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July 2nd, 2019 22:00

Dell G3 3579 Displayport Alt Mode for VR?

I have a Dell G3 3579 as well as an Oculus rift S. I am able to use it just fine on my desktop. However, I am unable to use it on my laptop because it physically does not have a displayport connection. When I saw it had thunderbolt, I thought I was good and bought an adapter, however that does not work either because from the looks of it the iGPU is wired to the thunderbolt connection. I was wondering if there was any way to switch the thunderbolt to the dGPU via software. I have already come to the conclusion that it probably won't work, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Any help is appreciated.

4 Posts

July 25th, 2019 09:00

There is no solution. No adapter will work.

3 Posts

July 3rd, 2019 00:00

Wow you saved me I was about to purchase one for my dell g3 1060 version that's arriving tomorrow and buy an adapter to go with it. I guess I'm going to be getting a Windows mixed reality headset now instead since that's the only one that's compatible. I'm confused though why do they put a oculus ready sticker on it if it doesn't even have the right ports to support it? I assumed it worked with the thunderbolt 3 but apparently not.

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14K Posts

July 3rd, 2019 06:00

Unfortunately this is a hardware design issue.  It's quite common for most or all display outputs on systems to be wired to the Intel GPU, and then the dGPU when needed acts as a render-only device that passes completed video frames to the Intel GPU for output to displays.  The reason this design is common is that it allows the dGPU to be completely shut down when its extra horsepower isn't needed, which helps battery life (and heat, and cooling noise, etc.)  If the dGPU was directly wired to display outputs, then it would have to remain active whenever an external display was attached to those outputs, even if nothing graphics-intensive was going on.  The downside of this design as you've found is that there are certain features that require the dGPU to have direct control of the display output in order to work because the Intel GPU doesn't support passing them through and/or they're proprietary to the dGPU.  Some of these features are G-Sync, VR, stereoscopic 3D, spanning a single display's signal across multiple outputs (5K resolution displays that require dual DisplayPort links), etc.

The only Dell systems I know of that allow you to configure this are the Precision 7000 Series models.  They have a BIOS option that allows you to choose whether the built-in display and the display outputs are wired to the Intel GPU or discrete GPU.  They're able to offer this because their motherboards have DisplayPort multiplexers.  Basically, the built-in display and the display output connectors are wired to these multiplexers, and the multiplexers are wired to BOTH of the GPUs in the system.  The BIOS option controls which path is active.  But that's a more complex and expensive design to implement, and I don't know of any other Dell systems that have it.

I believe there are some Alienware and Dell Inspiron Gaming (now G Series) systems that were designed with the HDMI output wired directly to the dGPU specifically to support VR, which was great for the original Rift and similar headsets, but obviously doesn't help with the Rift S now that it switched to DisplayPort.  Unfortunately there aren't any viable options for converting an HDMI source signal to DisplayPort, even though there are plenty of adapters to go the other direction.  The only one I found indicated that it only supported an HDMI 1.4 source signal, and I don't think that offers enough bandwidth for the Rift S's requirements.

Sorry I don't have a better answer, but I thought you might find the explanation/history illuminating.

4 Posts

July 3rd, 2019 09:00

You could always go for a vive or find a used rift on ebay (friend got one for $250 after tax and shipping). It's unfortunate that we're SOL for the time being (or forever).

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14K Posts

July 3rd, 2019 11:00


@IsaAli wrote:

Wow you saved me I was about to purchase one for my dell g3 1060 version that's arriving tomorrow and buy an adapter to go with it. I guess I'm going to be getting a Windows mixed reality headset now instead since that's the only one that's compatible. I'm confused though why do they put a oculus ready sticker on it if it doesn't even have the right ports to support it? I assumed it worked with the thunderbolt 3 but apparently not.


@IsaAli  as I alluded to in my longer post above, the G3 probably has its HDMI port wired directly to the dGPU, so if you had the original Oculus Rift that uses HDMI, the system would indeed be "Oculus Ready".  Unfortunately Oculus switched to DisplayPort for the Rift S.  There are a lot of great reasons to do that because DisplayPort is superior to HDMI in many ways, so it's an understandable move especially on the way to VirtualLink, which appears to be the next standard that all of the VR companies are getting behind and which uses DisplayPort over USB-C, but of course for that particular system, that switch does create a compatibility problem.

3 Posts

July 3rd, 2019 16:00

I realized after this post that I was mistaken between the two I googled what ports you needed for a oculus headset and it said I had to use a Display Port, completely forgot they recently came out with a new one.

1 Message

July 25th, 2019 07:00

Dear All

 

I have the same Dell G3 3579 with oculus rift S. and what is the solution for not having DisplayPort

3 Apprentice

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4.3K Posts

July 25th, 2019 08:00

@SajhnairIf you got the system with the optional Thunderbolt capability, you can get an adapter.  The user manual states:

A USB Type-C to DisplayPort adapter (sold separately) is required to connect a DisplayPort device.

And you can probably find such an adapter from several sources or a Dock with that capability.

But the Oculus Rift S has a Display port attachment instead of the HDMI?

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