[ltp] state of nvidia optimus support

Alex Deucher linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:00:12 -0400


On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 5:20 AM, Aleksander Sumowski
<aleksander.sumowski@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey!
> I'm considering buying Thinkpad T420 with NVidia Optimus. I'm aware that the
> live/automatic switching of the gpu is not supported, but wanted to make
> sure that I'll be able to switch manually. What is involved in doing such
> switch? Is it supported by any distro?

Not in the near future.  Things like optimus and muxless hybrid
graphics only connect the integrated gpu to the displays, the discrete
chip is only used for rendering.  X needs a lot of work to decouple
display and rendering.  Right now it's assumed that that GPU driving
the displays is also the gpu doing the rendering.  There is some
effort to do this, but it will probably be a while before there is
anything broadly usable.

Alex