Arch Linux

el mariachi

Member

Registered: 2007-11-30

Posts: 595

Overheating when using NVIDIA card (Optimus laptop)

I had Ubuntu installed on this laptop for some time and never had any issues. In Arch, as soon as I open a game (examples: Strike Suit Zero, X Rebirth, Anomaly Defenders, Transistor) with primusrun my laptop's temp jumps to 80-90ªC and after a while everything slows down due to throttling and I have to stop playing. Some of these games are not that intense and, as said before, temperatures were normal (around 70) in Ubuntu, so it's not like there's a massive dust clog in my laptop. Running powertop with everything on doesn't make a difference.

I'm running the proprietary drivers (nvidia-346.47-3) and followed the wiki to setup Bumblebee and BBswitch -- both work fine, temperatures while not playing are 45-50 (which were actually cooler in Ubuntu too).

Laptop is a Lenovo Y510P with

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 755M] (rev a1)

Linux koi 3.19.1-1-ck #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Mar 7 11:48:52 EST 2015 x86_64 GNU/Linux

(using the stock arch kernel makes no difference)

Running Gnome 3 and launching said games from Steam with primusrun %command% (launching them outside of steam makes no difference)

What can I try? It can't be a hardware problem since everything worked dandy under Ubuntu.

thanks!

kligegilk

Member

Registered: 2015-02-11

Posts: 17

Re: Overheating when using NVIDIA card (Optimus laptop)

I'm no expert but I had the overheating issue as well on an ASUS Zenbook UX303. Il played Legend of Grimrock with primus and it went terribly hot. You can try to adjust the "high" and "critical" temperature thresholds

themax

Member

Registered: 2013-05-14

Posts: 32

Re: Overheating when using NVIDIA card (Optimus laptop)

I have a Thinkpad 420s, and I have serious overheating issues aswell. I thought this was due to Nvidia Optimus being a poor concept...
I will try Ubuntu and compare when I have some free time.

eticre

Member

Registered: 2011-10-15

Posts: 55

Re: Overheating when using NVIDIA card (Optimus laptop)

hi

in
/etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

try using primus in bridge

# Acceleration/ rendering bridge, possible values are auto, virtualgl and
# primus.
Bridge=primus

and proxy in VGLTransport

# The method used for VirtualGL to transport frames between X servers.
# Possible values are proxy, jpeg, rgb, xv and yuv.
VGLTransport=proxy

on my laptop other settings cause high cpu usage