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Friday, March 1, 2013

[Linux-Mint 13 - Maya] Disable Nvidia discrete graphic card in a Nvidia optimus laptop

I had been really really screwed up as I was not able to optimize my laptop battery life.
I'm having Windows 7 - Pro and Linux Mint 13 - Maya in dual boot. Yes, I switched to Linux Mint after lot of head-banging with Ubuntu 12.04 with freaky Unity. So this is it. With Linux Mint 13 Mate variant now.

Alright. Now, I had hell lot of problems lined up with DELL Vostro 3460 to customize it my own way.

Battery was lasting for nearly 5 hours with Windows 7 Pro, but that wasn't same with Mint. I had to struggle a lot to find out ways how can I optimize my laptop battery. Mint would last for merely 2 hours. That was really annoying. So many optimization options were not really helping me. Like installing laptop-mode-tools, disabling unused services for every boot-time, and what not.
And even after all that, powertop showed power consumption to be ~ 25 Watts.
Moreover, without ANY application open after just logging into the system. :-(

I was so annoyed that, after thinking of changing distro to ArchLinux, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, I even thought to format laptop and stick to Windows 7 - pro. :-(
I had anyway paid for Windows 7, so why not just focus on it.

Anyway let the rest of story rest in peace. :-)

After lot of head-banging, I figured out that its Nvidia drivers who is culprit behind all this. I saw people saying, "if you had to install Linux on laptop, why go for optimus Laptops."

But this blog post saved me hell lot of battery life:
https://wenlong.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/disable-the-nvidia-discrete-graphic-card-in-a-nvidia-optimus-laptop/

Thank you so much man.
Now, powertop shows merely 10 Watts after logging into system. :-)

I thought of creating a Bash script for lazy bunnies, but then it has a github download link for which version might differ as well. So, that is it!

What do I say to Nvidia when Linus can say that better. :D



..............Done!!!

1 comment:

  1. Hello. I have the same computer, dell vostro 3460 whit GeForce GT 630M. I tried to swhitch-off the nvidia card using the instructions posted in the link. But the terminal gives me back "ERROR: Module nouveau is in use" each time i try to unload that module. My computer go as high as 80°-85°C, i have two fan coolers around... i can't use the computer :(
    I use fedora 18 & linux mint 14.
    Do you have an idea of the problem?

    ReplyDelete