Disable Switchable Graphics

rabcor · 2013-02-25 18:21:09

I have this laptop model
Its set up with some amd radeon dual graphics thing that's never really worked properly and i've never fully understood either. the only good its done for me is nothing, the only bad its done for me is make my laptop overheat.

kudos hp.
A little bit of background:

In Windows, the default setting for these switchable graphics is set to off or just... not supported at all i think, i think it needs the drivers for the card to be installed for proper support of switchable graphics, otherwise it just defaults to... uhh... something.
In windows the drivers give me 2 options for the switchable graphics controls "High Performance" and "Power Saving" mode, my take on it is that if i select power saving mode it renders all graphics with just the GPU and its 512mb dedicated memory, then if i select high performance mode its supposed to add the apu on top of that, which is basically my processors intergrated graphics. which should give an extra 512mb dedicated video memory.

Now again in windows, i used my media player with the highest end files i could find on the net pretty much, using the haali renderer (it couldn't handle madVR) now according to the theory, it should have ran ok in power saving mode, but better in high performance mode, however if i set them in the catalyst control center to the same settings (Just like the 3d settings on the nvidia control panel really) then

In power saving mode: Runs fine on haali and has some lag spikes on madVR but is still barely watchable
in high performance mode: Has lag spikes on haali but is still watchable, madVR is unwatchable.

For those who don't know it, haali and madVR are different video renderers, and long story short, haali is a bit less quality than madVR but much much less graphical requirements, whereas madVR as the name kinda suggests tries to squeeze the best possible graphics out of every file at the cost of much higher GPU requirements.

Another thing i might add is that if for whatever reason my computer was using the dual graphics thing in windows 7, all hell could break loose, i had sudden forced hibernations, my screen sometimes would just turn black and stop working (whereas my external monitor was still working but the computer wasn't responding), and of course i had overheats, and if i tried to boot windows while everything was still hot i'd get a black screen on windows boot (kindof assume thats just forced hibernation, but the hibernation didn't really work since the heat doesn't dissipate at all, my only working way of cooling down the computer is completely shutting it down for a while)

Now that you understand windows's behavior in this thing.

Here's what linux does, now on gentoo's livecd which seemingly doesn't have the switchable graphics module loaded in the kernel by default things went fine until i booted into my system which i had enabled the module in back a while ago
Then even if my computer was idle and just in the terminal, my fan went crazy and the system heated like it was on fire, and eventually went to sleep.

in archlinux on the install cd the switchable graphics module seems to be loaded by default. which means i only have limited time to do anything in there.
Just idling the laptop heats up faster than an oven, its amazing really!
And oh yes, pacstrap fails. which was a bit odd...

Without resorting to the amd proprietary drivers, how can i disable this abomination?

Last edited by rabcor (2013-02-25 18:23:48)

jasonwryan · 2013-02-25 19:30:05

Not an Installation issue, moving to Kernel & Hardware...

rabcor · 2013-02-25 19:44:23

True, but i couldn't finish the install because of the issue
And i need to be able to do this during the install, it can't be a method which i can only use after the install.

jasonwryan · 2013-02-25 19:49:39

Blacklist the relevant module and complete the install...

s1ln7m4s7r · 2013-02-25 20:25:19

Run the arch installation cd, press TAB when syslinux menu appears and after the boot line place "modprobe.blacklist=radeon".

rabcor · 2013-02-25 20:57:31

thanks that would've worked

but i did it this way:

radeon.modeset=0

also just in case i ran "modprobe -r radeon" after the cd booted.

which worked.

but i'll be using that blacklist command you showed me next time.

Last edited by rabcor (2013-02-25 20:58:42)

rabcor · 2013-02-26 00:56:33

a bit of an update, after setting up the amd proprietary drivers on my system, i find that its handling my switchable graphics MUCH better than the ones in windows.

No overheating... and it actually performs like i'd expect it to. better on high performance and worse on low performance.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-02-25 18:21:09

Disable Switchable Graphics

#2 2013-02-25 19:30:05

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

#3 2013-02-25 19:44:23

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

#4 2013-02-25 19:49:39

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

#5 2013-02-25 20:25:19

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

#6 2013-02-25 20:57:31

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

#7 2013-02-26 00:56:33

Re: Disable Switchable Graphics

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