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#1 2017-02-10 22:06:00

cgprats
Member
From: Florida
Registered: 2017-02-10
Posts: 1

New Mobile Pascal GPUs + Proprietary Nvidia Drivers?

Noob question here.

I was wondering if I could use the new laptop Pascal gpus with the proprietary drivers offered by Nvidia. On Windows, the laptop OEM has to offer the drivers for these cards instead of Nvidia. The reason I wish to use the proprietary drivers is for the Optimus (gpu switching between iGPU and the dedicated card when needed to save battery) functionality, which AFAIK isn't available with Nouveau.

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#2 2017-02-10 22:28:55

Azured
Member
Registered: 2014-02-08
Posts: 9

Re: New Mobile Pascal GPUs + Proprietary Nvidia Drivers?

Did you look at the wiki?

The wiki suggests you check Nvidia's website for compatability of the proprietary driver:

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx

And it has an entire article for Optimus:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus

Wiki wrote:

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 fixed. 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 nvidia, nvidia-libgl and xorg-xrandr from the official repositories.

Wiki wrote:

Using nouveau

The open-source nouveau driver (xf86-video-nouveau) can dynamically switch with the Intel driver (xf86-video-intel) using a technology called PRIME. For more information, see the wiki article on PRIME.

Finally Bumblebee is for using proprietary Nvidia drivers with switching capability, but is itself not a nvidia provided solution:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

Wiki wrote:

Bumblebee: Optimus for Linux

Optimus Technology is a hybrid graphics implementation without a hardware multiplexer. The integrated GPU manages the display while the dedicated GPU manages the most demanding rendering and ships the work to the integrated GPU to be displayed. When the laptop is running on battery supply, the dedicated GPU is turned off to save power and prolong the battery life. It has also been tested successfully with desktop machines with Intel integrated graphics and an nVidia dedicated graphics card.
Bumblebee is a software implementation comprising of two parts:
Render programs off-screen on the dedicated video card and display it on the screen using the integrated video card. This bridge is provided by VirtualGL or primus (read further) and connects to a X server started for the discrete video card.
Disable the dedicated video card when it is not in use (see the #Power management section)
It tries to mimic the Optimus technology behavior; using the dedicated GPU for rendering when needed and power it down when not in use. The present releases only support rendering on-demand, automatically starting a program with the discrete video card based on workload is not implemented.

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