Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG
Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG is a 14-inch laptop that packs in an Intel Core i5-430M processor and dedicated ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics, making it a powerful 14-inch laptop. ArchLinux works mostly works out of box, but there are few tweaks required to make the hardware fully compatible with ArchLinux.
Contents
Hardware
Make sure that you have BIOS_Acer_1.25_A_A.zip installed.
PowerSmart / Battery Optimization
Switchable Graphics
This laptop contains inbuilt Intel HD & Radeon 5650 graphics adapters. The Intel HD graphics adapter is optimized for low power consumption which Radeon 5650 consumes high power.
To use Linux kernel's "Laptop Hybrid Graphics - GPU switching support" add following to /etc/fstab
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs defaults 0 0
This will enable /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
[root@arp arp]# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch 0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0 1:DIS: :Pwr:0000:01:00.0
IDN - denotes integrated Intel graphics. DIS - denotes discrete Radeon graphics.
To switch-off Radeon, do following -
[root@arp arp]# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch [root@arp arp]# echo "OFF" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
[root@arp arp]# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch 0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0 1:DIS: :Off:0000:01:00.0
To switch-on both graphics chips, do following -
[root@arp arp]# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch [root@arp arp]# echo "DDIS" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
Init script for switching off the Radeon card -
[root@arp arp]# cat /etc/rc.d/radeon_off #!/bin/bash . /etc/rc.conf . /etc/rc.d/functions case "$1" in start) echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch echo "OFF" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch ;; stop) echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch echo "DDIS" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch ;; restart) stat_busy "Restarting radeon_off ..." $0 stop $0 start stat_done ;; *) echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}" esac [root@arp arp]# chmod +x /etc/rc.d/radeon_off
Switch the Radeon off while booting. Add following at the end of the file : /etc/rc.sysinit
#Switch-off discrete graphics /etc/rc.d/radeon_off restart /bin/dmesg >| /var/log/dmesg.log
Enable CPU Frequency Scaling
Enabled by default, see CPU frequency scaling for details.
Power Usage
The power rating before tweak -
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 24.1W (2.8 hours)
The power rating after "switching off the radeon graphics" and "enabling laptop-mode tools".
Power usage (ACPI estimate): 11.1W (6.5 hours)
Sensors
[arp@arpc ~]$ sudo modprobe coretemp [arp@arpc ~]$ sensors acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +53.0°C (crit = +105.0°C) radeon-pci-0100 Adapter: PCI adapter temp1: +2147355.6°C coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +49.0°C (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C) coretemp-isa-0002 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 2: +53.0°C (high = +95.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Synaptics Touchpad
See Touchpad Synaptics.