[SOLVED]Is AMD Switchable Graphics supported yet?

[Klaw117]

I did a quick search on this topic, but I've been getting conflicting information. Some people have said that Switchable Graphics with AMD GPUs is enabled with the newest drivers from AMD, but I've also heard others say that it's not supported yet. Which is it? Is it supported or not? If it's supported, I'll probably give Linux Mint another shot (I uninstalled it after I realized that Switchable Graphics wasn't supported yet, which was back in December or January). I have an Intel HD GPU and an AMD Radeon 6470M GPU on my Dell Inspiron 14R laptop.

[AlbertP]

You can use the Catalyst driver from the AMD website instead of the one offered by Mint: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx

Switchable Graphics can be configured in Catalyst Control Center. It's supposed to work automatically with latest drivers but it's not yet working for everybody.

[rhodry]

Switchable Graphics can be configured in Catalyst Control Center. It's supposed to work automatically with latest drivers but it's not yet working for everybody.

Is it working for anybody @AlbertP ?? I have seen a few claims of this working from AMD bloggers but have not yet met anybody who has it working? It's early days yet I guess.

The other option is to see if your bios allows a "use dedicated graphics only" option. I don't know about Dell ( have not used one for years) but my Lenovo Y570 allows me to choose to turn off the 'inbuilt' graphics. I know the proprietary drivers work when they only see only the dedicated graphics. I don't need switchable because battery life is not an issue, the machine is a desktop replacement and rarely runs on battery.

rhodry.

[AlbertP]

Is it working for anybody @AlbertP ?? I have seen a few claims of this working from AMD bloggers but have not yet met anybody who has it working? It's early days yet I guess.

AMD+ATI switching has been working for ages. Intel+ATI switching however is new in the Catalyst Linux driver. If automatic switching fails you can always switch manually using Catalyst Control Center.

[Klaw117]

The BIOS option isn't going to work. People have recommended that to me many times, but my BIOS doesn't have that option (or I haven't found it yet). As for the driver, I guess I'll try it out and if it doesn't I'll just stop using the Linux partition until the driver works. Thanks.

[MistuhMarc]

Alrighty, this is a first post for me, so bear with any lack of full understanding.

My machine is an HP DV7 4060US with an AMD Phenom II Triple Core N830 (2.1GHz) with what I guess is referred as hybrid graphics. When on battery power, I run an ATI Mobility Radeon 4250 and when I'm jacked in and giving it some juice, it flips over to an ATI Mobility Radeon 5650. Now my prior experiences with Ubuntu (11.04 and 11.10) were insanely drastic. With 11.04 I had no thermal issues, but I couldn't access the 5650 card either, so everything was pretty sluggish and ran about as smooth as a gravel road for media/compiz. With 11.10, the performance worsened even further.

So from what I've just read that there IS indeed a driver set out there from ATI itself that would let me harness my laptops full graphical capabilities for my laptop?

[AlbertP]

You can use Catalyst Control Center to switch manually if automatic switching is not working.

[Dorden]

Alrighty, this is a first post for me, so bear with any lack of full understanding.

My machine is an HP DV7 4060US with an AMD Phenom II Triple Core N830 (2.1GHz) with what I guess is referred as hybrid graphics. When on battery power, I run an ATI Mobility Radeon 4250 and when I'm jacked in and giving it some juice, it flips over to an ATI Mobility Radeon 5650. Now my prior experiences with Ubuntu (11.04 and 11.10) were insanely drastic. With 11.04 I had no thermal issues, but I couldn't access the 5650 card either, so everything was pretty sluggish and ran about as smooth as a gravel road for media/compiz. With 11.10, the performance worsened even further.

So from what I've just read that there IS indeed a driver set out there from ATI itself that would let me harness my laptops full graphical capabilities for my laptop?

I've been wrestling with the same problem with the exact same GPU configuration on my DV6 machine with Phenom II quad-core. For me though, when I did buy this laptop around a year ago I installed Fedora on it. It was the latest release at the time. I remember playing World of Warcraft on wine with no performance problems nor heat problems. Nowdays though on Mint I have quite bad heat problems and problems with the switchable graphics. The AMD drivers just didn't change the GPU eventhough I tried. Switch, it asks to reboot, I reboot, and the old GPU is in action. I just couldn't swap the graphics, not with commandline nor the GUI.

Today I was able to get the switching to work with vga_switcheroo following the steps here. I'm still running at around 70C on HD4200 but at least the switching works now, on HD5650 it gets to over 80C. Trying out vga_switcheroo is probably worth a shot. It did break my suspend though, have to work on that .

[joutlan]

I have a Vostro 3350 laptop with Intel/ATI 6490 switchable graphics. To get it working, I had to run as root:

Code: Select all

#aticonfig --initial

When I logged out and back in, ATI control panel was working with switch option. However, on reboot it went straight to console, not X, so I ran an update and xorg.xxxx files were updated and now it boots into X normaily.

I do not have hibernate....that's another thread

[AlbertP]

@ Klaw117: do you need any more help? If not, please edit the first post and add [solved] to the title.

[compazter]

I have HP 431 laptop with ati/amd 6470. I install the driver from additional driver app. Then i do aticonfig --initial
Now everyting is working fine but when i check fglrxinfo it says that my graphics is amd 7400 not 6400, did i install wrong driver?

My laptop run Linuxmint 13 Cinnamon 64bit
Sorry my bad english

[AlbertP]

That's not a problem. 74xx and 64xx are the same hardware, the rebrand to 74xx is only to improve sales, to let the low-end 7000 cards look like they're new hardware, which they aren't.

[compazter]

That's not a problem. 74xx and 64xx are the same hardware, the rebrand to 74xx is only to improve sales, to let the low-end 7000 cards look like they're new hardware, which they aren't.

Okay, thanks for your info.

[Klaw117]

I know that I said I would try this months ago, but I didn't actually get around to it until now. The end result: the newest driver (12.6) works with my laptop. I also followed instructions from these two sites:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu ... tion_Guide

Both say essentially the same thing, but in the first link, my laptop's model was marked as tested and functional, so it basically convinced me that my laptop would be fine if I tried to install the new driver.