[ltp] W500 DisplayPort Intel GMA vs Radeon 3650

[Karsten König]

Am Montag, 31. Mai 2010, 15:57:40 schrieb credito@gmx.de:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have a W500 with two graphic cards. One is the Intel GMA 4500 and the
> other is a ATI Radeon Mobile 3650. I disabled the ati in bios as I don't
> need the  extra 3d power.  I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 64bit.
> 
> But no I face an issue: I can't get the Intel card working on the
> displayport. VGA works fine but the image is a bit blurred on high res.
> xrandr tells me there is an DP1 but nothing is connected.
> 
> I googled a bit and it looks like the intel graphic card can't use or is
> not attached to the displayport. Does anyone of you have any further
> information on this ?

I remember seeing the DVI port on the dock only works with the discrete 
graphics card enabled (T400 that is) and I assume it's the same case for the 
DP output on the W500.



> What I can tell is if I boot with the intel setup the external monitor is
> pitch black. If I switch to ati card the monitor shows the boot process.
> So I'm not too confident this can be fixed by software.
> 
> Anyway I switched to the opensource radeon driver. This gave my indeed wh=
at
> I wanted for a couple of minutes. Then out a sudden (10-15 minutes after
> normal work) the internal display just got some kind of blurry effect.
> It's hard to describe. Thin black lines for instance are flickering
> blueish. The fonts are readable but it appears every 2nd row has some sort
> of misinformation. The background of the console window is not black
> anymore. For my eye it appears some grey color is added.  And a couple of
> other nasty features. If I power down and start up again it is fine for
> 5-10 minutes. I suspect this might be a temperature issue. I noticed the
> GPU has around 60° degree Celsius.   Does anyone have an idea what h=
appens
> here ?

Older radeon driver stack lacked powermanagment

> Next I decided I try the fglrx (10.5) driver. Well at the moment this
> blurry feature is gone (GPU is around 45°), though I will continue t=
o do
> some long term investigations. Of course now I struggle other problems
> suspend, switch to console,...
>
> I'm a bit scared because of this blurry feature. The laptop is a week old.
> 
> 
> Rightnow I'm thinking of how I could get a proper setup. I'd like to use
> the Ati card only if is absolutely necessary (in my case external monitor
> via displayport). Does anyone of you have a similar setup and maybe a
> solution for it ?

The current ATI graphics stack in XOrg, Kernel and Radeon driver is getting 
better, so there is already starting powermanagment etc, I suggest using a 
bleeding edge distribution for now to have the best support, Arch Linux, next 
generation openSUSE or Fedora, maybe update the kernel to 2.6.34 on Fedora 
though.

> I guess there is no auto switch graphic card utility in linux yet. I'm ju=
st
> wondering if it could be switched during boot (grub boot parameter) to
> pick one graphic card. I just don't know if it is possible to completely
> shutdown the intel and ati card by linux. Any pointers ?
> 

Check out vga_switcheroo from 2.6.34+, your usecase fits perfectly =)

> Best regards,
> 
> Marcel