Arch Linux

nexion

Member

Registered: 2011-07-16

Posts: 1

Switchable Graphics (intel & radeon)

I just got an HP Pavilion dv7t-6100 laptop which comes with two graphics adapters:

[pavel@orianna ~]$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc NI Seymour [AMD Radeon HD 6470M] (rev ff)

When I boot up, both i915 and radeon modules are loaded, but radeon is not being used.

I have never seen the 'radeon' open-source driver actually work for my video card. It seems that every attempt I make at switching to it results in a hard freeze of my laptop.

1. My first problem (which I solved): Since both video cards are powered up, the radeon card is just a drain on the battery.
Solution:

[pavel@orianna ~]$ cat /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/bash
#
# /etc/rc.local: Local multi-user startup script.
#

# Power off the radeon card
mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

# This powers off the radeon card on system startup
---------------

2. My second problem (not solved): The boot process looks fairly random and it seems that sometimes it tries to start with the radeon card active. I have not yet figured out why, but doing so shows a radeon driver crash during boot, followed by a complete freeze, requiring a hard reboot. It's safe to say that the driver is faulty, but is there a way to make sure the radeon card is NEVER the active one?

I've considered blacklisting the radeon module, but note: It would be nice to have #1 (powering off) still happen for the radeon card.

---------------

I'm okay with using integrated graphics, but I'd like to minimize the impact of the radeon card. The ideal, of course, would be to have switchable graphics (defaulting to integrated) with the radeon driver working properly, but I suspect that isn't an option at this time, hearing that even the proprietary radeon driver will not support switching. This does work perfectly on Windows. Does not work on Ubuntu 11.04 and latest Arch (only 2 I tried).

Thanks in advance!

IronMania

Member

Registered: 2011-07-16

Posts: 9

Re: Switchable Graphics (intel & radeon)

Hey,

i don't know if this works, but for my TimelineX laptop it works:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ac … e_Graphics

I don't know if there is an "official" version, so I can just provide you with the link above. This script stops my radeon card when I boot. I only have as kernel parameter i915.modeset=1
and my intel card is always on.

phoque

Member

Registered: 2011-08-24

Posts: 1

Re: Switchable Graphics (intel & radeon)

Granted, I'm not working with Arch but have solved this on Ubuntu:

For me it's possible to load the radeon module using

modprobe radeon

after everything has booted fine.

After doing that, vgaswitcheroo is working again and I can disable the discrete graphics card.