I am using Ubuntu in Vivobook and am experiencing terrible battery life. It could be due to the MX230 included. Is there a way to shift to iGPU?
21 Answer
So long as you have the nvidia driver installed, you can manually switch between the video devices using the nvidia X Server Settings utility:
Open the application and choose "PRIME Profiles" from the list on the left. You will then see some options on the right:
The options are broken down as such:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| NVIDIA (Performance Mode) | Prioritise graphics and to heck with power saving |
| NVIDIA On-Demand | Automatically switch between NVIDIA dedicated graphics and the on-board Intel graphics device depending on the task |
| Intel (Power Saving Mode) | Only use the on-board Intel graphics device |
Some notebooks only show two options, so do not worry if you do not have the exact same list.
Note: If you are unable to find nvidia X Server Settings in your application menu, then you might not be using an nvidia driver. You can confirm this by opening Terminal and using sudo lshw -C video. You will see something like this:
*-display description: VGA compatible controller product: GK106GLM [Quadro K2100M] vendor: NVIDIA Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 version: a1 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0 resources: irq:46 memory:b0000000-b0ffffff memory:80000000-8fffffff memory:90000000-91ffffff ioport:4000(size=128) memory:b1080000-b10fffff *-display description: VGA compatible controller product: 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 06 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=i915 latency=0 resources: irq:38 memory:b1400000-b17fffff memory:a0000000-afffffff ioport:5000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffffUnder configuration there is a driver value. If it says nouveau, then you're using the open driver. If it says nvidia you're using the proprietary driver.
Hope this answers your question and helps resolve the battery life issues you're experiencing.
