Aspire E17 E5-773G-52PB discrete or GPU cards?

FreeBSD
FreeBSD Member Posts: 11 New User
edited March 2023 in 2017 Archives

Hello!

 

     I need some information from my Acer Aspire E17 E5-773G-52PB notebook. Sorry so far I couldn't found from this notebook a full and correct specification nowhere anything. This machine has two video card, sorry with Nvidia optimus technology.

Intel HD Graphics 520

NVIDIA GM108M [GeForce 940M]

 

      As far as I know, the Optimus systems do not have discrete (dedicated) Nvidia graphics, just an Nvidia GPU that uses the video memory of the Intel GPU. So I can use the Intel GPU alone for power savings, or Intel + Nvidia GPU together for the faster rendering if the software supports it, but not Nvidia alone. But I'm not sure in this! For me the power saving is not important, I would like to use the two card together or the NVIDIA card alone.

 

First I would like to know, that in this notebook are the two card GPU as far as I know ?

 

Second, I cannot switch off either GPU off in the laptop's BIOS, therefore I'm meaning on a BIOS update (maybe in an updated BIOS I will can switch off either GPU). But I need for the legacy BIOS option also in the future (I'm using some live and other not windows distros).

Can somebody say me, that If I'm updating the BIOS of this notebook than the legacy BIOS option will stay and that I will able to switch off either GPU with the new updated BIOS? This is an almost new machine with the original BIOS.

 

Maybe if somebody can offer me an other solution to switch off either GPU please write it down.

Now I can du it with a script:

 

% fetch https://people.freebsd.org/~xmj/turn_off_gpu.sh

% make -C /usr/ports/sysutils/acpi_call install clean

% vim turn_off_gpu.sh # read it before executing!

% sh turn_off_gpu.sh # as root user

 

I can Thank's any help!

Best Answer

  • Trukntigger
    Trukntigger Member Posts: 256 Mr. Fixit WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓

    My reading shows gtx940 with 2gb ram. This ram is not shared, it is part of the gtx940 package. The shared is the internal intel video on CPU only. During normal operation it is used until a heavier load program requires the gtx940 to kick in so web surfing your on the internal intel video but say running world of tanks the nvidia 940 takes it. 

     

    Disabling the intel video really is unnecessary because you gain no performance boost but increase power use for no reason.  If it was shared resources on memory I could understand the goal but it has its own ram which unfortunately can not be increased either (wish mine with the gtx950 and 2gb ddr5 could be). There is the app control panel which you can use to override windows choice in video devices so a person could tell it to use say the nvidia 940 for the web browser as example but unless there is a performance problem with the intel solution I don't see the point of changing it.

     

    if anything make a manual restore point in windows then play with the settings, can always roll back to that if it gets out of hand during the tinkering. 

Answers

  • Trukntigger
    Trukntigger Member Posts: 256 Mr. Fixit WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓

    My reading shows gtx940 with 2gb ram. This ram is not shared, it is part of the gtx940 package. The shared is the internal intel video on CPU only. During normal operation it is used until a heavier load program requires the gtx940 to kick in so web surfing your on the internal intel video but say running world of tanks the nvidia 940 takes it. 

     

    Disabling the intel video really is unnecessary because you gain no performance boost but increase power use for no reason.  If it was shared resources on memory I could understand the goal but it has its own ram which unfortunately can not be increased either (wish mine with the gtx950 and 2gb ddr5 could be). There is the app control panel which you can use to override windows choice in video devices so a person could tell it to use say the nvidia 940 for the web browser as example but unless there is a performance problem with the intel solution I don't see the point of changing it.

     

    if anything make a manual restore point in windows then play with the settings, can always roll back to that if it gets out of hand during the tinkering. 

  • FreeBSD
    FreeBSD Member Posts: 11 New User

    Thank's your help!