Some games cannot go fullscreen

[Bo$s]

Recently I bought Dell D6000 and I'm facing a strange issue where one of my games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can't go fullscreen on display connected to this dock.

My setup is as follows:

Inspiron 7577 gaming with second GPU (GTX 1060 MAX-Q)
Windows 10 Home 1909 with latest updates
Nvidia drivers 445.87
Dell D6000 with A03 FW connected via USB-C
DisplayLink drivers 9.3.3147.0
AOC 2260 connected via HDMI to D6000


The issue is that when Windows is configured to use external display only, then after starting CS:GO the desktop screen "freezes", however, I hear that game starts and it's running but no UI is displayed (I can also hear menu sounds when I'm moving the pointer). Also, according to the Task Manager, main GPU is used to render the game UI. I still can use Alt+Tab to "unfreeze" the screen, however, when I focus back the CS:GO process then screen freezes. The same issue occurs when Windows is configured to extend displays and the external display is set as the main display.

The interesting observations are:

Game is correctly rendered on both displays when Windows is configured to duplicate the displays which to me proofs that game can be rendered on the external display
Game starts correctly in Windowed or Fullscreen Windowed mode (however, performance and overall experience is quite bad) so that's not an option)
Game works fine when the external display is connected directly to the notebook


So far I tried to:

change CS:GO launch options, no luck with different setups here
downgrade to 9.1 drivers as such version is offered by Dell
updating DirectX runtime libraries
Resetting Windows


I'm really happy to get some help here, workaround ideas, or anything which would help me to solve that issue.

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us on the forum.

I have few questions to clarify this case even more.

1. Did you test other games in fullscreen or only CS:GO? If not, please verify that.
2. What resolution are you using in CS:GO? It seems like your monitor should be working in Full HD. Please also check other resolutions if they impact the screen in any way.

Thank you for your feedback.

Best regards,
Jakub

[Bo$s]

Thanks for the reply!

1. Did you test other games in fullscreen or only CS:GO? If not, please verify that.
I tried: Dark Souls 3, Dishonored 2, Hitman, Mafia 3, Worms Armageddon - for all of these game launched with no issues.

2. What resolution are you using in CS:GO? It seems like your monitor should be working in Full HD. Please also check other resolutions if they impact the screen in any way.
Full HD. I tried 1024x768 - I got a black screen instead of a frozen desktop.

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

I have been looking into CS:GO display settings and I have found that there is an option under Display mode called: Fullscreen Windowed. As you mentioned you had some problems in this mode but when I checked it the game works perfectly fine for me. I have also checked the FPS ratio in the menu and while playing. I have reached nearly maximum which was set by the commands in console.

Please remember that in CS:GO you can set by commands a maximum number of fps which will be better than having always a maximum possible at a time.

Could you please verify if you are also having lags or fps issues in this mode? As it looks pretty stable for me and the issue comes from CS:GO that bypasess DWM probably for gaming preferences. It appears to me as this is the only possible explanation of such behaviour based on other games that works well for you.

Thank you for checking that and letting me know if that changes anything for you.

Best regards,
Jakub

[Bo$s]

I tried the Fullscreen Windowed mode - after a few minutes, I noticed screen stuttering and frames (not the frame rate) dropping, especially when I was moving quickly my mouse (and it doesn't matter how was the display connected - in both cases I had a noticeable worse gameplay experience in Fullscreen Windowed mode). Therefore, as a workaround, I prefer reconnecting the display when I want to play CS:GO, however, that's not the solution which I was looking for when I bought that station (and I wouldn't choose it if I had known that it does some magic with virtual Display Adaptors to support multiple displays in higher resolutions, as to me it brings only problems instead of benefits).

The one thing which confuses me a lot is that everything works fine when the screen is duplicated on both displays. This means that there is a way to have the game working correctly when the display is connected to the dock. I would love to see an experimental driver option that disables/bypasses the virtual display adaptor and let me use dock HDMI in the same way as the notebook HDMI works.

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

We have done some more testing and on another machine we were able to reproduce the issue.

It seems like there is a problem with amount of frames that are being projected by CS:GO. In a Fullscreen windowed mode with an external display set as a primary one and on extend option. The game launched correctly but in-game experience was not satisfactory enough unless we lowered the amount of maximum FPS.

Firstly, we tried with highest possible and we did see the lags and stuttering BUT when we capped the FPS for 60 it was not present and the game played smoothly. We did try to increase the capped FPS and up to around 120 we did not see any changed. Around 200fps the game started to work really slowly.

This would also prove that other games can work normally as the ones you mentioned are capped for around 60fps.

What I would suggest for now is to lower and cap the FPS ratio in CS:GO as it seems to be an issue that the device is not able to project so many frames at once. If you would need a guide how to do it, here is the YT clip about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbTPNvbg228

Lastly, I would like to analyze the issue further. Could you please follow this link and gather log files for me? https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/533818-how-can-i-report-windows-issues-to-displaylink

I would like to see your exact setup and possible errors or information in the logs.

