NVIDIA Optimus - ArchWiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.

php/NVIDIA_Optimus

NVIDIA Optimus
From ArchWiki

NVIDIA Optimus is a technology that allows an Intel Related articles

integrated GPU and discrete NVIDIA GPU to be built into
and accessed by a laptop. Getting Optimus graphics to work Bumblebee
on Arch Linux requires a few somewhat complicated steps,
Nouveau
explained below. There are several methods available:
NVIDIA
disabling one of the devices in BIOS, which may result
in improved battery life if the NVIDIA device is
disabled, but may not be available with all BIOSes and does not allow GPU
switching

using the oicial Optimus support included with the proprietary NVIDIA
driver, which oers the best NVIDIA performance but does not allow GPU
switching and can be more buggy than the open-source driver

using the PRIME functionality of the open-source nouveau driver, which

allows GPU switching and powersaving but oers poor performance
compared to the proprietary NVIDIA driver and may cause issues with sleep
and hibernate

using the third-party Bumblebee program to implement Optimus-like

functionality, which oers GPU switching and powersaving but requires extra
conguration

These options are explained in detail below.

Contents
1 Disabling switchable graphics
2 Using nvidia
2.1 Alternative conguration
2.2 Display Managers
2.2.1 LightDM
2.2.2 SDDM
2.2.3 GDM
2.3 Checking 3D
2.4 Further Information
3 Troubleshooting
3.1 Tearing/Broken VSync

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3.2 Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU fallen o the
bus / RmInitAdapter failed!)
3.3 Resolution, screen scan wrong. EDID errors in Xorg.log
3.4 Lockup issue (lspci hangs)
4 Using nouveau
5 Using Bumblebee

Disabling switchable graphics

If you only care to use a certain GPU without switching, check the options in your
system's BIOS. There should be an option to disable one of the cards. Some
laptops only allow disabling of the discrete card, or vice-versa, but it is worth
checking if you only plan to use one of the cards.

For another way see Hybrid graphics#Fully Power Down Discrete GPU.

If you want to use both cards, or cannot disable the card you do not want, see the
options below.

Using nvidia
The proprietary NVIDIA driver does not support dynamic switching like the
nouveau driver (meaning it can only use the NVIDIA device). It also has notable
screen-tearing issues that NVIDIA recognizes but has not xed. However, it does
allow use of the discrete GPU and has (as of October 2013) a marked edge in
performance over the nouveau driver.

First, install the NVIDIA driver and xorg-xrandr (https://www.archlinux.org/packages

/?name=xorg-xrandr). Then, congure xorg.conf . You will need to know the PCI
address of the NVIDIA card, which you can nd by issuing

$ lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D"

The PCI address is the rst 7 characters of the line that mentions NVIDIA. It will
look something like 01:00.0 . In the xorg.conf , you will need to format it as #:#:# ;
e.g. 01:00.0 would be formatted as 1:0:0 .

Note: On some setups this setup breaks automatic detection of the values of the
display by the nvidia driver through the EDID le. As a work-around see
#Resolution, screen scan wrong. EDID errors in Xorg.log.

If X.Org X server version 1.17.2 or higher is installed ([1]

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(http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/358.16/README
/randr14.html))

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Module"
Load "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
BusID "<BusID for NVIDIA device here>"
Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
EndSection

Next, add the following two lines to the beginning of your ~/.xinitrc :

~/.xinitrc

xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0

xrandr --auto

Now reboot to load the drivers, and X should start.

If your display dpi is not correct add following line:

xrandr --dpi 96

If you get a black screen when starting X, make sure that there are no
ampersands after the two xrandr commands in ~/.xinitrc . If there are
ampersands, it seems that the window manager can run before the xrandr
commands nish executing, leading to a black screen.

If the black screen persists, see the #Alternative conguration below.

Alternative conguration

If you experience Xorg-server crashes since release 1.17.1 with above

conguration, modify the section for the Intel device in /etc/X11/xorg.conf as
follows:

# nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
Identifier "intel"
Driver "modesetting"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"

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Option "AccelMethod" "sna"

#Option "TearFree" "True"
#Option "Tiling" "True"
#Option "SwapbuffersWait" "True"
EndSection

As above, the BusID must match for the output of the lspci command. Search for
the line with "VGA compatible controller", that contains something Intel. For
example:

$ lspci |grep VGA

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)

Tip: The three last commented out options may (without #) result in positive
eects on the tearing, but exchange for some performance cost. Note the
TearFree option may be used for "sna" acceleration only, see Intel graphics. You
can use either "sna" or "uxa" in "AccelMethod" option. For further experimenting,
a working xorg.conf from a Lenovo Ideapad Z50-70 59-432128 is here: [2]
(http://pastebin.com/tMtPz381).

