Radeon 6990m and switchable graphics w/linux
 

Hello all,

First post, and new to linux. I have just ordered a Clevo P150HM laptop, with the ATI Radeon 6990m graphics card. The chipset is the i-7 2820QM. I do believe this chipset has built-in graphics, but that the Radeon card "does not support" switchable graphics. I was wondering (and hoping!) that there is some way to switch graphics cards while using linux (turn off the 6990m and use the intel integrated graphics), in order to save some battery life. Any help on this would be much appreciated, as again I'm new to this linux thing, and hoping for the best!

cheers.

While you may not be able to switch graphics cards "on the fly," you could certainly select which card you want to use in BIOS. Kind of a pain to reboot, yet effective.

Oh fantastic. This is honestly quite better than I was expecting (was expecting "no"). This may be a newb-ish question, but if you can point me in the direction of a post/thread about how to do this, that would be awesome (of course, if you could tell me how, that would be even better!).

Thanks again very much.

cheers

I would think that it will be pretty apparent once you go into the BIOS set-up utility to switch between the Intel® HD Graphics 3000 and the AMD Mobility RadeonTM HD 6990M.

okay great. thank you. i will look into this asap when my laptop arrives.

thanks again, i appreciate it.

May I ask where you got this information? If the graphics card doesn't support switchable graphics, why should the manufacturer route the output of the CPU-inbuilt GPU to the display? And why should the manufacturer implement a non-working function in the BIOS?

Most likely there is no option in the BIOS to switch between the two. That's increasingly uncommon on newer laptops. In fact, there is likely no hardware mux, because 6990m isn't even routed to a display.

The good news, then, is that the intel GPU will likely be enabled by default, with the 6990m off, which is what you asked about. The bad news is that you probably spent extra money for the 6990m, which will likely be unusable under Linux for the foreseeable future.

Adam

Tobi-
I think you may be correct. I asked the manufacturer of the laptop and they said "it's unlikely, since it is a hardware issue rather than an OS or software issue".

Adam-
Honestly your post would be a good thing for me. I am planning on using windows for gaming with the laptop (and thus using the 6990m card, which sounds quite clear that I will HAVE to use if running windows). However, if somehow the hardware is set up such that in linux the intel gpu is default (and have no way of using the 6990 card), that would be perfect since I won't be using linux for any graphically-intensive things (and would certainly appreciate the battery life improvement).

I'm guessing there's no real way to tell until it arrives? I appreciate all the help and info on this though guys, it's quite informative.

cheers,
ryan

Yeah, you probably won't know till it gets there unless you can find someone with that exact laptop to check with.

Adam

the thing to watch out for is sometimes when you first install linux and you haven't figured out the configuration you end up with both
graphics chipsets running at the same time and the laptop can get hot as crap real fast.

i think the issue with switching is because it's an amd graphics card on an intel platform.
the more low end ones where switching works so well in linux - both graphics chisets are being controlled by the same ati driver.