Hi there,
I am trying to get my NVIDIA gpu working on my laptop with hybrid graphics. I have a Dell XPS 15 9560. I looked in the nixos-hardware repository (nixos-hardware/dell/xps/15-9560 at master · NixOS/nixos-hardware · GitHub), but I still can’t get it working. Here is the relevant bits of my configuration.nix:
{
imports =
[ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
<nixos-hardware/dell/xps/15-9560>
./hardware-configuration.nix
];
...
###### Nvidia Nonsense ######
# enable opengpl and gpu drivers
hardware.opengl = {
enable = true;
driSupport = true;
driSupport32Bit = true;
};
services.xserver.videoDrivers = ["nvidia"];
hardware.nvidia.modesetting.enable = true;
hardware.nvidia.prime = {
offload = {
enable = true;
enableOffloadCmd = true;
};
# integrated
intelBusId = "PCI:0:2:0";
# dedicated
nvidiaBusId = "PCI:1:0:0";
};
# specialisation = {
# gaming-time.configuration = {
# hardware.nvidia = {
# prime.sync.enable = lib.mkForce true;
# prime.offload = {
# enable = lib.mkForce false;
# enableOffloadCmd = lib.mkForce false;
# };
# };
# };
# };
# Taken from NixOS wiki:
# If you encounter the problem of booting to text mode you
# might try adding the Nvidia kernel module manually with:
# boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ "nvidia" ];
# boot.extraModulePackages = [ config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidia_x11 ];
###### End Nvidia Nonsense ######
I have commented out some of the stuff that didn’t work.
What is very strange is that when I look for PCI devices with lspci or lshw, the nvidia gpu does not appear. However, I know that the nvidia gpu is working properly, because when I boot into windows it works fine! When I initially set this up, I swear I remember the nvidia gpu appearing as a "3D" device under lspci, but now it’s gone…
Hi @liamwb,
I’m exactly in the same boat as you, installed NixOS on my XPS and trying to get the GPU working.
The problem is that the nixos-hardware module for the xps 9560 completely disables the nvidia gpu!
This was done 5 months ago because of broken bumblebee:
One of the option is to enable the Nvidia GPU only with <nixos-hardware/dell/xps/15-9560/nvidia>.
I will try to check if bumblebee is still broken (and I suspect it is, since there are no commits for that package on nixpkgs) or if we can re-enable the old configuration
Well now I feel silly! I had been following this Vimjoyer tutorial, which now seems to work straightforwardly. Both nvidia-offload and the dedicated-gpu “gaming-time” specialization seem to work.
I was under the impression that bumblebee has more or less been superseded by prime, so should we update the nixos-hardware entry to use that? Here’s what currently seems to be working in my configuration:
This will definitely be a good contribution to nixos-hardware, feel free to submit a PR!
I’ll test it myself ASAP
Not sure about the sync specialization to be part of nixos-hardware… maybe a separate config in the gpu/nvidia folder (if it’s not already there), so that one can choose to enable it in addition to the base config?
EDIT: the <nixos-hardware/dell/xps/15-9560/nvidia> mentioned before already has prime offload enabled, so you can just use that.
I use the nvidia module along with a couple other options to use prime offload on wayland. Works well when I need it. It is off when I do not, I have it in it’s own specialisation.
I got some strange behavior with this configuration: when I unplug the power cord, the pc freezes for a bit and restarts itself
I can’t see anything strange with journalctl, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
Do you ever experienced something like that?
I just tested the nvidia configuration and I did not encounter any strange behavior like that. It appears to work properly, although there are some odd missing fields when I run nvidia-smi, but that might be correct behaviour:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.78 Driver Version: 550.78 CUDA Version: 12.4 |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| 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 GTX 1050 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A |
| N/A 52C P8 N/A / ERR! | 140MiB / 4096MiB | 36% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 6082 G ./runner 138MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
What is odd is that the comments in the nvidia/default.nix claim that it disables the intel gpu:
# This runs only nvidia, great for games or heavy use of render applications
##### disable intel, run nvidia only and as default
hardware.nvidia.prime = {
# Bus ID of the Intel GPU.
intelBusId = "PCI:0:2:0";
# Bus ID of the NVIDIA GPU.
nvidiaBusId = "PCI:1:0:0";
};
}
But I can’t see where in the imports or the body of the file that the intel gpu is being disabled, and indeed when I run nvtop the intel gpu appears, and reports utilization as well. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the comment, but it seems misleading?
I believe this is because the intel card is still needed, since it’s the one directly connected to the display/hdmi (and the reason why we can’t use the nvidia card to do video passthrough to windows vms, but that’s another story)
