Thank you so very much for the PERFECT guides! I tried Bumblebee, it just broke the kernel and wouldn't work right in BackTrack, and I couldn't get Cpyrit to work in Ubuntu 11.10... So pretty much boned without this post. Thanks again man.
So I got bbswitch and the drivers working great, I did find that I had to throw in a modprobe -r nvidia to get it to drop power consumption after I had used bbswitch <<<ON.
I'm assuming the Alienware you reference in this thread is the same machine as the one you reference in: this one? If that's the case, am I ok to apply "Graphics Driver fix" as well?
If anyone is interested in the scripts:
Code:#!/bin/bash modprobe -r nouveau modprobe -r nvidia modprobe bbswitch tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFFYes, -r nouveau is redundant once you start using them, but it doesn't seem to hurt anything and it makes it so I don't have to do things in particular order.Code:#!/bin/bash modprobe -r nouveau modprobe bbswitch tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<ON
I added the off script to my startup programs just to boot up on the right foot. For some reason on my rig (Asus U30SD, similar to but weaker than Snafu777's Alienware), my battery consumption is around 20000mW on Nouveau, 11000 with bbswitch off, and 16000 with bbswitch on. So it looks like Nouveau is just the devil on at least some of these machines....
*don't forget the executable bit (chmod +x) if you use those scripts*
*edit* turns out that adding the <<<OFF script to my startup programs has a pretty cool side effect. My consumption idles right around 10000 mW, right from boot, and when I run pyrit benchmark it jumps up to 50000 mW during the bench mark and then drops back down to 10000.
So loading off, at least on my system seems to automate bbswitch just fine. Only difference I've really noticed is that it takes it a bit (5-10 seconds) to get up to full speed if I let it load automatically, so the short benchmark comes out a little bit lower than it does if I manually switch the nvidia drivers on before I start the test.



