ASUS Laptop dGPU Toggling, eGPU Handling, Panel Overdrive Patches For Linux

A set of Linux kernel patches to the asus-wmi driver are pending that improve the support for newer ASUS gaming laptops.

The ASUS WMI driver patches sent out today by independent developer Luke jones wire up support for panel overdrive, dGPU disabling/toggling, and eGPU enabling for relevant newer ASUS laptops.

The panel overdrive support is for select ASUS laptops that allow driving the LCD panel slightly faster in order to eliminate/reduce ghosting artifacts.

The dGPU disabling allows for disabling the discrete graphics processor on newer ASUS laptops if wanting to just use the integrated GPU. Besides disabling the dGPU, the patch allows for re-enabling the discrete GPU too should you have previously disabled it - disabling it spans reboots including from Windows to Linux. The Linux handling though isn't exactly ideal as users first need to unload/unbind their GPU driver from the hardware before this WMI driver can disable the GPU.

The other patch of the series is for eGPU enabling for devices like the ASUS X-Flow (X13 Flow) laptop with an external GPU.

These ASUS WMI driver patches for improving the ROG / gaming laptop support on Linux can be found via the kernel mailing list. Given the timing it's too late for this work to come for 5.14 as we are already a week through the merge window but hopefully the work will be deemed ready to appear in 5.15.