hybrid-graphics-linux team mailing list archive

["Vangel V. Ajanovski" <ajanovski@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 07/28/2011 03:02 AM, Eric Appleman wrote:
> Not sure if this includes the muxless (PowerXpress 4.0) laptops.
>
> http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTcyMQ
>
> Anyone with an HP dv6-61xx, Thinkpad Edge Ex20x or Dell Vostro 3x50 up 
> for testing?
I don't know if I qualify because I have a HP dm4t-1100 which has 
Intel+ATI 5470 (and I don't know if it has a mux or not - I know that 
Windows driver automatically switches based on usage).

I use Xubuntu 11.04 at this moment and I can say that with 11.7 
switching works. But not completely.

OpenGL is much faster if I switch to the ATI card.
But, unfortunately, battery drain does not change, no matter which card 
is switched on and no matter if I enable the powerplay options. It 
doesn't matter if I do a full restart or just restart of X.

On the other hand, with opensource radeon driver and vgaswitcheroo, I am 
able to manually turn off the ATI card and in that way lower the battery 
drain. The bad thing is that the performance with the opensource radeon 
driver is similar to the performance of the intel card, so there is no 
point in using the opensource radeon driver at all.

So this is what I do:
A. if I want long battery life I UNINSTALL fglrx and reboot with 
opensource drivers and immediately turn off ATI
B. if I want better opengl (for work) i INSTALL fglrx and reboot and use 
the ATI card.

It takes just 15 minutes of my time. It could take less, but 
unfortunately with option A opensource driver has some bug in switching 
the screens on off and sometimes the kernel freezes so you have to 
reboot the laptop several times in a row until you get lucky to make it 
work :) This problem is many times worse (many more reboots needed until 
you get lucky) if you forget to turn on the ATI card before shutdown or 
reboot.
I'm talking about this bug:
- 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/727620
Which is supposedly fixed in kernel 3.0, but fglrx does not work there.