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No you don't need to do this. The games will use the dGPU automatically. Only the steam client uses the iGPU
Hmm... Is that a recent change? That is not true from my experience and most comments online discuss explicitly setting this to take advantage of the dGPU.
Value itself also mentions using this environment variable: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/blob/master/doc/steamlinuxruntime-known-issues.md#-multiple-gpu-systems
Update: So I just tried this with City Skylines. I launched Steam from the dock/panel with the "Integrated Graphics" option and started City Skylines without the
DRI_PRIMEenvironment variable. Checking the output ofintel_gpu_topit appears that the game was only used my integrated graphics as theRender/3Dusage was 100%.I then added the
DRI_PRIMEenvironment variable to the launch options and restarted City Skylines. With the setting, the FPS counter was higher and theintel_gpu_topoutput was only around 10%... which probably means it was using my discrete AMD GPU instead of just my integrated Intel one. Also, my fans kicked on, which usually only happens with the dGPU is being used.So unfortunately, it does not appear to automatically use the dGPU... at least not on my laptop, with my configuration.
Odd. I am guessing that use integrated graphics option from the Gnome DE forces the use of the iGPU for everything steam launches. Do you also require to use the DRI_PRIME=1 command if you launch steam through the terminal in which case it automatically switches to the iGPU for the steam client because I sure did not when I was launching steam from the terminal to circumnagivate the issue
I used the workarounds mentioned in this post's comments to resolve the issue https://lemmy.one/post/151466. With this workaround there no need to use the DRI_PRIME=1 modifier for the games(atleast in my experience)
Edit : does somebody know to link the post in a way such that it opens within the app you are currently using(voyager for me) and does not open a new lemmy.one tab in the browser
If I just start steam from the terminal, then it uses the iGPU and I still need to use the DRI_PRIME=1 environment varitable. This makes sense, because the DRI_PRIME=1 modifier is not set in the environment.
The workaround mentioned in that post (ie. changing
PrefersNonDefaultGPU=truetoPrefersNonDefaultGPU=false) is just a way to change the shortcut (.desktop) in GNOME from using the dGPU to iGPU by default (whereas right clicking on the shortcut and selecting "Launch with Integrated GPU" only temporarily overrides the setting for that single instance).It would be nice if was automatically detected on my computer... or rather it would be even better if we didn't have to workaround it at all and Steam just worked :]
I am stumped. How can steam/the system exhibit different behaviour when we are executing similar commands. Maybe it is because I have an amd+amd laptop so it automatically dumps the graphically intensive application to the dGPU. Or maybe because in a desktop, the dGPU is connected directly to the display, it not switching to the dGPU automatically as the user had specified the use of the iGPU. In my laptop(which has no mux switch), the iGPU will draw the frame on the screen even if it the dGPU which determines what is to be drawn
I'm not sure either, but this is on a laptop with an Intel CPU and AMD dGPU (strange mix) and more recently a NVIDIA eGPU.
The issues only appear with the AMD dGPU.