Inspiron 15 Gaming 7567 HDMI Specs/Does HDMI out support full bandwidth for G-SYNC Dell Gaming Monitor – S2417DG

First of all, G-Sync as far as I know requires DisplayPort and will not run on HDMI.  Even if it does, I don't think even HDMI 2.0 has enough bandwidth for 1440p @ 165 Hz.  And even if it does though, all of the Dell systems I've seen have only had HDMI 1.4, which is only enough for 1440p @ 60 Hz.  But even if all of that isn't a problem, does the Inspiron 7567 have ONLY a GeForce GPU, or does it have an Intel GPU plus a GeForce GPU?  If it's the latter, G-Sync will definitely not work because in almost all systems that have both GPUs, only the Intel GPU is directly wired to the display outputs.  If your system has ONLY the GeForce GPU, then G-Sync should work in theory, but again you may have the bandwidth problems I mentioned above.

Well I just got off the line with NVIDIA support and they pretty much said what you said.  There is no way HDMI will support passing the full video capabilities that the GTX 1050T i graphics card supports/puts out.  It requires a DisplayPort output, and again like you mentioned, it requires it be directly connected to the graphics card.  So bottom line, I paid for a graphics card that I cannot fully use.  To make things worse within a short time they reconfigured the  Inspiron 15 Gaming Laptop to 7677 and it does include a 1 x Thunderbolt™ 3 Port (USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C™ with support for 40 Gbps Thunderbolt and DisplayPort).  So I now have a $1300 non-gaming laptop.  Time to talk with customer support and see if anything can be done.

One further option you can consider: Buy a system that includes Thunderbolt 3 and is known to support external GPUs through that connection.  Then you can buy an enclosure like the Akitio Node that connects via Thunderbolt 3 and houses a desktop-grade GPU of your choosing.  At that point you would either connect your display(s) directly to that external card in order to take advantage of all of the features of that card, or you could even use that external GPU to accelerate graphics on your built-in panel --  and of course you can get much better performance than what you'd find in basically any laptop, AND the system is much more future-proof since you can upgrade the desktop GPU in that enclosure whenever you want.  The catches with this option are that a) you'll still want a system with a fairly powerful CPU, and b) ideally you'll want a system that has 4x PCIe lanes wired to its Thunderbolt 3 port.  The spec allows either 2 or 4 lanes, and this piece of info can be tough to find on certain systems.

I seriously doubt that customer service will be able to do anything if you're outside the return period, since they're not going to agree that lack of G-Sync makes that a non-gaming laptop.  After all, the GPU can still certainly be used to accelerate external displays, and G-Sync support wasn't promised anywhere in the product description.  That system won't support VR either for the exact same reason it doesn't support G-Sync, and some games use VR, but that doesn't mean that all systems that don't support VR should now be considered non-gaming systems.

But with respect to the newer system, if it has also has an Intel GPU, the Thunderbolt 3 port DisplayPort outputs would still be wired to the Intel GPU, so you still wouldn't be able to run G-Sync.  If you wanted G-Sync, you would either need to find a laptop that includes ONLY an NVIDIA GPU and no built-in GPU at all (which is tough because Intel GPUs when present are integrated into the CPU these days, and most CPUs have them), or you'd have to find a system that allows you to have the discrete GPU take direct control of the display outputs.  The Precision 7000 Series models can do this through a BIOS option called "Graphics special mode", but offering that capability requires a more complicated and expensive motherboard since they essentially have DisplayPort switchers built into them to decide which GPU is actually connected to the outputs.

Thanks so much for all the informative replies. The call on the response from customer support was spot on, past 30 days there is nothing that can be done.  So at this point I am interested in what would be the best monitor to buy based on the capabilities of the current configuration. One of the posts talked about how the HDMI port is connected to the video card and if there was the Intel GPU as well.  The answer is yes, there are both video cards in the unit, but when talking to the NVIDIA tech rep he said that the signal is swapped between the two based on what is being displayed.  I need to test this for both the on board monitor and then via the HDMI but if that is the case, which I hope it is, then my quest is to find the best/most compatible/smoothest monitor that I can find to get the best gaming experience.  The specs do say that it is HDMI 2.0 so hopefully that will help.  Can anyone suggest what specs I should look for in the monitor to get the best experience possible?  Or even maybe suggest a specific monitor itself?  I do not want to pay for features that I cannot use such as noted, G-Sync. Thanks in advance,

The NVIDIA rep is wrong about the signal being swapped between the two.  Yes, the NVIDIA GPU will take over rendering duty, but the Intel GPU is always the one connected to the displays.  And even on systems that can be configured to have the discrete GPU take direct control of the display outputs, that's something that has to be toggled in the BIOS, not something that happens dynamically.

What spec are you reading that says HDMI 2.0?  If it's the specs of the NVIDIA GPU, don't rely on those for the reason I just mentioned.  Again, I have not seen any Dell laptops yet that support HDMI 2.0.

So in terms of the display to buy, you may actually want to consider a display that has features your current PC won't use, on the very reasonable assumption that that you'll be keeping your new display longer than this specific PC, in which case you can make sure that the next PC you buy will be able to use those features.  In that case though, I would suggest waiting for HDR displays to hit the market.  ASUS has a 4K, HDR, G-Sync, 144 Hz display coming out early next year, which basically ticks all of the gaming boxes.  The downside is that you'd have to use it as a 1440p, non-HDR, non-G-Sync, 60 Hz display today.  That still wouldn't be a bad experience, though.  The only potential issue is that a panel with a native 4K resolution being run at 1440p might have some blur, but then again given 4K's pixel density, maybe not.  If you don't want to take that chance, you might still want to consider waiting at least for HDR, since that really will be a major improvement once you have a system that can use it.  If you don't even want to do that, look for a 1440p display that's ideally IPS for image quality purposes and has a fast response time.  ASUS makes some great gaming-oriented displays, for what it's worth, and there some good "Best gaming displays of 2017" review shootouts that should help you.