Drive external display via intel GPU W530?

[Joost]

Is there a bios update available/planned to fix the issue with the external displays via the intel gpu?

I can't seem to get an external display working under linux while using optimus/bumblebee setup.

From the manual I got that Windows has the same problem, but it is masked by the seamless automatic switching.

the machine needs to switch to discrete mode to be able to drive the external displays, even the VGA. This is very disappointing, because this reduces battery live a lot and makes the machine noisy. None of the machines I used before suffered from this problem.

It seems unnecessary to me to use the nvidia GPU just drive an extended desktop. 

[lead_org]

The intel GPU on my W530 can only drive the internal screen, I think this is how it is physically setup.

[ThorsHammer]

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@Joost wrote:

Is there a bios update available/planned to fix the issue with the external displays via the intel gpu?

I can't seem to get an external display working under linux while using optimus/bumblebee setup.

From the manual I got that Windows has the same problem, but it is masked by the seamless automatic switching.

the machine needs to switch to discrete mode to be able to drive the external displays, even the VGA. This is very disappointing, because this reduces battery live a lot and makes the machine noisy. None of the machines I used before suffered from this problem.

It seems unnecessary to me to use the nvidia GPU just drive an extended desktop. 

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Battery power is immaterial when using external displays.  The assumption is that you are on AC power.

When using Windows 8, my docked W530 will drive three displays with the BIOS set to Optimus. That is my daily setup now. If I really want full control for presentations or demos on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, then the BIOS must be set to Discrete and on AC power.

Welcome to our world.

[Joost]

Battery power is immaterial when using external displays.  The assumption is that you are on AC power.

This is a bad assumption.

In more ad-hoc settings I can't always connect to AC while presenting on a (mini-) projector.

[Joost]

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@lead_org wrote:
The intel GPU on my W530 can only drive the internal screen, I think this is how it is physically setup.

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This would be strange, because: "Optimus avoids usage of a hardware multiplexer and prevents glitches associated with changing the display driver from IGP to GPU by transferring the display surface from the GPU frame buffer over the PCI Express bus to the main memory-based framebuffer used by the IGP. The Optimus Copy Engine is a new alternative to traditional DMA transfers between the GPU framebuffer memory and main memory used by the IGP." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Optimus)

This implies the intel GPU always does the output driving and the NVidia gpu simply injects its rendered result into the buffer of the intel GPU

[ThorsHammer]

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@Joost wrote:

Battery power is immaterial when using external displays.  The assumption is that you are on AC power.

This is a bad assumption.

In more ad-hoc settings I can't always connect to AC while presenting on a (mini-) projector.

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Well then, you'd better have enough battery power to use Discrete NVIDIA GPU processing.

It seems odd to me that you are using a projector and there is no AC power.  Is the mini projector also battery powered?  There are no AC outlets in the room you are using?

I think Lenovo might be interested in the scenario.

[Joost]

I attend barcamps and hackdays and often we simply run out of power sockets on the spot. And I use a my mini projector when no A/V is available at the place I have crashed for the moment.

I haul around my laptop all day. So the laptop is not necessarily fully charged to begin with.

I had no trouble doing this with my previous laptop with optimus

[ThorsHammer]

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@Joost wrote:

I had no trouble doing this with my previous laptop with optimus

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What was your previous laptop with Optimus?

The Optimus implementation changes with every generation.  Some things get fixed, other things get broken.  It does get a little frustrating.

In a perfect world, I would like the flexibility to use either GPU to drive external displays. I would like control from the BIOS and from within Windows.  Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world.

[Joost]

Asus PL30JT

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@ThorsHammer wrote:

What was your previous laptop with Optimus?

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[PaulAnderegg]

I just hooked up an external monitor to my W530 today for the very first time. Used the lame VGA port.........the Nvidia control panel would allow no other options than laptop on integrated, and external VGA on Nvidia......don't know if that would differ for Linux.

As a side note, the first two times I plugged the VGA cable into the port, the computer crashed and rebooted.....weird......

Paul