Arch Linux

Casiven

Member

Registered: 2021-12-10

Posts: 1

[Nvidia] Multiple GPU Switching

As a disclaimer, I'm a new Arch/Linux enthusiast (roughly two weeks) and my apologies if this is in the incorrect sub-forum.  I've been having a blast learning over the past couple weeks, definitely feel like diving head first into Arch after leaving Windows was the best decision for me.  Talk about immersion learning.

This is mainly an "is this even possible?" question.

[Hardware]
CPU: Ryzen 3800X
RAM: 32GB
GPU 1: Nvidia 760 [Host]
GPU 2: Nvidia 1070 [Guest]

[Current Configuration] (Basically this)

What I'd like to do:

GPU 1: Nvidia 760 [Host] or [Inactive] (Disable?)
GPU 2: Nvidia 1070 [Host] or [Guest]

Boot with both GPU's active, with the choice of selecting the active GPU at either login screen or through terminal.  Where I'd have the ability to run my full "experience" on my primary card or allowing me the option of falling back to "Current Configuration" if I need to boot a Windows VM for 'X' or 'Y' game.  Part of this is definitely possible using scripts + hooks with virtmanager, at least with applying/removing the VFIOPCI driver to the 1070 card on VM boot through hooks.  I've done some reading about bumblebee, nvidia-xrun and optimus, but I'm unsure if these are valid options due to most of these seeming to be configured for an Intel/AMD iGPU + dGPU or mobile GPU's.  May be completely overthinking it, just know the two times I've tried touching optimus manager or xrun have caused issues during boot (probably noob problems).

Would it just be easier/smarter to setup another VM (or just use the Windows VM)?  Or, to just remove the 760, upgrade drivers to the newest version and deal with the single monitor with a single gpu passthrough option?

There's no real reason I need to do this, just like tinkering.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,285

Re: [Nvidia] Multiple GPU Switching

bumblebee / nvidia-xrun / optimus / prime are all intended for hybrid graphics, not systems with multiple separate videocards .

You can have multiple X sessions though each with their own (static) configuration.

check manpages of startx , xinit and xorg.conf to get an idea. The readme file of the nvidia driver may also have useful info.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky