DRI_PRIME on G505s with enabled dGPU?

[Matt B]

Hi,

Quick question before I go out and buy a different motherboard for my G505s:

To those who have a dual-GPU G505s and have enabled the recent support for
the dGPU, does DRI_PRIME GPU offloading work?

Thanks,
    -Matt

PS. Could here be an option created to enable/disable the dGPU at boot time
without recompiling?

[Mike Banon]

On Sun, Mar 8, 2020 at 6:56 PM Matt B  wrote:
> To those who have a dual-GPU G505s and have enabled the recent support for the dGPU, does DRI_PRIME GPU offloading work?

Yes, DRI_PRIME GPU offloading works on G505S - and actually I think
it's the only possible way of using a discrete GPU on this coreboot'ed
laptop at the moment. However, it's usefulness really depends on your
software and how fast is the integrated GPU's RAM: you may have
1600MHz CL9 RAM modules installed, while a discrete GPU's own soldered
chips are i.e. 1333MHz CL9 only. I recommend testing them side by side
in all the programs you care about and remember which one is better in
what cases.
> Could here be an option created to enable/disable the dGPU at boot time without recompiling?

If there could be a real benefit from doing so (does it consume less
power if you "hide it" from your system by disabling a PCI bus?), such
a way could be implemented - however, I don't know how to do it
without using NVRAM (which I would like to avoid for various reasons)