RTX 5070 EnvyControl hybrid graphics battery problems

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

System Info:

Arch Linux, updated today, Kernel 6.18.2

BIOS 03.04, Framework 16 Ryzen AI 7 + RTX 5070

Been very excited for my Framework, having a lot of fun setting things up to use it. I decided to go Linux with my laptop, which I did despite knowing that Nvidia and Linux do not really go so well together. I am currently attempting to use EnvyControl, which has been a little frustrating. On the integrated graphics only mode, I can see powertop reporting around 8-12 watts of power draw at idle. This is pretty ideal, but it would be nice to keep hybrid on so that I don’t have to reboot every time I’d like to use the dGPU, and reboot once more to keep my battery life afterwards. Unfortunately, hybrid mode has the strange issue of using much more power. I see around 21-25 watts of power usage in powertop. This is specifically with flag –-rtd3 3.

I used nvtop to view the usage of each GPU, and while the 5070 does get a little bit of use (as for why I cannot say, I only have Discord and Firefox open) certainly not enough to warrant the massive extra power draw, as the 5070 is sitting at 0% most of the time. This looks like to me that the GPU is simply not shutting off when not in use, but I don’t really know what to do about it.

I did some Googling to see if I could find anyone else with these problems. Most people with issues were on Intel iGPUs. I still looked into them and tried the only solution that was presented. One person suggested running envycontrol -—reverse and rebooting, but this didn’t really help matters all too much. Unfortunately, graphics switching is not something I’ve ever had to deal with before on this OS and I haven’t found anything all too helpful, not even on the EnvyControl github.

Has anyone been experiencing similar problems? I really feel like the battery life should be a lot longer, hoping I just missed something obvious.

2

Been using the Framework 16 since mid 2024. I never got over 7hrs on battery (Fedora and Windows). Best thing you can do for your battery is swap out the GPU module for the blank fan model.

3

You know, 7 hours actually sounds pretty good. I have to admit I haven’t tested what a full charge looks like, only done calculations based on what powertop has shown, which would be a little less than 4 hours. It would have likely been appropriate for me to simply test it out first instead of believing the metrics at face value. I admit I was very tired last night. I’ll get back to this forum and see if that’s about what I can get on a full charge.

4

I can only speak for the 7700s, but nvtop will hold that dGPU awake when running, causing more power draw (doesn’t matter if it’s 0% usage or not). Check and see what power state your GPU is in when you run these monitoring programs. Most of them will wake up the GPU and hold it awake.

I wonder if the Nvidia driver holds it awake? I admit it’s been a while since I have bothered with Nvidia on Linux. But again, check power states to make sure.

The 7700s, in my experience, uses pretty much 0 power when it is asleep (d3cold) power state.

5

Unfortunately, it wasn’t powertop. As for the Nvidia driver, I have no idea. I wouldn’t imagine there’s much fixing the issue if that’s the case.