Nvidia Optimus with GTX 850m not working

I recently got a new notebook (Acer Aspire V5 573G) with a Nvidia Geforce GTX 850M and the Intel Haswell integrated graphics. Now I read through a lot of websites in order to find out what the best way is to get the system running. Usually, I wont need the GeForce card so that the intel one is good enough. However, I think the Displayport and the HDMI port are wired to the Nvidia card, so I need that one to work as well. Problem is, the Nvidia card is not detected by Ubuntu: Output of lshw -C display:

*-display description: VGA compatible controller product: Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 0b width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom configuration: driver=i915 latency=0 resources: irq:65 memory:b3000000-b33fffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:5000(Größe=64)

The best thing for me would be, that the Nvidia card is constantly turned off but can be activated so that i can use HDMI/Displayport. I already tried to install bumblebee, but -of course- the card is not detected. Please tell me if you need any further information. Thanks a lot!

EDIT: Output of uname -a:Linux LappII 3.13.0-52-generic #86-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 4 04:32:59 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

3 Answers

I think the problem is that current version of Nvidia drivers in Ubuntu does not support this card. You can try to install a newer version. Run in terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-346
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Also it makes sense to upgrade kernel and graphical stack to HWE of 14.04.2. It can be done by running:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libqt5gui5 libgles1-mesa-lts-utopic libgles2-mesa-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic:i386 libglapi-mesa-lts-utopic:i386 libegl1-mesa-drivers-lts-utopic

Then reboot.

After that try both 346 and 349 drivers. New kernel and stack support newer hardware better.

Instead of Bumblebee, you could try nVidia's proprietary drivers, which have been added Optimus support to.

Open the Software & Updates utility, and navigate to the Additional drivers tab. It will take some time to load, after which you'll be presented with a list of drivers known to work with this device. By default, the open source noveau driver will be selected.

Select the driver next in the list, probably something like nvidia-331, and click Apply. After the download and installation of the driver finished, reboot. You can now open the nVidia Control Panel and configure Optimus in the nVidia Prime section.

If the driver doesn't support Optimus or works badly with your graphics card, choose the following one in the list.

Based on what you have said in earlier communications on the Question. Nvidia 349 Seems to be working with your Card. You also intend to use Nvidia GPU only when needed.

So I have a Solution for you. I have posted this to my blog a well and got a very positive response from people who used it. So I have compiled a little how to document like below

The official Repository of Ubuntu has only old and dated drivers. I don't use that myself and would suggest you do the same if you want the latest Nvidia Driver without any problems.

Steps:-

1) First step after installing Ubuntu is to install all updates. You may use the software updater or simply run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

2) Add the Xorg-edgers ppa using

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa and then sudo apt-get update

3) Run sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This is the most Important step. If you miss this you will see a black screen after reboot. Please do this as we are using the xorg-edgers ppa. We need to ensure all packags required for bumblebee and nvidia are taken from the ppa.

4) Now Install bumblebee and Nvidia drivers using

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus nvidia-349

5) Add the current user to the bumblebee security group.

sudo gpasswd -a $USER bumblebee

for Ubuntu 15.04 only you need to manually enable to bumblebee daemon using

sudo systemctl enable bumblebeed

6) This will take care of the Installing the required software on your system. We need to configure it.

I can assure you if you followed these steps so far then configuring should be a breeze.

We start by enabling bbswitch and intel i915 Driver.

7) sudo gedit /etc/modules

Ubuntu 15.04 the file is /etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf

add these two lines to it

i915 bbswitch

8) Edit the bumblebee configuration file. sudo gedit /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf

1. line 22:

Driver=nvidia

2. line 55:

KernelDriver=nvidia-349

3. line 58:

LibraryPath=/usr/lib/nvidia-349:/usr/lib32/nvidia-349

4. line 61:

XorgModulePath=/usr/lib/nvidia-349/xorg,/usr/lib/xorg/modules

In addition to this there is another file that needs to edited.

9) sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bumblebee.conf

Add the below line to end.

blacklist nvidia-349

Now you may reboot. After reboot.

Check using

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils if mesa-utils is not already installed.

primusrun glxinfo | grep OpenGL

This should tell you that nvidia-349.16 driver in use.

Please note that nvidia-349 is the latest driver at the time of writng this. Please check the launchpad page for xorg-edgers ppa an accordingly replace nvidia-349 with the latest version if any.

Let me know if this works for you.