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I am new to Linux and to the community. I recently installed Ubuntu in my system and I am already in love with it.

My question is, as my system came with a dedicated Nvidia graphics card installed in it, so do I really need to install the driver for it? because my system is doing good so far and in the details section it only shows the Intel graphics, which is the integrated one I guess.

As far as I know there aren't much high-end games for Ubuntu that requires a dedicated graphics card, so will it be worth installing a graphics driver for it?

Thanks.

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  • I would advise yes.
    – Tim
    Aug 12, 2014 at 7:44

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I'm inferring a laptop's "Optimus" setup from your question.

If you don't need it, using the Intel card alone is probably more power efficient but that relies on the discrete graphics card dropping into lower power levels, controlling fans accurately, etc. I would suspect that for it to work as designed, you'll still need the proprietary driver installed.

That will also give you the option of running things through optirun (or whatever system you use) in the future for 3D-heavy games if you want to. There are 600 games in Steam, 18 months after launch so I wouldn't say it's a complete gaming desert any more.

This seems like the latest best question on handling all this:

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Read more about and enjoy your new video card:
BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

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