Hello!
I've been trying to make my internal laptop display fully rendered by the eGPU (RX 6700 XT) connected via TB3 instead of the integrated intel or dedicated NVIDIA card.
To my knowledge the most straightforward xorg.conf to achieve this is:
With this, X fails to start:
Once I add the integrated card as a Device, X starts, but the eGPU is not the primary GPU and I have to use DRI_PRIME (which works fine execpt for some visual glitches):
I am on Arch Linux, running the latest packages, have the [testing] repo enabled and am using a self-built linux-firmware-git package because RX 6700 XT firmware was just pushed to kernel.org.
From what I can tell from other people's configuration, this works with NVIDIA cards. Would be a shame if getting a new shiny AMD card because of open source drivers was a mistake 🙁
Thanks!
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
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In my experience, it's not advised to try start the x server on the egpu as you are doing here if you have an AMD card and are only using the internal display. Even when I got it working it was very stuttery. PRIME is the way to go here (even in the nvidia case I believe it's still using nvidia's own nvidia-prime implementation when you do this). If you want the whole desktop to use the eGPU you can add DRI_PRIME=1 in /etc/environment
Mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro (MacBookPro9,2) TB1 -> RX 460/560 (AKiTiO Node/Thunder2)
+ macOS 10.15+Win10 + Linux Mint 19.1
2012 13" MacBook Pro [3rd,2C,M] + RX 460 @ 10Gbps-TB1 (AKiTiO Thunder2) + macOS 10.14.4 [build link]
When I connected an external display to the GPU directly, I could use xrandr (arandr) to make the eGPU primary on both screens.
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
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@henning_pohl, Could you please explain this in more detail. I installed this myself and had a look but it only seems to show me monitors and not really GPU out puts so I'm unclear on how to set my eGPU as primary output?
I read through the PRIME documentation that @nu_ninja suggested and can see how it may work with reverse PRIME, but I'm running wayland and the instructions are for xorg so I'm a little confused on how I would attempt this.
Any help you can share would be awesome as I really want to get this sorted.
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
.This process is for xorg specificly, I don't think it will work for Wayland desktops.
If you use Gnome wayland you can use this script:
https://github.com/dangreco/gnome-egpu
Or for wlroots based desktops like Sway I made a different script:
https://github.com/ewagner12/sway-eGPU-setup
If you're using any other wayland desktop I'd recommend switching to xorg for now.
Mid-2012 13" Macbook Pro (MacBookPro9,2) TB1 -> RX 460/560 (AKiTiO Node/Thunder2)
+ macOS 10.15+Win10 + Linux Mint 19.1
2012 13" MacBook Pro [3rd,2C,M] + RX 460 @ 10Gbps-TB1 (AKiTiO Thunder2) + macOS 10.14.4 [build link]
@nu_ninja, Thanks for the follow-up. That's a real shame tho. I've seen Kwin doing some more work in regards to eGPU hot-swapping and such I wonder if it's worth flagging with them and showing the functionality that Xorg has so they know what we need to be replicated??
I might give it a crack and if I see any progress I'll make a post on it.
To do: Create my signature with system and expected eGPU configuration information to give context to my posts. I have no builds.
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