Higher power consumption on laptop with nvidia optimus GPU

[Kai Krueger]

Hello,

I have a HP Pavillion DV6t-7000 laptop with an Nvidia 650M (hybrid) graphics card and a i7-3720QM processor.

Using a fresh installation of Ubuntu quantal quartz, the laptop draws about 22W of power when idle. In comparison in Windows the laptop draws only about 9W in idle.

The biggest fraction of this power increase (about 10W) is caused by the the Nvidia graphics card not powering down.

If I understand it correctly, neither the Nvidia binary drivers nor nouveu drivers support optimus and its power management yet.

To solve this problem I need to disable the graphics card using acpi_call [1] and run the disabling script every time after reboot or when the laptop comes out of suspend.

As this basically halves power consumption (doubles battery life) on laptops with nvidia optimus graphics, it would be very helpful if Ubuntu could disable the nvidia optimus graphics card by default to make linux power consumption more reasonable, or at least provide a package to automatically disable the graphics card on reboot / resume and warn users about this.

[1] http://hybrid-graphics-linux.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Acpi_call

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1045935

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the latest v3.6 kernel[0] (Not a kernel in the daily directory) and install both the linux-image and linux-image-extra .deb packages.

Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. Please only remove that one tag and leave the other tags. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text.

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tag 'kernel-fixed-upstream'.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the tag: 'kernel-bug-exists-upstream'.

If you are unable to test the mainline kernel, for example it will not boot, please add the tag: 'kernel-unable-to-test-upstream'.
Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug as "Confirmed".

Thanks in advance.

[0] http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.6-rc4-quantal/

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Also, please attach the apport logs as requested in comment #1.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]