If X starts but nothing appears on the screen, check if /var/log/xorg.conf contains a

following line or similar:

/var/log/xorg.conf

[ 16112.937] (EE) Screen 1 deleted because of no matching config section.

If so, the problem may disappear when you change your ServerLayout section of
/etc/X11/xorg.conf :

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout"
Screen 1 "nvidia"
Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Display Managers

If you are using a display manager then you will need to create or edit a display
setup script for your display manager instead of using ~/.xinitrc .

LightDM

For the LightDM display manager:

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/etc/lightdm/display_setup.sh

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0
xrandr --auto

Make the script executable:

# chmod +x /etc/lightdm/display_setup.sh

Now congure lightdm to run the script by editing the [Seat:*] section in
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf :

/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

[Seat:*]
display-setup-script=/etc/lightdm/display_setup.sh

Now reboot and your display manager should start.

SDDM

For the SDDM display manager:

/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup

xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0

xrandr --auto

GDM

For the GDM display manager create two new .desktop les:

/usr/share/gdm/greeter/autostart/optimus.desktop
/etc/xdg/autostart/optimus.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Optimus
Exec=sh -c "xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0; xrandr --auto"
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=DisplayServer

Make sure that GDM use X as default backend.

Checking 3D

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You can check if the NVIDIA graphics are being used by installing mesa-demos
(https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=mesa-demos) and running

$ glxinfo | grep NVIDIA

Further Information

For more information, look at NVIDIA's oicial page on the topic [3]
(http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/370.28/README
/randr14.html).

Troubleshooting
Tearing/Broken VSync

This requires xorg-server (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xorg-server) 1.19 or

higher, linux (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=linux) kernel 4.5 or higher, and
nvidia (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia) 370.23 or higher. Then enable
DRM kernel mode setting, which will in turn enable the PRIME synchronization
and x the tearing.

You can read the oicial forum thread (https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic

/957814/linux/prime-and-prime-synchronization/) for details.

Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU fallen o

the bus / RmInitAdapter failed!)

Add rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1 to the kernel parameters. Original topic can be

found here (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=169742).

Resolution, screen scan wrong. EDID errors in Xorg.log

This is due to the NVIDIA driver not detecting the EDID for the display. You need
to manually specify the path to an EDID le or provide the same information in a
similar way.

To provide the path to the EDID le edit the Device Section for the NVIDIA card
in Xorg.conf, adding these lines and changing parts to reect your own system:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Device"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT-0"

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Option "CustomEDID" "CRT-0:/sys/class/drm/card0-LVDS-1/edid"

Option "IgnoreEDID" "false"
Option "UseEDID" "true"
EndSection

If Xorg wont start try swapping out all references of CRT to DFB. card0 is the
identier for the intel card to which the display is connected via LVDS. The edid
binary is in this directory. If the hardware arrangement is dierent, the value for
CustomEDID might vary but yet this has to be conrmed. The path will start in
any case with /sys/class/drm.

Alternatively you can generate your edid with tools like read-edid
(https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=read-edid) and point the driver to this le.
Even modelines can be used, but then be sure to change "UseEDID" and
"IgnoreEDID".

Lockup issue (lspci hangs)

Symptoms: lspci hangs, system suspend fails, shutdown hangs, optirun hangs.

Applies to: newer laptops with GTX 965M or alike when bbswitch (e.g. via
Bumblebee) or nouveau is in use.

When the dGPU power resource is turned on, it may fail to do so and hang in
ACPI code (kernel bug 156341 (https://bugzilla.kernel.org
/show_bug.cgi?id=156341)).

For known model-specic workarounds, see this issue (https://github.com

/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues/764#issuecomment-234494238). In other
cases you can try to boot with acpi_osi="!Windows 2015" or
acpi_osi=! acpi_osi="Windows 2009" added to your Kernel parameters. (Consider
reporting your laptop to that issue.)

Using nouveau
The open-source nouveau driver (xf86-video-nouveau (https://www.archlinux.org/packages
/?name=xf86-video-nouveau)) can dynamically switch with the Intel driver ( xf86-
video-intel (https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=xf86-video-intel)) using a
technology called PRIME. For more information, see the wiki article on PRIME.

Using Bumblebee
If you wish to use Bumblebee, which will implement powersaving and some other
useful features, see the wiki article on Bumblebee.

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Category: Graphics

This page was last modied on 22 April 2017, at 18:06.

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