Switchable AMD graphics (HD 5650 - HD 4200)

[Dorden]

There seems to be some topics about switchable graphics but they seem to concern Intel onboard graphics. I'm having a problem with ATI switchable graphics on my laptop.

I have HP Pavilion dv6-3138eo laptop. It has a Phenom II N930 quad core CPU but more importantly it has AMD Radeon HD 5650 graphics card with switchable HD 4200 GPU. What this means, is that the laptop has two GPUs. The 4200 is ment to be used for prolonged battery life and 5650 when you need the performance.

However, it seems that the switching doesn't exactly work when running LM. I have the newest AMD drivers released 28.3.12. The graphics seem to default to the 4200 for some reason and when ever I try to change it from the CCC, it says it needs to reboot. Okay, I reboot. After reboot I check and the 4200 is still the GPU in use.

This basically results to me being unable to play anything on linux. I've tried native linux versions of games like Jamestown, Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac. All of them have bad performance on linux, and the performance of the games is the same even if I run the Windows versions with Wine.

I have a dualboot Windows installation. On Windows the switchable graphics seem to work and I'm able to play said games on expected performance.


On a different matter, the laptop runs really hot, around 75C on idle. Before upgrading to the latest AMD drivers it actually was about 10C cooler. The open source drivers supplied by LM are out of question though, with them it gets so hot it locks up withing 5 minutes of boot. This overheat problem is present on Windows too, though.
EDIT: Okay it seems that the temps have fallen back to the 65C range. I have no idea why it rised so high but it's back to "normal" now.

Thanks for your time.

[Dorden]

Something interesting that I just remembered; when I bought the laptop the first distro I installed on it was Fedora (can't remember which version but newest one at the time, late summer 2011). I was able to play World of Warcraft with Wine and it ran fine. I was using the default drivers provided by the distro. So the problem wasn't present on Fedora.

[viking777]

I cannot help you in the least with switchable graphics, but I would be seriously worried about a laptop with a 65c idle temperature. I tend to think that my laptop is quite a 'warm' one and it runs at least 20c cooler than that. I realise it is a high powered processor you have there, but unless you want it to be like a Formula 1 racing car that goes extremely fast for an extremely short period and then has to have the engine rebuilt, I would really look into how good the cooling system is on that machine especially since the Windows temperatures are the same.

[Dorden]

I've ment to open the machine up and see if the heatsink is properly connecting etc but these machines aren't exactly made to be opened. The one time I was able to arse myself to try, I wasn't able take it apart enough before I got frustrated on how retardedly these laptops are put together. I've in fact seen some people saying there's a problem with the heatsink in this laptop model but I guess you could find posts like that for any laptop.

But what is more interesting, I don't remember it heating up so much around the time I bought the machine. I even used LM11 for quite long with the default open source drivers without any heat problems. I don't really remember when it started but at some point the open source drivers started to overheat and thus lock the machine up.

It is certainly weird and I should try to disassemble the machine enough to see the heatsinking.

[AlbertP]

You probably just need to clean the fan and cooling system with a vacuum cleaner, or replace the cooling paste under the CPU or GPU.

[Dorden]

I tried to change the GPU using amdconfig commandline utility instead of the Catalyst GUI. I was able to do it and I restarted X-server with ctrl+alt+backspace. amdconfig says that high-performance GPU is in use but Catalyst says low-power GPU is in use and fglrxinfo shows OpenGL renderer string to me Radeon HD 4200, the low-power GPU. Did try a game and performance was low as before.

So the amdconfig can't actually change the GPU, it just thinks it does or maybe the low- and high-power GPUs are both for somereason the HD 4200 instead of high-power being HD 5650? Annoying.

[rhodry]

I can't talk to AMD switchable graphics as I don't have any; but, in the Nvidia alternate universe, there is the Bumblebee Project that is slowly coming to grips with this stupid switchable technology and I thought I read somewhere the new Catalyst drivers ( is it 12.3) were now handling this.

The alternative I have gone for is to only buy laptops that have a Bios option that allows you to choose the "Dedicated Graphics GPU" only, ie turn off the inbuilt graphics. Some Lenovo models do this. Most manufacturers though only allow bios switch between inbuilt only or both enabled; not dedicated only. On the Lenovos I just turn off the inbuilt graphics and run the Nvidia proprietary drivers. Works fine and all I lose is a bit of battery life (which is not an issue as nearly all my laptops are plugged in desktop replacements ).

