I used bumblebee with my Optimus laptop (i7-3630QM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 670MX) since 13.1.
It was troublesome to install, but it worked.
Now forum member bosim made the offer in his thread ‘Nvidia Optimus without bumblebee’ https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/511230-NVIDIA-Optimus-without-bumbleebee
to transpose the prime mechanism I first heard of from ubuntu to Opensuse Leap 42.1.
I gave it a try during changing from 13.2 to Leap and it is working great, that is, the GPU performance is great.
The drawback had been the lacking mechanism to switch off
the Nvidia card from power, when using the intel power saving graphics.
But with bbswitch installed, you can handle this problem with two small scripts you have to call as root
after booting and before changing to Nvidia graphics.
Though the prime implementation is still experimental, I had no problems at all with stability or suspending when using intel graphics,
but also none with nvidia graphics. The system is awakening without problems.
-
Fresh Leap 42.1 installation with KDE and Plasma 5.43, kernel 4.1.12-1-default x86_64.
-
Installation of the appropriate Nvidia driver from http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/42.1
via http://opensuse-community.org/nvidia.ymp
I chose nvidia-glG04 for my GTX 670MX, with all dependencies chosen by Yast. -
Next I added http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/bosim:/suse-prime/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/ to my repositories
and installed suse-prime-0.1-8.1.noarch.rpm from there. -
According to this instructions https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:bosim:suse-prime/suse-prime
I added in the script
/etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup
after the line “. /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager” the following:
if -f /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/prime-offload.sh ];
then
. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/prime-offload.sh
fi
- I tried prime-select as described there:
‘Run “prime-select nvidia” log out and login again, hopefully you are using nvidia GPU.
To switch back to intel GPU run “prime-select intel” Remember to run as root.’
This worked just fine and stable, also after rebooting.
But the power consumption was not as low as with bumblebee when just using the intel graphics.
bosim suggested using bbswitch and I tried this way successfully.
- I installed bbswitch and bbswitch-kmp-default from the main Oss repository
and changed the default settings of bbswitch with
nano /etc/modprobe.d/50-bbswitch.conf to:
options bbswitch load_state=1 unload_state=1
so that the discrete Nvidia graphics card gets switched on by bbswitch, when booting or shutting down the system.
This is important for initializing my GTX 670MX card correctly - learned from bumblebee troubles.
- There is a way to switch off the Nvidia card by manually changing /proc/acpi/bbswitch
I am using therefore two scripts I call as root after booting, in order to power off the Nvidia card,
or if I change to Nvidia graphics:
switchoffNvidia.sh
#!/bin/sh
modprobe -r nvidia_uvm nvidia
tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFF
selectNvidia.sh
#!/bin/sh
tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<ON
modprobe nvidia_uvm nvidia
prime-select nvidia
echo "Now you have to log out -> log in!"
Now with all scripts ready, this is my modus operandi:
-
Usually I am using the intel graphics for everyday work and there I am right after booting into my system.
To reduce power consumption under intel graphics, I have to run as root the script switchoffNvidia.sh -
If I want to play X-Plane with the Nvidia graphics on, I run as root the script selectNvidia.sh and log out from KDE and in again.
Performance boost for glxspheres under Nvidia graphics from 248-250 frames/sec or Mpixels/sec with bumblebee
to 1318.988993 frames/sec - 1471.991717 Mpixels/sec under prime. -
to switch back to intel graphics I have to run as root
prime-select intel
,
then log out from KDE, log in again and run my script switchoffNvidia.sh as root to reduce power consumption.
Power consumption after switching off the Nvidia card is as low as with bumblebee using intel graphics.
Thanks to bosim for his work!