NVidia Optimus Notebooks (hybrid graphics)

Find out if you are on such system run this from terminal:

lspci -vnn | grep '\''[030[02]\]'

if it gives out something like this with two devices:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0a16] (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] [10de:0fe4] (rev ff) (prog-if ff)

it will be that you have such hybrid system with a combination of nvidia and intel gpu.

Some basic information on that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hybrid_graphics

If so and your nvidia gpu is supported by the latest nvidia driver there are some different ways to handle a switch between gpus or simple only use one of them:

Optimus-manager is one solution currently where you can switch between the two GPU’s:

Optimus-Manager

Optimus Switch is completely powerdown Nvidia GPU and will save more power, but needs to reboot system to do so:

Optimus-Switch

Render Offload is a new mechanism build inside the Nvidia Driver:

Render-Offload

Bumblebee is the very first Linux implementation to switch and manage Optimus systems GPU’s, but is not working on newer systems:

Bumblebee (older systems)