Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG
Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG[dead link 2020-03-28 ⓘ] 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[dead link 2020-03-28 ⓘ] 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 fstab:
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs defaults 0 0
This will enable /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
.
# 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:
# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch # echo "OFF" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
# 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:
# echo "DIGD" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch # echo "DDIS" > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
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
Synaptics Touchpad
See Touchpad Synaptics.