Arch Linux

Zygote

Member

Registered: 2013-01-15

Posts: 77

[SOLVED]Using the dedicated Radeon graphics card with the Sony Vaio Z2

Hi there!

Ive installed Arch Linux on my Sony Vaio Z21 and it works great! The only problem is that I cant get the graphics card in the Power Media Dock to work. Its being detected but from what I can tell the system is only using the integrated Intel HD3000 card for graphics processing as 3d benchmarks gives me the same score regardless of whether the dock is connected or not.

xrandr --listproviders
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0x7f cap: 0xb, Source Output, Sink Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 5 associated providers: 1 name:Intel
Provider 1: id: 0x57 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 6 outputs: 2 associated providers: 1 name:radeon

Tried setting xrandr --setprovideroffloadsink radeon Intel but glxinfo still indicates that the Intel GPU is the OpenGL renderer

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile 

Any ideas would be most welcome

Last edited by Zygote (2015-01-21 19:54:07)

clfarron4

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From: London, UK

Registered: 2013-06-28

Posts: 2,163

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Re: [SOLVED]Using the dedicated Radeon graphics card with the Sony Vaio Z2

What method are you using to provide hybrid graphics? Catalyst PowerXpress, amd-bumblebee-git, PRIME (there are others I think, just can't think what they are right now)?

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Zygote

Member

Registered: 2013-01-15

Posts: 77

Re: [SOLVED]Using the dedicated Radeon graphics card with the Sony Vaio Z2

What method are you using to provide hybrid graphics? Catalyst PowerXpress, amd-bumblebee-git, PRIME (there are others I think, just can't think what they are right now)?

Im not using any specific method. I was under the impression that the necessary patches for the Power Media Dock was already included in the kernel now.

PRIME doesnt seem to require anything except supported drivers, which I have installed. Ive read through the ArchWiki page on PRIME and tried xrandr --setprovideroffloadsink but it doent seem to make any difference. Running DRI_PRIME=1 glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" gives me the following

OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD TURKS

That looks good, but benchmark results with unigine-heaven yields identical results regardless of whether I have the dock connected or not

Have not tried any other the other aforementioned methods though.

Last edited by Zygote (2015-01-21 18:44:38)

Zygote

Member

Registered: 2013-01-15

Posts: 77

Re: [SOLVED]Using the dedicated Radeon graphics card with the Sony Vaio Z2

However, if I run glxgears as follows i get aproximately 80 FPS

glxgears

However, if I run:

DRI_PRIME=1 glxgears

I get more than 770 FPS.

So I guess that solves the issue. The answer being: Use PRIME.

Last edited by Zygote (2015-01-21 19:53:47)