Docking Station D6000-Very Bad Video performance for gaming

In addition to the post above, one other thing you may want to consider is getting rid of the 4K 27” displays in favor of 1440p 27” displays, for a few reasons:

- 4K at 27” gives you a pixel density that’s high enough that you’ll have to enable scaling for things to be legible (and Windows and various applications still don’t handle scaling consistently well) but not high enough to give you a truly sharp Apple Retina-style experience (you need 5K resolution at 27” for that). So in that regard, unless you specifically need 4K resolution for something like editing 4K video, 4K 27” is sort of the worst of both worlds. That’s why when I just bought a pair of 27” displays, I specifically avoided the U2718Q and instead bought the U2717D, which is 1440p.

- Lower resolution means your system will have an easier time rendering games at the native resolution of the displays, and you won’t even be able to tell the difference in pixel density.

- If you don’t have Thunderbolt 3 but do have USB-C, you can run dual 1440p displays if you connect the displays directly to the USB-C port with a USB-C to DisplayPort cable rather than running through a dock, for technical reasons I can explain if you’re curious. You can even do it through a single cable connection if your displays support DisplayPort daisy chaining. By comparison, running dual 4K displays using native GPU connectivity requires Thunderbolt 3, unless you have two separate display outputs on that system that are each capable of 4K 60 Hz and you’re ok using two cables for your displays.

Thank you.

@jphughan Hi there, sorry for bringing up an old thread, but your post came up very top in my Google searches... Am trying to find out what will happen if a D6000 is connected via USB-C without installing the driver, will the 2 DisplayPorts work at all?

Am trying to figure this out because of an issue with the OBS software, as it cannot handle dual GPU setup, so if the DisplayPorts on D6000 only work via DisplayLink with drivers, which means they're technically on another GPU, there could be issues.

Thanks a lot in advance.

@loyukfai-new  I'm not sure what happens in that scenario.  The documentation indicates that when you have 3 displays attached, the HDMI display uses DisplayPort Alt Mode wile the other 2 displays use DisplayLink, but I don't know if the HDMI output can work on its own via DisplayPort Alt Mode if it's the only display connected and there are no DisplayLink drivers installed.  Additionally, I think Windows Update will provide at least basic DisplayLink drivers automatically now -- but I'm not 100% sure about that.

But DisplayLink is not really another GPU.  DisplayLink displays are not actually connected to any GPU at all.  The issue with dual GPU systems it that DisplayLink displays can only have their content accelerated by the system's primary GPU.  So if you have an Intel+NVIDIA setup, you won't get the benefit of the NVIDIA GPU's rendering performance on your DisplayLink displays.

Thanks a lot for the info!

There is a NVIDIA chip but I've disabled it due to compatibility issues with OBS. It seems OBS prefers one GPU and no extra stuffs...

Leaning towards TB15 as of writing. Since high resolution is not a pre-requisite in the use case I'm investigating.

Cheers.

Hello @jphughan, I've just got a D6000 and I was not able to get a VGA monitor working using a DP to VGA cable adapter. I also connected a HDMI monitor but it's working well.
I've installed the latest driver but I still getting a black screen.

Hope you can help me.

I'll try using a different adapter since the display only support VGA input. I hope it works if not I should get newer monitor.

Thanks so much for your response and patience.

@d6000-user  That should be a straightforward setup.  However, DisplayPort to VGA adapters include active signal converter chips since DisplayPort does not natively support VGA output, and those signal converter chips seem to cause problems sometimes.  I've seen this happen with USB-C to HDMI adapters where the same design exists since USB-C uses DisplayPort for video.  Sometimes one brand off USB-C to HDMI adapter will work with one laptop but not another, while some other brand of USB-C to HDMI adapter will work with both laptops, even though both adapters should have worked with both laptops.  If you have a way to test whether the DisplayPort output works for regular DisplayPort, that might be a useful data point just to rule out an issue with the port on the D6000 itself, but the D6000 has two DP outputs, so if you're seeing this behavior on both ports, it's unlikely that both of them would be bad while HDMI works as expected.  So you might just need a different brand of DP to VGA adapter.  I've had good luck with StarTech and Cable Matters for these types of products, just to name a couple of solid vendors.

