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darlac

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 12

[Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

I have Nvidia (GTX 1060) in my system; my hdmi is hardwired to the Nvidia card so I need it to run an external monitor. I use Nvidia with Bumblebee and works great. When I am using my laptop on battery, with NO external monitor, utilizing only the embedded intel card I still have very low battery life (~ 55 mins).
The problem has to be with Nvidia being initialized, although I do not call for it -
I tested completely removing bumblebee + Nvidia drivers, and my battery life is ~ 2.5 hrs (not great, but significantly better)
When I install Nvidia, no bumblebee, my battery life drops to ~ 55 mins

based on the above I believe that nvidia is still using some resources, and drains the battery,  even if I am not using it - is there a way to fully de-activate nvidia if I am on battery power? can I use any tools (e.g. laptop-mode) to achieve this?
thanks,
Dimitris

Last edited by darlac (2017-12-01 14:27:16)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,364

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

Install bbswitch and bumblebee will make sure that it is started and stopped properly once bbswitch is present, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bu … management as well.

darlac

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

I just checked, bbswitch-dkms is installed; is there a way to check its functionality? should remove and install bbswitch?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,364

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

What's the output of

dmesg | grep bbswitch
cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch

?

Last edited by V1del (2017-12-01 14:14:08)

darlac

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

[    4.739609] bbswitch: version 0.8
[    4.739619] bbswitch: Found integrated VGA device 0000:00:02.0: \_SB_.PCI0.GFX0
[    4.739627] bbswitch: Found discrete VGA device 0000:01:00.0: \_SB_.PCI0.PEG0.PEGP
[    4.739810] bbswitch: detected an Optimus _DSM function
[    4.739994] bbswitch: Succesfully loaded. Discrete card 0000:01:00.0 is on
[    4.743710] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics
[  170.365271] bbswitch: enabling discrete graphics
[  173.668905] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics
[  173.740284] bbswitch: enabling discrete graphics

darlac

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

now I have a 2nd monitor on
so

cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch

gives

0000:01:00.0 ON 

I will restart to check w/o the 2nd monitor and update

darlac

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Nvidia optimus battery drain

Ok, I guess bbswitch works fine -
here is the output w/o 2nd monitor

~>$ dmesg | grep bbswitch
[    5.159962] bbswitch: version 0.8
[    5.159966] bbswitch: Found integrated VGA device 0000:00:02.0: \_SB_.PCI0.GFX0
[    5.159971] bbswitch: Found discrete VGA device 0000:01:00.0: \_SB_.PCI0.PEG0.PEGP
[    5.160090] bbswitch: detected an Optimus _DSM function
[    5.160166] bbswitch: Succesfully loaded. Discrete card 0000:01:00.0 is on
[    5.161512] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics
 ~>$ cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:01:00.0 OFF

will mark thread as solved, and look more into the battery drain issue..
thanks