Arch Linux

trppmus

Member

Registered: 2021-05-23

Posts: 1

How is the graphic card picked up by default

Hello

I have 2 graphic cards installed on my system, both are working fine:

$ lspci -k | grep -i vga -A 2
04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Device 11bf
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
--
0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] (rev e7)
	Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Radeon RX 580
	Kernel driver in use: amdgpu]

I have no specific configuration file in /etc/X11, and by default the AMD one is used:

$ glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon RX 580 Series (POLARIS10, DRM 3.40.0, 5.12.5-arch1-1, LLVM 11.1.0)

I know how to start X11 with nvidia using an ad hoc configuration file in /etc/X11 but I am trying to understand when / where the graphic card is chosen and how come this is the AMD one? is it at boot time?

Thanks

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,334

Re: How is the graphic card picked up by default

Yes, the BIOS/UEFI defines the "primary" card during initial startup, potentially based on which PCI slot which card is in as far as I know