Tips: Beware buying NVIDIA Optimus™ technology Graphic Cards

[b0nd]

Folks,

Last month I bought Asus N43 Series with Nvidia Geforce GT 540M 1Gb card.
For last three days I was struggling configuring Nvidia to make it work with cuda for WPA cracking.
The cracking thing worked, but the irony is I am not being able to use the card for X server. It simply fails and I need to switch back to built in Intel card.

Digging further, I found the following:

The card should be ok as long as it works alone. But OP is screwed because his laptop (DELL XPS15)is Optimus enabled. With Optimus the Nvidia card becomes a kind of hybrid with a cheap onbroad Intel card so the Linux driver for the Nvidia card no longer works. As for Nvidia, not only does it not support Optimus in Linux, it doesn't give Linux users the option to NOT use it. With Optimius enabled, you simply cannot use the Nvidia card you pay for, period (unless your laptop has a BIOS switch to turn off Optimus and choose the discrete card,--Nviida) But even worse, the unusable Nvidia card would still be sitting there eating your battery so it is worse than an expensive paper weight.

So the optimus is killing here. Anyone planning to buy something related to it, please make sure the compatibilities and all. Cracking is working fine with pyrit and cuda but can not use the nvidia card for x-server.

NVidia GeForce GT 540M

Group Effort Petition Nvidia about Optimus Linux drivers

nVidia Optimus and Ubuntu explained [UPDATED]

bumblebee
Bumblebee brings nvidia optimus GPU switching to Linux users


b0nd

PS: If anyone come across any solution for it, please do let me know.

[keval_domadia]

I am using NVidia GeForce GT 540M on ubuntu and its working brill!
however, post update, you need to re-compile it and install it. Its a bit headache but, I hope it works out for you!

[b0nd]

I am using NVidia GeForce GT 540M on ubuntu and its working brill!
however, post update, you need to re-compile it and install it. Its a bit headache but, I hope it works out for you!

Hey KD, that would be awesome if I could make it work.
What exactly did you do to make it work?

Rgds