Laptop not recognizing an Nvidia graphics card

[native vortex]

Hi, Ive installed the nvidia drivers (the propietary as far as i know) and steam, however when i look at the system monitor i dont see any app using anything from the GPU. Ive further confirmed this as steam recognizes only the integrated graphics card and not the nvidia one. I've an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile and Intel CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630]. I tried to do some stress test and had a stream ongoing in firefox and hotline miami running through steam but i only see the CPU going overdrive, but not the GPU. What can i do to make my PC use the GPU? Thank you

[jolly igloo]

You're probably going to need to use NVIDIA Optimus/Bumblebee or similar

[native vortex]

what is the difference with optimus and bumblebee?

[jolly igloo]

As I understand it Optimus is the base technology by Nvidia and Bumblebee is an unofficial implementation of it for Linux, but there are other options and you should investigate which one is best for your system and hardware

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA_Optimus#Use_switchable_graphics

[native vortex]

alright, i guess i can go with optimus, but is it in the aur? i dont see the steps to install it in the wiki

is it installing the "optimus-manager"?

[jolly igloo]

That's also third-party software that uses Optimus, it having "optimus" in the title doesn't mean it's an official Nvidia release (if that's what you meant)

If you do decide to go with that, there are configuration/installation/usage instructions on its GitHub repository, and the indicated AUR package seems to be optimus-manager-git or optimus-manager-qt if you don't want CLI restriction

Be aware that this option is incompatible with Wayland

[native vortex]

i had already changed to x11 as per what the nvidia drivers installation told me to do, so i dont think taht will be an issue

im reading now the github and see what i can do

although, how do i know if i have made any modifications to the xorg conf file?

[half basalt]

@native vortex show us your config

[native vortex]

i think it should be fine, i have no files in the addresses the github said

[half basalt]

then proceed

[native vortex]

alright, brb

[native vortex]

ok so i got yay to help me install the package

and after i installed optimus it asked me to reboot

[half basalt]

then reboot

[native vortex]

and following what the github says, i wanted to change to the hybrid mode and i see this

[native vortex]

yes, i come from a reboot now but i want to confirm if these is ok for me to do now

[half basalt]

@native vortex yes

[native vortex]

i thought i was going to be logged out but ye, i dont know what i did wrong

[half basalt]

@native vortex use the gui

[native vortex]

optimus-manager-qt right?

[half basalt]

yes

[native vortex]

ok give me asec

well i kept getting this error, and even if i manually restart i dont think the changes are applying. im currently reading what the link (https://github.com/Askannz/optimus-manager/wiki/A-guide--to-power-management-options) is telling me to do, so brb

Of course, if your laptop is always plugged in or don't care about battery life, you can just ignore this page and leave the default configuration untouched.
well this is my case, my laptop is always plugged in, so does it matter if i dont chamge the power management?

[half basalt]

no?

[native vortex]

well, after reading the github page it told me to leave evrything as a default but if that is the case do i have to touch any of the files?

it says that i should just use the hybrid mode but i cant change to it over the constant error i keep getting so im unsure how should i proceed

actually, now that i cjeck it, i dont have that file

[native vortex]

welp so i managed to change it into hybrid, but is it normal that even with a stream and a game running then nothing happens?