# Switching on and off discrete video card

## nihil39

Hi,

I own an ASUS K53SJ laptop with an intel core i3 i2310M and an nvidia gt 520M. At the moment i'm only using the integrated intel video card and it's working fine. How can i turn on the discrete nvidia card? There is no optimus technology sticker on the laptop su i guess i should not try the bumblebee method. I have no clue where to start, should i use the asus_swithceroo module? 

Thanks for any answer.

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## candamil

Same problem that we have here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-920122.html

and here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-920148.html

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## nihil39

Have you managed at least to activate and use the nvidia card (e.g. with mplayer with vdpau support)? Remember that in my case there is no “optimus” sticker on the laptop so i don't think i can use that technology.

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## candamil

I don't have any stick neither, but I was able to use the nvidia card and optimus with the wiki I say in my thread. Anyway it drains the battery, no matter if you are using it or not.  For me is absolutely necessary to turn it off completely.

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## nihil39

Have you tried this method to switch off the discrete card? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1768911

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## nihil39

Try also the method described in the first post of this thread  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1791081 It's a bit clumsy but i hope it will work. I hope we can solve this issue.

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## candamil

I tried the second one, but it didn't work, I can't get bumblebee working properly because of the nvidia driver (I'm not using nouveau).

I am now trying with the first one, but I think it doesn't work. I installed the acpi_call module and I did the acpi_call echo, but after doing that, the integrated card still works, and I can still run "optirun glxgears", so I think it's not a valid method.

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## nihil39

Try with this script https://github.com/mkottman/acpi_call/blob/master/test_off.sh

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## candamil

It seems that script works. I had tried it a couple of days ago, but the system hanged and the fan started spinning at maximum speed.

Now I tried to unload the nvidia module before, and it seems everything is OK. The discrete card is still detected, so I'm not sure if it works or not. I am not able to load the nvidia module if I don't reboot 

```

nomada acpi_call # modprobe nvidia

FATAL: Error inserting nvidia (/lib/modules/3.2.12-gentoo/video/nvidia.ko): No such device

```

so maybe it's something. I'll do a battery test with this as soon as I can.

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## candamil

Yep, powertop says that the power consumption went down from 10 to almost 8W. Good news.

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## nihil39

I've tried the test_off.sh script, and it works but the fan starts to spin like hell. I blacklisted nvidia and bbswitch modules. Damn...

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