is optimus device driver needed in this case?

[piker]

I have just installed sparky on a new laptop with this graphics setup:

Graphics Processor:
User Switchable between Microsoft Hybrid Graphics Mode or Direct (Discrete/Non-Hybrid) GPU Mode
* Intel 630 HD Graphics
* NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU with 2GB GDDR5

Even though everything seems to be working fine, i found "(Optimus) Nvidia corporation device" in Device Driver Manager. If I installed this would it improve battery life? Or did Sparky already set this up?

[paxmark1]

There is the bumblebee (and bumblebee-nvidia meta-package) for optimus and also the non-free nvidia driver.  The Debian wiki has some about it under bumblebee and the Arch wiki has a bit more depth.  check out the bumblebee site,
https://www.bumblebee-project.org/
subsection https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/wiki/Supported-drivers
and      https://wiki.debian.org/Bumblebee
and      https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

typing under an old netbook with old intel drivers - hopefully others with experience on a laptop will post.  You are in a debian testing  environment so 3.21 is quite up to date.

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aptitude show bumblebee                                     
Package: bumblebee                                                                                 
Version: 3.2.1-14                                                                                   
State: not installed                                                                               
Priority: extra                                                                                     
Section: utils


[piker]

Thanks paxmark1. I was mainly concerned that it was running on the Nvidia chip most of the time and using up excess power. I ran this:

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lspci -v | grep "VGA controller"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 591b (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
which seems to indicate that its already normally running on the Intel chip.
I'm not using this laptop for gaming or anything, so i'll just leave it as is at the moment, but I do have some idea how to get switching working if needed later. Cheers.

[dirkme]

Thanks paxmark1. I was mainly concerned that it was running on the Nvidia chip most of the time and using up excess power. I ran this:

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lspci -v | grep "VGA controller"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 591b (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
which seems to indicate that its already normally running on the Intel chip.
I'm not using this laptop for gaming or anything, so i'll just leave it as is at the moment, but I do have some idea how to get switching working if needed later. Cheers.

Hey piker, could you provide a step by step tutorial how to get the Nvidia driver installed? I have the same setup except i have 4GB DDR5. I had nothing than bad luck with bumblebee on Debian 9, Fedora, OpenSuse etc.

I don't mind having the Nvidia driver running at all times.