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My work station is a Macbook Pro which has...

  • integrated graphics: Intel HD 3000
  • discrete graphics: Radeon XXXX...

I have installed drivers for the discrete graphics right after installation.

During normal usage, I notice that the calculated time for the remaining battery life frequently changes significantly - therefore I assume that Ubuntu 12.04 switches between the integrated and discrete graphics.

However, the indicated battery life only changes between 1:30 and 3 hours, which is significantly less than the 5-6 hours I get when using OSX 10.7.X.

  • Is all of this this due to an overhead caused by 'bad' drivers that I have to expect - or is it just that I'm using discrete graphics all the time?
  • How can check what graphics I'm currently using?
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If you install powertop and run sudo powertop, do you see lots of elements to improve in the Tunables section? – 213441265152351 May 7 '12 at 7:09
@130490868091234 I don't see a tunables section. Here's a screenshot of what I see when running sudo powertop. – gentmatt May 7 '12 at 7:21
If you move to the right with the arrow keys, it should be the last on the right. – 213441265152351 May 7 '12 at 9:46
@130490868091234 Ok :) Thanks! There are quite a lot of entries: link to picture. schlecht=bad, gut=good – gentmatt May 7 '12 at 9:56
You can hit Enter on each of them, moving with the down arrow, and then check back the power usage after that (while unplugged). – 213441265152351 May 7 '12 at 10:06
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1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You should be able to see what video drivers are being loaded by looking at the X server log in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Alternatively, the OpenGL renderer string. For instance, on my desktop system I see:

$ glxinfo | grep 'OpenGL renderer string'
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD JUNIPER

Which is consistent with my system having a Radeon card.

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I can't really make sense of the content in Xorg.0.log, but I have not found anything that hints to integrated graphics being used. glxinfo prints: OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 7400M Series even though I'm just browsing the web. – gentmatt May 7 '12 at 10:19
So, I will assume that the graphics switching is not working. – gentmatt May 7 '12 at 10:23
it would be useful if you could join the hybrid-graphics-linux launchpad team and provide the DSDT info for your laptop: launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux – 213441265152351 May 7 '12 at 12:25

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