Macbook Pro 15" retina (Model 10,1) - how to disable nVidia display adapter?

[ksatta1]

I remember I had to had add echo ON/OFF foo a few months back to get reboot/suspend/resume to work, now I just can't find them anywhere. Did you try manually doing it to see if it works like that?

[sauferkel]

yap, i just did.
looks as follows:
suspend works with nvidia enabled and disabled. however, if i suspend without the nvidia, i can't enable it anymore after the suspend. my system freezes then.

[ksatta1]

I think I added a script in /etc/pm/sleep.d, but it's not there anymore

Anyway, if you add a script in /etc/pm/sleep.d called anything, then put something like this in it:

case $1 in
     suspend|suspend_hybrid|hibernate)
    echo ON > switchfoo
        ;;

     resume|thaw)
    echo OFF > ...
        ;;
esac

That should fix the suspend atleast.

[sauferkel]

So you don't change anymore at all, or it just works in a magical manner?

Thank you

[ksatta1]

I have two installs, one intel-only and one nvidia-only. In the intel-only install I remember I had to add echo foos, but it seems to work without them now.

And to switch I go to OS X etc..

EDIT: I do "echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch" once in rc.local, but nothing after that.

[sauferkel]

I further tested the behaviour between the two operating systems, OSX and linux.

What i found out:
Booting ubuntu once, destroys the mechanism to change the gpu within osx. This is NOT dependend on the grapicscard i use within ubuntu. It gets destroyed, no matter if i reboot with the nvidia or the intel.
But, after this, i can't boot Ubuntu anymore. I have to boot osx twice to get it back working.

On the other side, if i set to the dedicated in osx, i can boot ubuntu and disable the intel card...
Even more interesting: The switching mode is still working in OSX, without booting it twice!

If i set the integrated in osx, i can switch off the nvidia in ubuntu (nothing new).


Don't know whether or not this helps, but wanted to write it down and "save this piece of knowledge"

[ksatta1]

Sounds about right, thanks for writing this down for everyone and saving the knowledge

[birdsarah]

Hi all,

ksatta1 thank you so much for your blog postings and the information on this thread - with your help I have lovely shiny ubuntu on my lovely shiny macbookpro retine (15" 10,1).

One small piece of additional knowledge collection. I tried the blacklisting the nouveau root (had to add i915.modeset=1 to refind.conf entry line to make it work) but this did not decrease my power consumption to the levels you described and vgaswitcheroo was gone.

When I kept nouveau in combination with 'echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch' in rc.local that's when I see my power really drop (10W idling with a low backlight and no wifi & ~13W with wifi and doing some basic stuff - like writing this post). I used gfX as you suggested to switch to Integrated in OSX. The only small annoyance for me is if I ever need to go back into OSX it changes the setting (even though I've tried to make it permanent in gfx) and I need to make sure I reset it back to Integrated before rebooting into Ubuntu. Now my tweaking's done I'll be almost entirely in Ubuntu so this shouldn't be an issue.

I did need to add the sleep script for suspend to work.

MANY, MANY THANKS!

Bird

[ksatta1]

Anyone dared to try Apple's v1.1 SMC firmware update? Apparently people have had to update their kernels and/or nvidia drivers after that. I'm just wondering how it affects vgaswitcheroo etc. Might try it one day when I feel daredevilish It probably doesn't make switching GPUs any easier, nvidia's proprietary drivers are still missing apple-gmux support (which I'd need to use the external outputs etc).

[ksatta1]

I don't know what's going on. I just decided to test the Nvidia proprietary driver to get the external displays working. I'm getting 14-16W power consumption with WiFi on and dropbox syncing some stuff. Back in December the power consumption was around 24W all the time without the vgaswitcheroo stuff etc. I've booted to OSX a couple of times to switch gpus, but I haven't installed any updates. I don't know if the new firmware is installed without confirmation. Anyway I still have to do more testing. I calculated the estimated battery life with a full battery would be around 6h, which is very close to what I have with the Intel. It drops to around 13W when idling, but now with Nvidia it's around 14W Also the temps now with Nvidia look normal (around 50C), and the fans aren't running all the time.

Right now I have kernel 3.8.0-17 installed and no vgaswitcheroo. I don't think it affects this, but I also added changed /etc/default/grub line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash text" (added the "text" so that it doesn't go straight to X).

Now I just have to figure out how to check my firmware ver

EDIT: yup, just did some testing.. with glxgears and vsync off:
98739 frames in 5.0 seconds = 19747.705 FPS
and the power consumption jumped to 55-57W. When I quit glxgears it dropped to 16W Now this laptop is just about perfect for everything

EDIT2: OSX still shows the SMC update (didn't install it, ofcourse), so that hasn't changed. If I disable WiFi the power consumption drops to 13W after a couple of refreshes. What's "wrong" with my MacBook
Another thing I can think of is that I think I did the original tests back in December with Ubuntu and Unity Desktop. Now I'm running Xubuntu with XFCE desktop, which doesn't use any 3D accel. But still, how can it be 13W with Nvidia.

EDIT3: grub option "text" didn't affect it.

EDIT4: With 12.10 and nouveau I can't get below 24W.
With 13.04 and nvidia.com driver:

Version	310.44
Release Date	2013-04-02 0:00:00

my macbook idles at 13W. If the new Nvidia driver did this, then way to go Nvidia