AMD/Intel Hybrid Graphics works

[gh1234]

That's the all point of installing catalyst drivers. You can't disable any of the graphic cards with the free drivers. The both working at the same time, that's why battery dies so quickly. On my laptop, having both cards running together warm the laptop until the wifi card stop working due to heat.
So I don't manage it, I just hope it'll work eventually.

With the free driver there is still vga switcheroo which worked quite well until I found this. The problem is that the catalyst driver fails to run in low power mode after S2RAM.

[clement.analogue]

How do you switch from one graphic card to another ? And, more important, how do you turn off the card unused with the free drivers ?

[gh1234]

How do you switch from one graphic card to another ? And, more important, how do you turn off the card unused with the free drivers ?

I used vgaswitcheroo:

echo "OFF"|sudo tee /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

does the trick with the free driver. The problem with this solution was, that:
a) it still consumed more power than this one (dunno why) it might be the same issue that occurs for me after S2RAM because the reported discharge rate was nearly the same :/
b) it was impossible to get the discrete graphics to work for some reason, so gaming was impossible thought.

[AshenShugar]

This worked to get graphics working. My only caveat is that it slowed my boot time by about 5-6 seconds, not a huge deal, except that I think it doesn't need to. At a certain point in my boot, xorg goes into uninterruptible sleep waiting for the Radeon GPU, which should be disabled as I'm in igpu mode. There is a six-second jump in the X.org log file which corresponds exactly to the sleep and which always occurs between the same two lines in the fglrx calls.

Computer: Samsung 700Z5B
OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Kernel Version: 3.2.0-26
Catalyst Version 12.6, but 12.4 had the same issue
Radeon HD 6400M

[clement.analogue]

If I understand, if I use this command, the intel graphics will be used instead of the ATI, but the energy consumes will be the same ?
So, I guess the ATI graphics still power on but not used, am I right ?

[codeguru11]

I've found the solution!!!!!!


It's not necessary the mesa-dri-experimental package to solve the problem.
I've found a weird thing done by AMD fglrx driver during installation, but to make sure it'll work, let's verify if you have the same diagnostic:
First thing is about glxinfo, if it show no direct rendering, just execute this command:

 LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose; glxinfo

the first output lines, if appears a lot of 'libGL errors' like below:

libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri/swrast_dri.so failed
libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri/i915_dri.so failed

if you saw, there's an i915 dri driver that couldn't be loaded for some reason. As you can see, the directory is /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri/ but, if you ls this directory you will not see more than one driver named
fglrx_dri.so
So, I've figured out that when fglrx driver installs it changes the LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH to its own particular path, such that is: /usr/lib/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
if you write the command below you'll see the output like above:

 echo $LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

the output will be something like that: /usr/lib/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
if you have the same output as above you just have to add the directory where is the intel dri drivers, lets do that!

as you can see in this file : /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx

$ gksu gedit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx

 
 if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then  
   if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then  
     LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
     if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:  
     fi  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32  
     export LD_LIBRARY_PATH  
   fi  
 fi  
 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH 

in the fourth line you have the LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH defined as: /usr/lib/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
if you have the same as above, just add the following path in that fourth line:

for x86_64 (64 bits): /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/

for x86 (32 bits) linux: /usr/lib32/dri/

just add is with a “:” (without quotes) in the end of 4th line and put the path above of your respective system to get the direct render working!
The file will be like this:
File /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx for 64 bits (x86_64) linux:

 LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri  
 if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then  
   if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then  
     LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri  
     if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:  
     fi  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32  
     export LD_LIBRARY_PATH  
   fi  
 fi  
 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

File /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx for 32 bits (x86) linux:

 LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri  
 if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then  
   if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then  
     LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri://usr/lib32/dri
     if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:  
     fi  
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32  
     export LD_LIBRARY_PATH  
   fi  
 fi  
 export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

then save the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx (must have root privileges) and reboot your system

then glxinfo | egrep render
and check it out if you'll have direct rendering!
Voilà! Shaazaam! Works

I've got gnome-shell loading and working sweeeeeeeeeetly without video tearing!!! XBMC also are working sweeeeetly and without video tearing! Good bye cruel World!!!!

Can someone tell me if Unity 3D works?

I would like to add few things here.
First, in a 32 bit system, the command "uname -m" will give i686, so your hack will not work.
Second I use Ubuntu/Precise, and there is no package like ia32-libs. I couldn't find any directory named /usr/lib32.
But I found this directory though, "/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/". The solution for 32 bits system is that, edit the 1st line of "/etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx" with proper destination which contains "swrast_dri.so" and "i915_dri.so". Use "locate" command to find these libraries.
So in my case "/etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx" was edited as:
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/dri
if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then
if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:
fi
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
fi
fi
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

After this I was able to run unity-3d. Hope this would save someone's time.

[ubik89]

I'm an owner of Intel HD 3000/Radeon HD 6450M.

Switchable graphics works fine.

But how to get rid of tearing with the radeon card?

Anybody has an idea?

There is no "tear-free" option in Catalyst Control Manager.

[Niccola]

I would like to add few things here.
First, in a 32 bit system, the command "uname -m" will give i686, so your hack will not work.
Second I use Ubuntu/Precise, and there is no package like ia32-libs. I couldn't find any directory named /usr/lib32.
But I found this directory though, "/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/". The solution for 32 bits system is that, edit the 1st line of "/etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx" with proper destination which contains "swrast_dri.so" and "i915_dri.so". Use "locate" command to find these libraries.
So in my case "/etc/X11/Xsession.d/10fglrx" was edited as:
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri:/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/dri
if [ `uname -m` = 'x86_64' ]; then
if [ -d /usr/lib32/fglrx/dri ]; then
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}:/usr/lib32/fglrx/dri
if [ ! -z $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:
fi
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}/usr/lib32
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
fi
fi
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

After this I was able to run unity-3d. Hope this would save someone's time.

You're absolutely right! But let me point some things in your observation:
1 - In 32bits Operating System you don't need to install ia32-libs. This package just provide a "multi-arch" support to 32bits libraries for a 64bits OS libraries.

2 - About the directory it's weird, because when I was in ubuntu 11.10 (when I posted it) the default path was /usr/lib/dri/i915_dri.so
As you can see in both packages.ubuntu.com (from 10.04, 11.10 and 12.04):
10.04 LTS dri path
11.10 dri path
12.04 LTS dri path

As you can see in the links above, the dri path in 32 bits its the same as described in my first post. But seems that things changed in 11.10 (as you can see in second link).
First, it was installed by ia32-libs but after, in 11.10 it was ported to libgl1-mesa-dri package

My fault to don't see it! Sorry!

[Niccola]

New 12.6 driver released! Somebody tried it?

I'm with 12.6 beta and facing with a lot of problems! It's freaking me out!

I've read that 12.6 final release is worst than beta version.

Is somebody having problems with final release of 12.6 driver?

[ubik89]

No problems with 12.6 final and Intel HD 3000/Radeon HD 6450M.

But I have to use this commands to switch:

sudo amdconfig --px-dgpu

(switch to discrete)

amdconfig --px-igpu

(switch to integrated)