Feedback about driver v3.0 beta

[rdolivaw]

Just updated to the 3.0 beta. Everything appears to be working OK. I have 2 displays now in my "normal" setup using DisplayLink in addition to the 28" Thunderbolt connected display, for a total of 4 displays. I am anxiously awaiting macOS Sierra 10.12.2 that is reputed to fix the black areas when moving windows.

I will update you if I see anything odd.

[andrew_green]

MacOS 10.11, on MacBook Air 11" late 2012.
This build is working *very* well for me.
In fact it's working about as well as it's ever worked in the three years I've been relying on DisplayLink for external displays -- which has been very good at times, if a bit disappointing at others.
The mouse cursor and dragged windows no longer feels like they're on 30fps screens when they're on my DisplayLink-driven displays.
Only TextWrangler is laggy when one of its windows straddles a monitor boundary, but that's nothing new.
Well done!

[Carlo]

Thank you all for the feedback,

Keep it coming!

Is anyone using 2560x1440 or 4K screens with DisplayLink? These are the hardest and it would be great to hear your impressions.

A few answers.
For HappySundays the black window or lack of refresh is an OS defect that Apple fixed in the 10.12.2 betas, we're all eagerly waiting for it to be released.

For shad0wca7 can you please send me the logs just after the reboot when that happens? I think you should be able to send me a private message here on the forum.
I'm sure you already have tried it, but in case please try to recover first by unplugging the DisplayLink device.

Best regards,
Carlo

[asdfsafd]

Using a 90° rotation I have a 1080x2560 resolution, plus a 1080p monitor, both with DisplayLink beta driver. I compare against a not rotated 2580x1080 Displayport Screen connected to a MacBook Air.

In Safari (Version 10.0.1 ) I sometimes get fragmented dark grey background toolbars and cannot read my bookmark's names. This also happens with the Mail app. Doesn't happen in Chrome (Version 54.0.2840.98 (64-bit)).

Performance is quite good.

[Lasse S]

Originally Posted by Carlo

Thank you all for the feedback,

Keep it coming!

Is anyone using 2560x1440 or 4K screens with DisplayLink? These are the hardest and it would be great to hear your impressions.

I've been using a Dell D3100 on a MacBook Air (early 2014) for about two weeks. I have three Dell U2515H displays hooked up at 2560x1440. One is connected directly to the Thunderbolt 2 port and the others to the dock (DisplayPort and HDMI - unfortunately I'm only getting 50Hz on the HDMI).
With 2.6 on Sierra I was quite disappointed and even considered going back to my Lenovo PC, but with 3.0b1 I have my hopes up! Performance is considerably better, although I still find it unacceptable in the long run.
"WindowServer" and "DisplayLinkManager" are still hogging my CPU, mouse movement is laggy and the display I use for coding in Sublime Text also lags. I find myself moving important windows to the TB display where performance is excellent.

I haven't had any crashes, but I see the occasional black windows and other graphical glitches. That doesn't bother me that much though - performance is the most important.

I have enabled "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency". Is there anything else that can optimize performance?

That's just my 2 cents - let me know if I can contribute in any other way!

[Lasse S]

Originally Posted by Lasse S

I've been using a Dell D3100 on a MacBook Air (early 2014) for about two weeks. I have three Dell U2515H displays hooked up at 2560x1440. One is connected directly to the Thunderbolt 2 port and the others to the dock (DisplayPort and HDMI - unfortunately I'm only getting 50Hz on the HDMI).
With 2.6 on Sierra I was quite disappointed and even considered going back to my Lenovo PC, but with 3.0b1 I have my hopes up! Performance is considerably better, although I still find it unacceptable in the long run.
"WindowServer" and "DisplayLinkManager" are still hogging my CPU, mouse movement is laggy and the display I use for coding in Sublime Text also lags. I find myself moving important windows to the TB display where performance is excellent.

I haven't had any crashes, but I see the occasional black windows and other graphical glitches. That doesn't bother me that much though - performance is the most important.

