Latest DisplayLink drivers and DirectX fullscreen errors

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Fektoer

I'll add my two cents.

With the latest drivers:
Final Fantasy XIV won't work in full screen (directx error)
League of Legends won't work at all (directx error)

On top of it all, the applications that do work -all- suffer from severe fps drops at irregular intervals. The application would run fine for a while on 59-60 fps until it suddenly drops to an unplayable 6-7 fps for a few minutes after which it will go back to normal fps. Rince and repeat. This happens with windows 7, windows 8, windows 8.1. With the dock connected ánd the dock unplugged. With extended display, projected display, non projected display.

Also, even when it's working 'fine' the displaymanager service hogs up an insane amount of cpu power. On my laptop with an i7-4771 processor, 16 gig of internal memory, nvidia 7500m gfx card, simply moving my internet explorer window around will use 40-50% (!!) of cpu capacity.

I uninstalled everything that had displaylink in the name and now all my applications show a noticable fps improvement, i can play my games fullscreen on a projected display, no more fps drops and moving my windows around won't use half of my cpu.

I'm not an expert, but I believe the DisplayLink software essentially works by emulating a graphics renderer entirely in software. This is why you see such a large CPU spike as it scrambles to update its virtual framebuffer.

I don't know enough to know how well this can be optimised, I'd like to think that it could be little more than a blitting operation between the actual graphics card's framebuffer and the displaylink one but that's above my level of knowledge. Ideally, they'd utilise the graphics hardware itself to do all of this and maybe they do, but there certainly seems to be room for improvement.

In any case, it seems their implimentation isn't complete and certain operations (such as fullscreen directX) cause their driver to fall over somewhat. It would be nice if they could disable the displaylink stuff when the dock is not in use, for a start.

[Fektoer]

That would solve the problem that you "can't" use your laptop anymore even when it's not docked. When you have it docked, you still have the same problem. Yes it's would help a bit but there's a reason i need the dock (ethernet mainly).

Thanks for the reply though, the load would make more sense if that's true. Not to say i understand -why- it would have to emulate anything. It only has to pass through the signal received from the hdmi cable, done. Let my laptop handle all the graphical heavylifting.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Fektoer

Thanks for the reply though, the load would make more sense if that's true. Not to say i understand -why- it would have to emulate anything. It only has to pass through the signal received from the hdmi cable, done. Let my laptop handle all the graphical heavylifting.

I don't know which dock you're using, but the one I have is connected with a single USB cable - not the HDMI port of my laptop. While I agree that it should be just passing through the data from the graphics card, I'm not sure how much "access" they have to that and there will definitely be a delay between grabbing the graphics chip's framebuffer and the displaylink one. It also has to compress that into a format compatible with the decoder inside the dock itself (I doubt it's a raw RGB stream or anything similar, especially considering that it can support multiple displays, ethernet and USB - not much bandwidth to spare, even on USB3, let alone USB2),which again will have an impact.

I think that much we all accept though, it's the fact that it's outright incompatible with some software that we have issues with. That and the fact that they just don't want to respond.

[Fektoer]

Fair enough, i was a bit too enthusiastic with my response. Mine is connected with a single usb cable too. So yes, it might not be as easy as a simple throughput.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...n&sku=332-0446

Going by the description of the product you would assume it could handle an HD display with less problems. Especially since it's advertised as being able to connect two displays at once. I don't wanna know what it would do to my cpu if i would have 2 1920x1080 displays in extended setup...

And yes, i would accept a bit of slowdown. But i won't accept incompatibility with software or issues like persistent fps drops. Especially for the price they come at.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Fektoer

Fair enough, i was a bit too enthusiastic with my response. Mine is connected with a single usb cable too. So yes, it might not be as easy as a simple throughput.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...n&sku=332-0446

Going by the description of the product you would assume it could handle an HD display with less problems. Especially since it's advertised as being able to connect two displays at once. I don't wanna know what it would do to my cpu if i would have 2 1920x1080 displays in extended setup...

And yes, i would accept a bit of slowdown. But i won't accept incompatibility with software or issues like persistent fps drops. Especially for the price they come at.

I completely agree with you, the compatibility issues are indeed a problem and even if they can't fix it, they need to be more up front about it.

Interestingly, I don't actually see large CPU spikes on my setup and I am running 2x 1080p monitors

[Fektoer]

Weird. No idea what causes it then. What threw me for a loop and nearly made me return my laptop since i thought it had faulty hardware, was the fact that during my fps drops none of my performance meters would indicate a problem. I could see the displaymanager service hogging up a lot of cpu power, but no spike or anything that would indicate a performance loss. The displaymanager service would hog up nearly the same amount of cpu percentage when the laptop was performing fine.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Fektoer

Weird. No idea what causes it then. What threw me for a loop and nearly made me return my laptop since i thought it had faulty hardware, was the fact that during my fps drops none of my performance meters would indicate a problem. I could see the displaymanager service hogging up a lot of cpu power, but no spike or anything that would indicate a performance loss. The displaymanager service would hog up nearly the same amount of cpu percentage when the laptop was performing fine.

I wish I could offer more insight on what's causing that. For such a detrimental but sporadic performance drop, I can only presume it's a race condition, something is blocking something else that's time sensitive, likely stalling the graphics card. It might not even be the displaylink software, though obviously that's the likely culprit.

[Trekari]

Displaylink,

Would you mind explaining the customer service you believe you're providing with this issue STILL outstanding?

Just tried to play Skyrim...kept crashing at startup. Removed displaylink drivers, which means no DCS A-10C or Falcon BMS 4, and Skyrim magically works again.


Seriously, this is beyond absurd to not be capable or willing to fix this problem for your users, and I'll be making sure my flight sim buddies know about it.

[Trekari]

I've begun my anti-displaylink campaign, and it's going to continue on Facebook, Twitter, and my flight sim forums until you resolve this issue.

Your company has NO excuse for this. Honestly this is worse support than even Saitek or EA provides, and those companies are sh**.

[Trekari]

Displaylink,

Any update on your "WeDoNotCareAboutProblemsOurCustomersHave-itis?"