off peripherals (although it was an early preview build they dropped support for the phone soon after they promised not to). Although I do feel for those who have to develop power management features, I’ve had a fair share of developing firmware for long term low power devices on both Atmel and Espressif platforms, always involved plenty of troubleshooting strange behavior and digging through long and complex documentation.

Very helpful thanks ! Good work

Goddamnit man that is the exact laptop I have. I have the FX505DU and it has a 1660 Ti (non Max Q), yours should too.

1.25A * 12.3V - 0.9A * 12.3V = 4.3W, so the driver estimation of 3W less was a bit low, maybe rounding. Sounds like it can go even lower too: P0/P1 - Maximum 3D performance P8 - Basic HD video playback P12 - Minimum idle power consumption

This is why Linus Torvalds cussed nvidia that one time..

I don't really see the advantage of using 2 gpu at the same time, it's just power lost. Personally I use slimbookbattery for power management and optimus switch amd for choose between gpu. I usually use de igpu and oly active de gpu when I need the hdmi output.

I have the same laptop and after 2 years this has probably been fixed, because nvidia-smi showed p8 and 2 watts without any X configuration with the 535 driver. The sensors showed the same numbers before and after, though they were different from the video (around 11 volts and 1.4 amps). The distro used is Arcolinux b

That is what I want bro I have been searching for this for a long time after getting brand new gaming laptop which I cannot use without installing ubuntu

IDK, PoP_OS (Ubuntu fork) has a switch for it without any mods. You have to reboot to switch but thats not that big of an issue IMO.....

Or try installing TLP for power management and adjusting gov, power management

Works out of the box with Pop!_OS. But I switched to Arch now :D

Use bbswitch to completely turn off the nvidia gpu

On my Lenovo laptop i can go to the BIOS and just turn off switchable graphics, forcing my laptop to use the intergrated one.

Thank you friend, Very good explanation.

there's a kernel module for switching the dedicated gpu off without the help of any nvidia driver software: github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch it's available as a package in archlinux, don't know about ubuntu and others.

so i have a 2014 hp envy15 with an i7 and 850m. I was running mint on it since 2016-17 and I found when running specifically with NVIDIA i would get about 1h50m (note this is with intelij and Firefox open.) and when I ran it with just the Intel as soon as my laptop hit 50% the battery would instantly drop to 0% and I wounder if this might be the case. recently I installed pop_os (two weeks ago) on the machine as system78 has laptops with a similar config. So I haven't been able to really test it but i just ran through their GPU switcher and found when set to integrated. nvida-smi is not even available. when in hybrid there are two xorg processes. in compute there are none but nvida-smi is available. (note i'm not seeing the actual power consumption from smi. this might be a config or hardware thing with my system) i'm guessing pop_os is doing the same thing of having a process open for battery and having a handle on the GPU when it needs to switch. IDK i'm just guessing based on my observation. I need time to sit down and benchmark it.

Thanks for the great explanation :) rllyy helpful

It's the driver I had it on numerous laptops.Its hard to find a good one on windows don't let me started on linux.But I just take the mxm gpu out when booting linux.then I'm good.For other laptop that runs windows only I just use vmware linux is best to use only on igpu or as desktop server station.

Now it really is a NoVideo gpu.

That's interesting. I have MSI GL 63 8RD with mint 19.3. Although gtx 1050Ti has optimus support, I was never able to setup successfully. So I run with onboard graphics all time & can switch between dgpu & igpu manually. That Nvidia utility, is it available as binary anywhere? Offtopic - Mark, you should use simplescreenrecorder for screencast. It does superb job of video/audio at same time.

Isnt that basically what looking glass is intended to do, but through a virtual machine?

the thing is that ryzen APU's are stupid efficient, so wasting that power is sucky the thing i hate about not using the GPU, is that it feels like a waste of money, so unless you play games, you're better off getting something like a dell XPS, if they ever started using ryzen and including thunderbolt

Bumblebee its a dual graphics, so you would need bumblebee when you play steam games

@Mark Furneaux I have more or less the same system and I am wondering if you or anyone else knows how to fix Debian so it works or has a good iso file for Debian testing with optimus + amd switchable.

bro please list commands,, very hard to see

Nice explanation!

Just out of curiosity because I'm looking into buying a new laptop in the near future, Is there any reason to buy one of these powerful machines with a dedicated gpu if it's basically never going to be used? Like having a better build quality or better thermals than regular thin and light laptops.

My asus laptop with a passively cooled intel CPU gets like 8 hours on a charge, but then again, that laptop has a larger battery than yours, and my main laptop, a POS walmart brand has a 45Wh that drains in like 3 hours with aggressive power management.

You also can completely turn off a GPU by doing an appropriate acpi call at boot time.

thank you soo much, sir :)

optimus manager for my laptop was burning battery like anything. whether its Nvidia or Intel optimus would drain battery like water. But on prime I don't have such issue I can run any application using prime-run in terminal and program name and no problem. It depends laptop to laptop I guess. Anyways mine is turing Nvidia-gtx 1650 and in Arch

ASUS TUF series laptops build quality is bad.

I could simply disable the dGPU in the bios luckily

great interesting. Is this something that should not happen with AMD?

I checked today, it's using more than windows power

Try Linux Mint 20, you can try installing the dual graphics , bumblebee! Battery life

nvidia relesad some dsp for cuda. it removes noisr perfect. have tried it in win. so im trying to share the gpu via ethernet from a linux machine. forgot how. did something with usb ports. tnx for explaining stuff edit. cpyrit on todo list too :)

i dont know if the consumer series support most of the smi commands but you could try forcing a max power limit "nvidia-smi -i 0 -pm 1 -pl 1" would lock the card at max 1watt power consumption. the card should not stay in P0 without any process, that looks like a bug. at least in my experience with datacenter gpus this is not the normal behavior.

I got a fx506 😁

Good info

Think of it dis way use tlp, and bumblebee, and it can utilize PM or utilize Manjaro tlp, and the bumblebee switch off from onboard graphics or wen gaming or kody to descreet graphics nvidia!

was looking for it for years and searching Optimus instead of prime. NVIDIA is a joke especially on Linux. they expected you to reboot everytime you need to swap to the DGPU unless you use bumblebee or something similar. lol

maybe on pop os works out of the box

Guess this hasn't been a priority with the coders... But, more and more Linux guys & gals are using these souped up rigs so maybe they'll take notice. Especially since you were kind enough to go through the trouble of making a video :-)

dont use nvidia gpus with linux. Always have bad experiences. I uninstalled it as I dont use for gaming. Now my laptop is in good temperature and have more battery time.

Linux is bad with graphics card driver .. special if you have integrated GPU+ dedicated GPU.... windows does this in better way

16 mins for literally 60s of information. 😔

Review random shit from eBay again