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Ryzen(radon) / Nvidia Optimus - how?
Guppy Nov 9, 2021
Got a new lap top ( Ryzen 5 5600H + RTX 3060 ) it's working fine except that randomly during desktop work the nvidia card will go into maximum effort mode and spin the fans to max for a few minutes.

So I enable "Hybrid graphics" in bios, booting up Mint again I get;

  • the external monitor is no longer getting a signal

  • cinamon is warning me of misbehaving spices

  • I'm being told of missing drivers (nvidia 470 is still installed though)

  • Nvidia settings has no info on the Xserver and *only* show the external display under GPU 0

  • fans are running full tilt



switching to 'on demand' changed nothing.

Switching bios back to 'dedicated graphics' everything is back to normal.


Before I start trying reinstalling graphics drivers, etc - can somebody please tell me if this is something I can expect to get to work. or if it falls into the 'to few people use this for any effort to be spend making it usable' category.

does a guide exists for setting it up?

Last edited by Guppy on 9 November 2021 at 11:37 am UTC
mr-victory Nov 13, 2021
I would choose hybrid graphics from firmware and on-demand from tray icon.
Use lsmod from terminal to list the modules loaded. nouveau is the open source driver but can be problematic. nvidia is the propriearty driver but is more reliable and offers more performance. If lsmod shows nouveau, reinstall your drivers using the Driver Manager app on Mint. If nvidia is listed it is fine. If neither of them are loaded try launching a program with nvidia gpu and use lsmod again.
When your fans go max, you may use nvtop to list processes using GPU and dmesg to see if there is a lockup or other problem.
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