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UnclePa

Member

Registered: 2018-07-06

Posts: 30  

Laptop AMD Graphics

My laptop's graphics have only been so-so but I figured that's just the way they were.  However, I was looking at the manual for my laptop and found this:

Video
Controller:
Integrated      •	 AMD A8-7100 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics
                •	 AMD A10-7300 APU with AMD Radeon R6 Graphics
Discrete        AMD Radeon R7 M265 Graphics

Memory:
Integrated     Shared system memory
Discrete       2 GB DDR3

That implies to me that it actually has switchable graphics.  "lspci | grep VGA" shows "VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Kaveri [Radeon R5 Graphics]".

Anyone have any experience/pointers on how to switch from the integrated controller to the discrete one?

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

"lspci | grep VGA"

How about

lspci | grep 'VGA\|3D'

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

UnclePa

Member

Registered: 2018-07-06

Posts: 30  

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

Exact same output.  I found an arch wiki article about this which seems to be saying that "xrandr --listproviders" should list all available cards.  However, the R5 is still the only one listed.  Edit: The wiki article has a troubleshooter for that situation but I don't have an xorg.conf file nor do I have any blacklisted modules.

Last edited by UnclePa (2019-03-30 01:05:53)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

Are you sure it's not listed anywhere in the plain lspci output?

Check the firmware ("BIOS") options to see if it can be enabled from there.

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

ToxicExMachina

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 210  

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

Anyone have any experience/pointers on how to switch from the integrated controller to the discrete one?

You can try DRI_PRIME from Mesa. It's the most proper way to use hybrid graphics.

UnclePa

Member

Registered: 2018-07-06

Posts: 30  

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

Thanks.  My understanding is that DRI_PRIME won't work if xrandr doesn't see both cards.  Even if it does, I've not found a driver that specifically states it supports the R7 M265 card.  As best I can tell, it looks like I have an unsupported system.  I got it pretty cheap and it is possible that the discrete video doesn't even work.  Neither the BIOS nor the diagnostics say anything about 2 video controllers.  I couldn't get dual boot to work when I first got it so I wiped Windows.  I think I'll have to punt on this one as far as high end graphics games go.  Not a big deal.

Last edited by UnclePa (2019-04-01 12:25:37)

ToxicExMachina

Member

Registered: 2019-03-11

Posts: 210  

Re: Laptop AMD Graphics

Try amdgpu (not amdgpu-pro) driver. It seems your GPU is GCN 1.1.