I have enabled "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency". Is there anything else that can optimize performance?

That's just my 2 cents - let me know if I can contribute in any other way!

I have attached a screenshot of CPU usage from Activity Monitor when using Safari on one of my DisplayLink connected displays. MacBook has been powered on for 2 hours, so quite a bit of CPU time used.

[phrogg]

So I actually just received my first DisplayLink device yesterday and I'm actually starting off with the 3.0b1 drivers as my very first experience with the product. So I cannot compare to using something previous.

But I can give a comparison of using my 4K monitor on a MacBook 2015 (10.12.1) either directly on the machine or through the DL adapter. I've simply just moved the cable over to the new device and will bring my other monitor and connect both next week.

The first thing I noticed is that when I close the lid on my Macbook that it doesn't reset the display preferences to delete that monitor from the config. It still exists in my monitors and I can put windows there or get my mouse lost on that screen. Not sure if that's an intentional design of the way the driver works, but its different from using the AV adapter.

Second there is a little bit of lag on the DL but not that much. However, I do seem to be running about 10% CPU higher than I was before. There was usually a little bit of background stuff always going on but its made a 10%+ jump. Looking in top it seems that the DIsplayLinkManager is keeping about 10% of my cpu occupied all the time now. I think I can probably live with that in order to have both of my 4K displays at the same time.

Third, the mouse seems a bit laggy specifically on tap-presses. When I go to click on another email message or something I find that I have to either click on the message or hold on the trackpad just a little longer than usual. I'm not sure how that is connected into the DL driver but its something I noticed today.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed in the whole technology and stoked to get both my 4K monitors (and potentially a couple of my 2560x1600 monitors) hooked up to my little Macbook ;-).

Phrogg

[rboerner]

Originally Posted by phrogg

The first thing I noticed is that when I close the lid on my Macbook that it doesn't reset the display preferences to delete that monitor from the config. It still exists in my monitors and I can put windows there or get my mouse lost on that screen. Not sure if that's an intentional design of the way the driver works, but its different from using the AV adapter.

Phrogg

In regard to clamshell mode not working as you expect, Apple has very specific requirements in order to make this mode work -> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201834

In short, with only a USB attached DisplayLink-based adapter connected the above conditions will not be met, so clamshell mode will not work.

[Lasse S]

Originally Posted by Lasse S

I've been using a Dell D3100 on a MacBook Air (early 2014) for about two weeks. I have three Dell U2515H displays hooked up at 2560x1440. One is connected directly to the Thunderbolt 2 port and the others to the dock (DisplayPort and HDMI - unfortunately I'm only getting 50Hz on the HDMI).
With 2.6 on Sierra I was quite disappointed and even considered going back to my Lenovo PC, but with 3.0b1 I have my hopes up! Performance is considerably better, although I still find it unacceptable in the long run.
"WindowServer" and "DisplayLinkManager" are still hogging my CPU, mouse movement is laggy and the display I use for coding in Sublime Text also lags. I find myself moving important windows to the TB display where performance is excellent.

I haven't had any crashes, but I see the occasional black windows and other graphical glitches. That doesn't bother me that much though - performance is the most important.

I have enabled "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency". Is there anything else that can optimize performance?

That's just my 2 cents - let me know if I can contribute in any other way!

I have updated to macOS 10.12.2 and used the DisplayLink displays for a full working day. Performance is better, although no way near my natively connected display. I still wouldn't say performance is acceptable, but at least now the displays are usable

I'm also seeing weird glitches on DisplayLink connected displays but that doesn't bother me that much - performance is much more important!

[Carlo]

Hi All,

The team in DisplayLink has been extremely pleased with the amount and quality of your feedback: thank you!

The key message we got is:
- We can see a performance improvement - and we want more!
- Please get rid of the artefacts around the mouse pointer
- We can still see the macOS glitches (10.12.2 should have helped with some)

We're working based on your feedback.

Best regards,
Carlo