Deactivate GPU and use IGP

Posted by squelos on Super User See other posts from Super User or by squelos
Published on 2013-03-23T04:15:49Z Indexed on 2013/11/11 10:02 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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laptop

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graphics-card

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gpu

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igp

I am having some trouble with my Sony Vaio SVE1511W1e laptop. It has an ATI Radeon and the i5 has an IGP (i5 2450m).

I don't often use my GPU, and the IGP would be just enough for most usage I do. Therefore, in order to improve the battery life, I wish to deactivate the GPU and use only the IGP.

The problem is that my BIOS doesnt allow me to do so. But I believe it is possible to deactivate the GPU 'programatically'. I'm running Debian Wheezy on the 3.2.0.4 AMD64 kernel.

The first problem I'm running into is that when I run lspci, my IGP doesnt show up. Could this be because im lacking a kernel module? (I chose a targeted installation).

What are the solutions to deactivating a GPU and using an IGP on a Linux System such as debian?

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