Have a look in the bios options . I don't know about the HP as I would never own one of their products even if you gave me the money ( hey but that's just personal experience, not a generalization).

cheers,
rhodry.

[Dorden]

So, I opened the machine up and was able to get my hands on the heatsink. I took it off, cleaned all the old thermal paste and applied new Arctic Silver paste. After that the temps are, well quite the same.

Regarding the choice of brand, I would've never bought a HP under normal circumstances but when my old ass laptop just died I was just about to leave for a trip where I absolutely needed one. I had to get one that same day without any sort of research so I went for the one on sale on local store.

I wonder if it would be any use to get in touch with HP about this as the warranty is void now.

[AlbertP]

Perhaps you can switch GPU's with vga_switcheroo?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

[Dorden]

That does seem interesting and totally worth a shot. The only problem being that I can't use the open source drivers. They overheat the machine on idle to lockup. I've been bouncing the idea of sending the laptop back as faulty as the warranty is still valid. Or it would be if I didn't open the machine up, remove the heatsink, reapply thermal paste and put it back together. No, it did not help the temperatures.

[AlbertP]

I think it overheats your machine because it has two graphics cards active. With the echo OFF command (as root of course: first sudo -s, then echo, as sudo echo does not work) you can turn off the 5650 when the 4200 is in use, and when switching to the 5650 you can turn off the 4200 that way.

[Dorden]

By followin steps here I was able to set up the graphics switch on boot. It actually does work and I was able to enable the discrete GPU. One problem remains, though. The machine runs really hot. With the discrete graphics enabled I'm running at over 80C. I'll check back with the integrated graphics temps soon.

Edit: Running on the integrated GPU I'm getting around 67C, which is still a bit higher than what I got with the AMD drivers. These temps are with the other GPU disabled.

[bpainter03]

Don't know if anyone is still checking this post or not. I have a dv7 with the 5650/4200 switchable graphics card and have been fighting this fight for a while. I installed mint 12 logging in with MATE and the switchable graphics works fine from CCC. However, when I install mint 13 and load the same proprietary FGLRX driver its stuck on the dedicated 4200 card. Followed the instructions for installing the driver straight form AMD but it wouldn't run CCC. Now Im back to mint 12 and its working again. Any one know what changed between 12 and 13 to cause this? (It also wouldn't work in Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04)

[fluir]

I have the same problem with a HP Pavilion DV6-3050us quad core phenomen II with 8GB ram ddr3, 640GB HDD and the laptop have two graphics cards, a ati hd5650 with HDMI output and a ati hd 4250
But in mint 12 or 13 (32 or 64 bits, maya, cinnamon, debian or kde) the machine work in 4250 mode and I can't switch to the 5650. In widows works fine, but I want to use mint.
Same problem as other users.

Adaptador principal
Fabricante de tarjeta gráfica Powered by ATI
Chipset gráfico ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
ID de dispositivo 68C1
Proveedor 1002

ID de subsistema 1440
ID de proveedor de subsistema 103C

Capacidad de Bus de Gráficos PCI Express 2.0
Configuración de Bus Máxima PCI Express 2.0 x16

Versión de BIOS 012.020.000.047
Número de pieza de BIOS BR35893.017
Fecha de BIOS 2011/02/17

Tamaño de memoria 1024 MB
Tipo de memoria DDR3

Reloj central en MHz 550 MHz
Reloj de memoria en MHz 800 MHz
Ancho de Banda de Memoria Total en GByte/s 25,6 GByte/s


Adaptador desactivado
Fabricante de tarjeta gráfica Powered by ATI
Chipset gráfico AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
ID de dispositivo 9712
Proveedor 1002

ID de subsistema 1440
ID de proveedor de subsistema 103C

Capacidad de Bus de Gráficos PCI
Configuración de Bus Máxima PCI

Versión de BIOS 010.094.001.045
Número de pieza de BIOS BK-ATI VER010.094.001.045.035812
Fecha de BIOS 2009/12/14

Tamaño de memoria 3131 MB
Tipo de memoria HyperMemory

Reloj central en MHz 500 MHz
Reloj de memoria en MHz 667 MHz

[AlbertP]

Please open a new topic instead of posting in somebody else's topic about this problem. It's hard to help two people if they are both in one topic.