AtomBIOS function to turn off Radeon
Hi list, i have a somewhat silly question: Probably you heard about the "switchable graphics" built into some modern notebooks. Right now, switching while working is only supported under Vista. For Linux, users had to select the graphic card in the BIOS. Lenovo e.g. offers three options there: Integrated - (Intel on, ATI off) , Discrete - (Intel off, ATI on) and Switchable - (Intel on, ATI on, screen "connected" to Intel). I have a new Acer Timeline notebook with switchable graphics, but here "Integrated" in the BIOS is missing. If i set my BIOS to "switchable", the notebook consumes about 20W of power. If i set it to "Discrete", RadeonHD or fglrx enter power saving and i get about 10W. Under Vista running on intel it goes down to 7W. My guess is: When i switch to "Switchable", the ATI chipset is running (at full power as no driver starts the saving-mode). The Vista driver then turns ATI off (when using Intel, of course). Could i set it via AtomBIOS to an "off"-state? I found ATOM_PM_OFF in atombios.h, could this be helpful? Thanks, Alex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
Hi list,
i have a somewhat silly question: Probably you heard about the "switchable graphics" built into some modern notebooks. Right now, switching while working is only supported under Vista. For Linux, users had to select the graphic card in the BIOS. Lenovo e.g. offers three options there: Integrated - (Intel on, ATI off) , Discrete - (Intel off, ATI on) and Switchable - (Intel on, ATI on, screen "connected" to Intel).
I have a new Acer Timeline notebook with switchable graphics, but here "Integrated" in the BIOS is missing. If i set my BIOS to "switchable", the notebook consumes about 20W of power. If i set it to "Discrete", RadeonHD or fglrx enter power saving and i get about 10W. Under Vista running on intel it goes down to 7W.
My guess is: When i switch to "Switchable", the ATI chipset is running (at full power as no driver starts the saving-mode). The Vista driver then turns ATI off (when using Intel, of course). Could i set it via AtomBIOS to an "off"-state? I found ATOM_PM_OFF in atombios.h, could this be helpful? I had the same situation on my Lenovo U330. I digged into it, and switching off
On Wednesday 16 September 2009 09:52:04 Alexander Simon wrote: the ATI card was taken care of by the embedded controller, through an ACPI call. Check the mailing list archives, I already sent the related code ... It would probably not work exactly the same way for you I guess, but you can try ;-) Sylvain -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
Hi Sylvain, good news, while i`m writing this, i'm using less than 9 Watts of energy :). This is a great piece of code for me and probably others! Thank you! If you google a little bit, you'll find out why it works on Acer: Switchable Graphics was a cooperation between Intel and ATI. So, Acer AND Lenovo are in fact are using the same stuff. And i would really really wonder if Lenovo or Acer were developing such hardware techniques themselves. I would put a website for informing other Thinkpad and Acer users and make your code easier downloadable (the opensuse online archives don't keep attachments, i had to download the whole august mbox file). Would that be okay for you? Someone from the Ubuntu guys also already found your entry: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7944950 Alex
I had the same situation on my Lenovo U330. I digged into it, and switching off the ATI card was taken care of by the embedded controller, through an ACPI call.
Check the mailing list archives, I already sent the related code ... It would probably not work exactly the same way for you I guess, but you can try ;-)
Sylvain -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 16 September 2009 14:28:47 Alexander Simon wrote:
good news, while i`m writing this, i'm using less than 9 Watts of energy :). This is a great piece of code for me and probably others! Thank you! That is indeed great news ! I'm jealous now, my U330 uses 12W when on switchable graphics :P
If you google a little bit, you'll find out why it works on Acer: Switchable Graphics was a cooperation between Intel and ATI. So, Acer AND Lenovo are in fact are using the same stuff. And i would really really wonder if Lenovo or Acer were developing such hardware techniques themselves. Yuk. The guys at Lenovo, when they announced the feature, actually said that they could not explain how to use it on Linux because their engineers put a lot of work in it and giving that work away won't be doable. It seems that most of the work is not Lenovo's ...
I would put a website for informing other Thinkpad and Acer users and make your code easier downloadable (the opensuse online archives don't keep attachments, i had to download the whole august mbox file). Would that be okay for you? It is perfectly fine for me.
Someone from the Ubuntu guys also already found your entry: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7944950 Cool :)
Sylvain -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
I'm glad to announce that i got switchable graphics working in Linux this morning! I disassembled my DSDT and also found ATPX. I looked at the functions: As you said, (2, [0 0 0]), disables the ATI. (2, [0 0 1]) enables it. (3, [0 0 0]) switches the screen to Intel, (3, [0 0 1]) switches to ATI. Then, I had the Kernel rescan PCI devices: echo "1"> /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:01\:00.0/remove echo "1">/sys/bus/pci/rescan Starting X always resulted in the Kernel not able to read ATIs BIOS ROM. Whatever i tried (trying around with setpci and /sys entries), it alwyays resulted in a kernel message "Invalid ROM signature". ROMs seem to always begin with 0x55AA and this signature was not been read. I'm sure there is some initialization missing. My dirty hack was to read the ROM in discrete mode to a file and patch radeonhd to read the ROM from file, not from the card. Now i can change the card in Text mode, switch Xorg.conf and start X with the other card! Next, ill try to add a sysfs interface to your module to write a script to automate the transition. Alex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: radeonhd+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: radeonhd+help@opensuse.org
On Sep 18, 09 12:48:52 +0200, Alexander Simon wrote:
I'm glad to announce that i got switchable graphics working in Linux this morning! [...]
Wow, that sounds pretty promising!
Good work!
Matthias
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Matthias Hopf
participants (3)
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Alexander Simon
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Matthias Hopf
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Sylvain Joyeux