Ubuntu 12.04 System Configuration for Nvidia Optimus Graphic Card

After proper installation of Ubuntu 12.04, I faced with Graphic card and Power management problems with my Z570 notebook. In this release, I will try to explain how I handled these issues.

If your notebook has a Nvidia Optimus graphic card, this means that your notebook having two graphic cards. One of them is Nvidia and the other one is Intel HD most probably. While you're using Windows 7, the Windows 7 drivers provide a switching between these graphic cards according to performance requirements.

In order to handle this issue, I will advice the readers to follow the instructions at the given web site: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

There are infinitely many rubbish information about Bumblebee, so using the link above will be enough for this issue. If you encounter a problem like "Cannot find bumblebee and bumblebee-nvidia package", ensure that in UpdatesAvailable-->Settings->Software Source-->OtherSoftware the bumblebee package selections are ticked.

Please do not install any drivers for Nvidia before Bumblebee installation. If you have already installed Nvidia drivers, you shall purge them by:

apt-get purge nvidia-current
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
reboot now

In fact, Bumblebee will install nvidia drivers itself. After installation of Bumblebe, you should reboot the system.

After reboot, you should check your Graphics card shown in "System Details". Mine is "Intel® Sandybridge Mobile

x86/MMX/SSE2".

If you have an improper resolution as 640x480, I suggest you to make the changes given below:

In /etc/X11/xorg.conf, look for these two lines :

HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0

and replace them with

HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0

Reboot or Logout to apply the changes.

Finally, in order to test if your Nvidia Graphic card is working properly in Ubuntu, open the terminal and write the command:

optirun glxspheres 

You can see the similar lines as given below on the terminal:

sezerb@sezerb-Ideapad-Z570:~$ optirun glxspheres
Polygons in scene: 62464
Visual ID of window: 0x21
Context is Direct
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GT 520M/PCIe/SSE2
97.621786 frames/sec - 108.945913 Mpixels/sec
103.086423 frames/sec - 110.279806 Mpixels/sec
106.882137 frames/sec - 104.728248 Mpixels/sec

This is how "optirun" commands work. For instance if you want to use your Nvidia card with firefox, you should write:

optirun firefox 

Bumblebee also sets the power switch of your Nvidia card to OFF if you are not using "optirun" command.

This provides power management and long battery life.

Note: In Bios Configuration menu, one can easily select the switchable graphic card option or the Integrated card option. 

If you do not want to use Nvidia card, you can handle this from Bios.

Update @08.12.2012

If you have hybrid graphic cards and if your system allows hardware mux between these cards, you can use also use

vga_switcheroo  (supported by radeon, nouveau) (not supported by nvidia, fglrx)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics   

References 

 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee

 http://askubuntu.com/questions/201123/screen-resolution-stuck-at-640x480-after-installing-bumblebee