Nvidia GPU Utilization showing 0% in nvidia-settings (driver N/A)

Support Graphics & Display
1

Hello, I’m very new to Manjaro and this forum so excuse my ignorance. Im running on a pretty old setup ASUS X550 with Nvidia 740M “inxi -G” outputs the following :

       Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel 
       Device-2: NVIDIA GK208M [GeForce GT 740M] driver: N/A 
       Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: intel resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
       OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB GT2) v: 4.2 Mesa 20.1.3

I’m trying to run some light games with “optirun” but my fps gravitates around 20 on the lowest settings. (I also have a windows machine with Nvidia GT 710 which does pretty fine with this game.)
When i run “optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8” while the game is running, under Nvidia 740 it says GPU-Utilization: 0%, so im wondering if im using the dedicated GPU at all.

“mhwd -li” also oputputs following:

Installed PCI configs:

              NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE

   video-hybrid-intel-nvidia-418xx-bumblebee            2019.10.25               false            PCI

Can someone please tell me if I’m doing something wrong or is my laptop simply too old. Many thanks in advance!

2

as this is hybrid card
try

optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8
4

Thanks for the answers, this is the line i got from the wiki :

  optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8

It starts the app and shows info about the Nvidia card but not the integrated card.
It works without the “-b none” arguments but without the “:8” it outputs an error :

nvidia-settings: option "-c" requires an argument.
ERROR: Invalid commandline, please run `nvidia-settings --help` for usage information.

It also returns an error without the “optirun” prefix :

 ERROR: NVIDIA driver is not loaded
 ERROR: Unable to load info from any available system

Wich may be normal since the driver is N/A. But is it supposed to be N/A without explicitly “optirunning” the card? Also since I’m not worried about power consupmtion, is it possible to entirely bypass the integrated GPU and just use the Nvidia card?

5

It looks like you are using the bumblebee driver. This is a good read for people with hybrid nvidia. Archived forum link

I personally use nvidia prime method mentioned here.

Although, I have successfully used optimus-manager also without any issues.

Edit: I forgot to mention that not all Nvidia GPUs / drivers support GPU utilisation monitoring. I know mine doesn’t. ( nvidia-smi command )