Hi,

I want to buy a laptop for working and very light gaming on to go. I’m currently looking for Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 with AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU. I’m going to use Fedora or Arch Linux with i3wm. The problem is I’m not sure if dual gpu setup is going to work or not. All i want to use igpu for all tasks until more power needed, then it needs to switch automatically to dgpu

Is this possible if so is there any good guide about it?

Thanks

  • @[email protected]English
    3•1 year ago

    I have similar laptop currently and I have it set up exactly as you want. I’m on Void Linux with KDE Wayland, but I was using Fedora few months ago and I remember it working correctly too. Wayland uses integrated GPU by default, so in case I want some program to use dedicated GPU, there’s handy script to do that (it just sets few env variables).

    I think it should be quite easy to set X with i3 to use integrated GPU, just like Wayland does.

  • ScrabboneEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I’m not entirely sure, but that would mean that the laptop’s display would have to be connected to both the integrated graphics unit and the dedicated graphics chip. I suspect that this will not be the case with most laptops.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•1 year ago

      I think most modern laptops output to display via integrated GPU even if it’s dedicated GPU doing the work. I know there are laptops with much chips that let user select which GPU is directly connected to display, but I guess those are mostly high-end models.

  • @di5cipleEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I have the intel/nvidia 2080q on my lenovo 17inch legion. Nvidia works on my Nixos with wayland/hyprland. Using both as well to save batter just have to activate nvidia prime with a command.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      Off topic a bit, but how is the Nvidia + Wayland experience?

      Are the horror stories true? Do you use multiple monitors?