Arch Linux

mms1313

Member

Registered: 2025-08-06

Posts: 42

[FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

I have a laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile and an integrated Intel GPU.
When I boot into the system, I just get a black screen.
Since I use SDDM, I tried typing my password anyway, and it actually logged me into KDE Plasma, which was kind of good.
But then I noticed the sound wasn’t working, animations were missing, and programs only seem to run using llvmpipe.
The NVIDIA driver looks like it’s installed and loaded, but I don’t see any actual activity from the GPU.

Here’s the output from nvidia-smi:

Wed Aug  6 20:26:03 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 575.64.05              Driver Version: 575.64.05      CUDA Version: 12.9     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 ...    Off |   00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   54C    P8              3W /   80W |      37MiB /   4096MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A             843      G   /usr/lib/Xorg                             5MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A            1810      G   /usr/bin/ksmserver                        1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A            1964      G   /usr/bin/kaccess                          1MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Last edited by mms1313 (2025-08-07 20:05:11)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,147

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

Did you run nvidia-xconfig or similar to generate a config? get rid of that. and xf86-video-intel if you've installed that for some reason. If that wasn't it, try switching to a tty and posting

sudo journalctl -b | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

mms1313

Member

Registered: 2025-08-06

Posts: 42

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

I dont think i ran nvidia-xconfig or installed the intel thing, and here is the output from tty:

http://0x0.st/8hYu.txt
http://0x0.st/8hYM.txt

Last edited by mms1313 (2025-08-07 07:51:30)

mms1313

Member

Registered: 2025-08-06

Posts: 42

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

I have also tried to run vkcube now using vulkan tools, and i got the error:

Selected WSI platform: wayland
Selected GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU, type: DiscreteGpu
[destroyed object]: error 7: importing the supplied dmabufs failed

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,147

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

 modprobe.blacklist=i915

you did that why exactly?

You have a PRIME setup where your display is driven by the intel GPU and the nvidia GPU should only be invoked on demand - which is generally what you want and that would be the default if you hadn't taken measures to try and manipulate it. And it also appears you have some custom configuration in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ post any files you created there and their contents: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

Last edited by V1del (2025-08-07 18:58:28)

mms1313

Member

Registered: 2025-08-06

Posts: 42

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

i thought i could only use the nvidia gpu by blacklisting the intel driver. and weirdly i can’t find anything in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/. i had an issue with mounting /boot before, said unknown filesystem vfat, but i fixed that. then this happened. should i just remove the i915 blacklist?

Last edited by mms1313 (2025-08-07 19:52:43)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,186

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

Only if you can disable the IGP in the firmware (UEFI/BIOS) or only use outputs attached to the GPU (which seems not the case)
If your output is attached to the IGP (and not soft-rewired by the firmware) you'll /have/ to use the IGP.
Whether you're going for a https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME#Reverse_PRIME or not.

Edit: what make you think that would be a good idea anyway?

Last edited by seth (2025-08-07 19:55:49)

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mms1313

Member

Registered: 2025-08-06

Posts: 42

Re: [FIXED] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 not being used.

I made that change a few months from now when i was very new to arch linux, but i think i have fixed it by removing it in grub and rebooting.