Dual GPU Setup: Xorg on Intel Integrated GPU, NVIDIA GPU for Gaming

Question

I recently purchased a new laptop and installed openSUSE Tumbleweed on it. The laptop has an Intel Core i5 processor with integrated graphics and an NVIDIA 3050 Ti. My goal is to configure Xorg to run on the integrated GPU and disable the NVIDIA GPU when it's not required (to save power, as it consumes around 6 watts). To achieve this, I used prime-select to set the offload mode by running the command sudo prime-select offload.

However, I encountered a problem where Xorg is still running on the NVIDIA GPU. When I checked the output of nvidia-smi, I received the following information:

Sun May 28 10:00:02 2023       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.116.04   Driver Version: 525.116.04   CUDA Version: 12.0     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                  N/A |
| N/A   42C    P8     6W /  30W |      5MiB /  4096MiB |      0%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      3246      G   /usr/bin/Xorg.bin                   4MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Additionally, when I checked the task manager, it indicated that Xorg should not be running on the NVIDIA GPU. I have examined the xorg.conf file located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf and it contains the following configuration:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Screen "intel"
    Option "AllowNVIDIAGPUScreens"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "modesetting"
    BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "AutoAddGPU" "false"
EndSection

# needed for NVIDIA PRIME Render Offload
Section "Device"
  Identifier "nvidia"
  Driver "nvidia"
  BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

I apologize if any necessary information is missing. Please let me know if you require any additional details. This is my first time working with a graphics card, so any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

OHHHHHH, YESSSSS. I SOLVED IT! I simply added GPUDevice "intel" to the xorg.conf file! Now there are no processes running on the NVIDIA GPU! It doesn't go into low power state but I think I will figure it out.

I saw it in the logs that it used nvidia as the GPUDevice.

Edit: I eventually got the PRIME offloading working thanks to this tutorial: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME