Ubuntu – NVidia and Intel in same Laptop: which card is used

14.04driversgraphicsintelnvidia

I'm trying to get my graphics card working in my Dell Mobile Precision 5510, which should be an NVidia Quaddro M1000M. The machine also has Intel graphics.

If I run lspci, I get, among other things,

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 191b (rev 06)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M] (rev a2)

Then, sometimes, after a few seconds, the machine freezes.

From the output of lspci, it appears the machine has both an Intel graphics card, and an NVidia one (M1000M) as expected.
This being a laptop, I don't have separate adaptors, so I don't know how outputs are switched, but I'd like to make sure I'm using the NVidia card.

I installed the NVidia drivers but X was just a blank screen.
I'm reasonably happy with the Nouveau drivers, but I cannot confirm that the correct graphics card is being used. The laptop was delivered with Ubuntu 14.04 has has never run anything else.

glxinfo gives me the following:

OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Skylake Halo GT2 
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.5.9

This sounds like the Intel card is being used. Is there a setting somewhere I could check? Thank you.

Best Answer

After two weeks of fiddling around and getting nowhere, I finally got the Nvidia card working with the NVidia drivers. The issue is that I originally tried to install the Nvidia drivers with the Ubuntu software installer (don't do this) which was originally happily using the Intel drivers. This didn't work, and several reboots later it has removed the Intel option and was apparently using the Nouveau drivers on the Intel card - a configuration I'm not sure is even possible. My system was immensely unstable in this configuration and would lock up with lspci or when using 3D graphics. I went through a lot of steps in order to fix this, and I don't really know what worked.

Get rid of whatever's there:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get purge nouveau*

Install the Intel driver. For some reason this uninstalls a load of stuff, such as wine. Can install it again later so don't worry.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel

I never explicitly uninstalled this (apt-get purge intel* is way too dangerous because of all the other Intel stuff) so presumably the Intel drivers are still there.

Add some respositories:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Install NVidia drivers and bumblebee:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-364
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus linux-headers-generic

This didn't work at first. I've no idea why. X would either not start, or keep returning me to the log-in screen. I tried replacing lightdm with gdm, that didn't work at all, so I went back to lightdm. Finally had one last try with the above and it worked. I can even use the nvidia-settings app to change to the Intel card. Only problem is that I have a 4k screen on a 15" laptop. Most software doesn't scale properly. I can't run 1920x1080 anymore with the NVidia card for some odd reason (it runs in the centre of the screen with a massive black border) but it works with the Intel card ok. I hope this helps somebody, but beware that hybrid graphics (on laptops) can be a complete pain to get working.

Related Question