NVIDIA setup
NVIDIA drivers setup
BIOS MUX Mode
BIOS MUX mode enables switching between integrated and dedicated graphics. This mode is particularly useful for optimizing performance in systems that use dual graphics configurations.
Mak shure to select your preferred configuration: Reboot your device and open BIOS (press del while booting); navigate in advanced options and search for a Display Mode option.
You shold see two options:
- dGPU only: Indicates the setup restricts to discrete GPUs exclusively.
- dynamic: Aspects of the setup (like resource allocation or switching) are determined at runtime rather than being static.
Using the dynamic configuration is recommended as it typically reduces power consumption while optimizing resource allocation based on your system’s workload.
Keep in mind that some applications may not fully leverage these dynamic adjustments.
NVIDIA Driver setup
paru -S nvidia nvidia-utils nvidia-settings
or (recommended)
paru -S linux-headers nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils nvidia-settings
verify with nvidia-smi. You should see something like this:
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 570.86.16 Driver Version: 570.86.16 CUDA Version: 12.8 |
+-------------------------------------+-----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=====================================+=======================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A |
| N/A 39C P0 590W / 80W | 1MiB / 8188MiB | 10% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-------------------------------------+-----------------------+----------------------+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|====================================================================================|
| No running processes found |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Prime Setup
NVIDIA PRIME is a technology used mainly on Linux systems with hybrid graphics. It lets you switch between an integrated graphics card (usually from Intel or AMD) and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU. With PRIME, the system can offload resource-heavy tasks (like gaming or GPU-accelerated applications) to the NVIDIA card while using the integrated GPU for everyday tasks, which helps save power.
Let’s create a prime-run command. It should allow you to launch an application using the dedicated NVIDIA GPU without needing to change system-wide settings.
sudo nano /usr/bin/prime-run
If you want to check if it works, if you have not set any desktop environment yet it involves different steps:
We need to install some xorg packages and mesa-demos to test the command and create a .xinitrc file:
paru -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-xrandr xorg-xset glxgears mesa-demos xterm
echo "exec xterm" > ~/.xinitrc
then run the following command to start a xterm session
startx
Should appear a little terminal, there run the following command:
prime-run glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
You should see something like:
OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2
Kernel and GRUB Configuration
Make shure to enable DRM mode for NVIDIA in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="loglevel=3 quiet splash nvidia_drm.modeset=1"
This parameter enables DRM mode setting for the Nvidia driver. In effect, it lets the driver configure the display mode during boot. This not only improves performance by ensuring proper initialization of the graphical interface but also enhances compatibility with features like PRIME Render Offload and Wayland-based systems such as Hyperland, especially in multi-GPU setups.
Then update GRUB with:
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Last updated 23 Feb 2025, 02:31 +0100 .