How to Save Energy When Using Your Computer
Linked by Howard Fosdick on Tue 2nd Aug 2011 22:18 UTC
Editorial Your computer is an important energy consumer in your home. Can you save energy when using it? This article offers a few tips.
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Dual-graphics cards
by WereCatf on Wed 3rd Aug 2011 05:24 UTC
WereCatf
Member since:
2006-02-15

I just very recently bought myself a new laptop and noticed that it actually has two graphics cards: a low-power, low-performance one and a high-power, high-performance one. I can switch between them manually or the system can do it based on my power-profiles, though it doesn't switch the high-power one on when I e.g. start a game. I s'spose it's a shortcoming of Windows and the drivers.

Anyways, it made me wonder when will PC manufacturers actually start doing the same thing on desktop PCs. It would make sense, even if it'll add $15 to the cost straight-up it'll pay itself back pretty quickly for most people.

EDIT: As a side-note I've gotten the impression that switching graphics card on-the-fly is STILL not possible under Linux. I would think that such an ability would be very high on the to-do list, after all it does save power quite a bit, but I can't recall having seen anyone even thinking of working on that. Has this changed yet, does anyone know?

Edited 2011-08-03 05:34 UTC

Reply Score: 2

RE: Dual-graphics cards
by Neolander on Wed 3rd Aug 2011 08:54 in reply to "Dual-graphics cards"
Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Have switchable graphics on my PC too, and I can attest that support in the Linux world is still in its early stages. Last time I tried, a few months ago, the computer locked up ;)

All I want myself is something that switches off the NVidia GPU and never turns it on again, since I don't use GPU-intensive software on Linux. Wonder if that's possible already...

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE: Dual-graphics cards
by _txf_ on Wed 3rd Aug 2011 10:10 in reply to "Dual-graphics cards"
_txf_ Member since:
2008-03-17

EDIT: As a side-note I've gotten the impression that switching graphics card on-the-fly is STILL not possible under Linux. I would think that such an ability would be very high on the to-do list, after all it does save power quite a bit, but I can't recall having seen anyone even thinking of working on that. Has this changed yet, does anyone know?


There is, with the ATI proprietary driver (powerXpress). Unfortunately you need unlink/relink to the ATI OGL library every time you switch.

Also there is some open source stuff that works with the radeon and intel gpus (I'm not sure it works with nouveau).

None of them are dynamic. You need to specifically switch, restart X (sometimes even restart the pc). Alas, the rather crufty graphics stack prevents dynamic switching...

Edited 2011-08-03 10:12 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: Dual-graphics cards
by WereCatf on Wed 3rd Aug 2011 10:33 in reply to "RE: Dual-graphics cards"
WereCatf Member since:
2006-02-15

You need to specifically switch, restart X (sometimes even restart the pc)


That's what I thought and that simply is not an acceptable solution. I hope someone gets around to do it properly, though.

That also means that I won't be using Linux on my laptop.

Reply Parent Score: 2