@d6000-user  Just one additional thought: Does the display you're trying to use have ANY other input besides VGA?  Even if you don't have DisplayPort or HDMI inputs on that display, do you maybe have DVI?  If so, you could get a DisplayPort to DVI adapter plus a DVI cable instead, or maybe even a DisplayPort to DVI cable if you can find one.  The D6000's DisplayPort outputs do have native support for HDMI/DVI signaling because they support "Dual Mode DisplayPort", so that would allow you to use a simpler type of adapter, and you'll get a higher quality image since ancient VGA is an analog signal, whereas DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort are all digital signals.  I'd try to avoid VGA if at all possible.

Hi,

Figured I would piggy back off this thread...

Dell Latitude 7390

x2 Dell 27 Monitor - S2721D

Dell WD 19 130W Dock

I am realizing that I am unable to get 2560x1440 from both of these monitors while using DisplayPort cables from monitor to dock and USB-C into laptop.  My laptop does not have Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, it only as DisplayPort USB-C.  My original goal was to get 2560x1440 on both monitors and charge my laptop with 1 one plug-in, while also conveniently hiding dock and wires behind monitors. Since the WD19 dock wont solve first part of my goal I am exploring options to fix that first.  I have 2 questions:

1. Can I use Dell Universal Dock - D6000 and connect via USB-C and obtain 2560x1440 from both monitors?

2. If #1 will not work are can you recommend something that will achieve all or most of my goals.

Thanks in advance!

@zbs221  The Latitude 7390 is a DisplayPort HBR2 system, and therefore with a regular USB-C dock that also supports USB 3.x data like the WD19, you can only use dual displays up to 1920x1200.  Running dual 2560x1440 and USB 3.x all through a regular USB-C dock would require a system and dock that supports DisplayPort HBR3.  The WD19 does, but that system doesn't.  But yes, the D6000 would allow you to run your desired display setup and charge the system -- as long as you're willing to accept the issues of DisplayLink that I described in the post marked as the answer in this thread.  If that's not acceptable, then the next best option would be to connect one of your displays directly to the system instead of running both through the dock.  In that case, you won't have to meet the bandwidth requirements of both displays through the dock.

@jphughan  Thank you very much for the info on this thread, it's been very helpful thus far. I was hoping you could also provide some clarity in my similar situation.. I have a Precision 7550 with dGPU and a WD19DCS dock connected via HDMI and DP to a single 34" samsung ultrawide 21:9 monitor. I am trying to achieve the option for two PIP displays each at 1720x1440 resolution on the single 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor.

The HDMI output provides me the recommended resolution of 1720x1440 for the half-screen display however the DP output does not offer 1720x1440 (only the full 3440x1440 and smaller options). To make matters worse I do not have the intel graphics control panel and cannot install it due to this being a company-controlled machine. I have the NVidia control panel but both display outputs are controlled via Intel. 

Can I make the dGPU control both display outputs by changing to USB-C and/or removing one of the HDMI/DP connections? Is there any other way to force NVidia to take control or force a custom resolution on the samsung monitor (which is recognized as generic PnP in device manager)? 

My goal is to maintain the dual USB-C dock connector as the only connection to my laptop for ease of use. 

Thanks in advance! 

@march718  Happy to help, although going forward it really would have been better for you to create your own topic about this rather than posting in this topic, since your question has nothing at all to do with the subject of this topic.

I’m surprised that PBP isn’t working given that running the display as a single display at its native resolution does. But if you want to have the NVIDIA GPU control the display outputs, you need to enable the BIOS option for that. It’s available on Precision 7000 Series systems like yours, and I think it’s called “Graphics special mode” or something. Using different outputs on the dock won’t make a difference because it won’t change which GPU controls the USB-C output supporting the entire dock.