[Bo$s]

Thank you for your help :) I tried setting fps_max to:

999 - this was my original setting - the game runs smoothly, but I experience frame dropping during fast mouse movement.
120 - the effect was similar to one with setting above but stronger
60 - the overall experience was much worse, I felt like playing in 20 fps (which is kind of funny, as other games running ~40fps don't have such issue, it may be somehow related specifically to CS:GO)


Please find below logs attached, gathered with the following steps:

Changed the CS:GO configuration to use Fullscreen mode
Connected External Display to the dock
Started Support Tool, Checked System Compatibility
Enabled Advanced DisplayLink Logging
Clicked Reset to clear old logs
Started CS:GO, the screen has frozen like usual
Exited CS:GO after a while
Gathered Support Information

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Thank you for your fast replies.

I have been doing some more testing recently on a Dual GPU machine. As I assumed the pixel encoding is being done by the Intel GPU while the game renders from nVidia GPU.

Due to the nature of DisplayLink technology, we currently do use some CPU or GPU resource to encode the pixels, this is then sent to the dock to decode and display on screen , while this can be used for gaming, we do not recommend for fast paced action.

I have then changed the encoding for CPU to see if this will help in the overall gaming experience. What have changed to me was the amount of GPU usage on Intel graphic card which allowed me to get a pretty smooth gameplay on a non-gaming laptop. Moreover I checked it in Fullscreen Windowed mode and capped the FPS to maximum of 90 -> it allowed me to play without lags or FPS drops on a pretty weak non-gaming laptop.

Settings used on my testing:

- Full HD resolution 1920x1080 on an external screen
- FPS capped to 90
- External monitor set as a main one (CS:GO on it)
- Extend mode used between laptop and external screen

What I would suggest right now for you is to change the encoding on the docking station with the following guide:

Please perform these actions with CS:GO closed.

1. Open Registry Editor on your Windows
2. Go to: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DisplayLink\C ore
3. Create a string called AlternativeEncoder (simply right click -> New -> String Value)
4. Set the value to false
5. Re-plug your docking station

A re-plug is needed for the changes to take effect. This will force the docking station to use CPU rather then Intel GPU to encode the pixels. As for CS:GO it should be all fine it will not be a good option to use in more demanding games with better graphics but a lower FPS (Dark Souls 3 for example). If you would like to use again GPU encoding, simply change the value to true.

Thank you for checking that and letting me know if that would help you in getting better in-game performance.

Kind regards,
Jakub

[Bo$s]

Thank you for your reply.

I tried your settings, together with changed registry key, however, the CS:GO experience was comparable to one which I got having fps_max set to 60. Like I said before, even when the external display was connected directly to the notebook I've seen the difference in game smoothness between Fullscreen and Fullscreen Windowed mode. So I still prefer to reconnect my display when I want to play CS:GO and use it in Fullscreen mode. Maybe it's somehow connected with other CS:GO settings or I'm just very sensitive about that because I play CS:GO for a long time.

I would like to know:


Is there any option to disable the DisplayLink features or use some workaround that would let me run CS:GO in Fullscreen mode on the external display connected to dock when the Windows is configured to use it as the only screen?
If not - are you planning to add such option/fix to the DisplayLink drivers in the near future so I can have control over it or just have the fame running in such setup?


If the answer to both questions is "no" then I will just replace the Dell D6000 dock with some other USB-C dock which won't support 3 external displays but probably will let me use one external display without issues.

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

I have been able to reproduce the issue and fix it with D6000 to work in the Fullscreen mode.

The D6000 is using two technologies, one is DisplayLink and the 2nd one is an Alt-mode which is running on HDMI only and only when there is 1 monitor connected to HDMI or 3 monitors in total.

Please do the following:
1. Unplug the D6000
2. Uninstall the DisplayLink driver
3. Connect the HDMI monitor to the D6000
4. Connect the D6000 to the laptop with a USB-C plug (it has to be USB-C)
5. When connected without the driver, Windows update will update the device automatically but you can go to device manager and under Display Adapters simply right click on D6000 and choose disable.

With that I was able to start CS:GO on the external monitor chosen as a Main monitor in the Fullscreen mode.

Thank you for checking that. Let me know if you would have any questions or faced any issues while following these steps.

Kind regards,
Jakub

[Bo$s]

https://media.giphy.com/media/1Z02vuppxP1Pa/200.gif

This is exactly what I wanted to achieve! Disabling the D6000 Display Adapters and reconnecting the docking station fixed the issue.

[JakubDabrowski]

Hello,

Great to hear that !

If you would need any more assistance in the future, feel free to contact us here on the forum or through the email.

Have a wonderful time playing :)

Best regards,
Jakub

[fkdbm595]

Check if the dock's firmware and the GPU drivers are fully up-to-date. Also, you could try tweaking the in-game resolution settings or adjusting the display scaling in Windows.
Another thing to check is your custom content. Sometimes, buggy CC can cause issues like this. Try to get your custom content only from reliable websites like. It might also help to disconnect the dock and run the game directly on your laptop just to see if the problem is with the dock itself.



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