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Revision as of 07:17, 2 February 2021 by Papoteur (talk | contribs) (Using Nvidia card alone)
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Mageia-prime is dedicated to laptops with "Optimus" technology and allows switch to NVidia proprietary driver.

Actually there are four combinations of configurations Nvidia/Intel. Between all the combinations, the most popular is considering the NVidia laptop graphics card in a way similar to a desktop card.

Using Nvidia card alone

Quick instructions are:

  • configure your card as usual as an Intel card from XFdrake (or MCC).
  • run from a terminal with root privileges and then reboot:
mageia-prime-install
reboot
Note:
default is for installing for cards supported by the nvidia-current drivers

The option '-3' (i.e. mageia-prime-install -3' for installing using the nvidia390) is yet untested on a real "390.xx" card. Feedback is welcome.

If everything works fine, at next reboot, you'll get the Xorg configured as NVidia. You can check the switch has actually been executed, running for instance one of the following utilities: glxinfo, glinfo, clinfo, nvidia-settings, cuda-z, checking /var/log/Xorg.0.log, typing "about:gpu" in chromium-browser, typing "about:support" in firefox, and some further benchmark like glxgears, glxspheres64, glmark2, etc., which should show also the increase of performance. blender should also work with CUDA rendering in Cycles.

- to go back to the Intel graphics card, run:

mageia-prime-uninstall

Switching between cards

Once all the kernel modules are built, you can quickly switch back and forth between NVidia and Intel, without rebooting, but just by restarting X11, using:

mageia-prime-install -z
mageia-prime-uninstall -z

which will zap X11 for you.

Offloading

With NVIDIA driver version >= 435.xx you can use prime render offloading, which starts X11 with intel and render with nvidia GPU:

https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/460.39/README/primerenderoffload.html

The option for enabling it with 'mageia-prime-install -p' instead of just 'mageia-prime-install', and then render, is using:

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia <application>

and there is a wrapper for doing the same with

mageia-prime-offload-run <application>

Note that in this way some application would work (e.g. benchmark works), some other doesn't, e.g. if you start chromium-browser under prime offload, you get it don't starting with acceleration enabled as you can check with "about:gpu." We are not sure why this happens, probably because there aren't available all the GLX visuals in offloading mode. Also in this way the performance are not that different from the integrated Intel card, though this might depend on which Nvidia card you have. If you have a GTX 3080 mobile probably the offloading is faster anyway.