8.1 Refresh Rate with DWM above 10%

[AlbanRampon]

Hello,

Today on Windows 10 Anniversary Update, DisplayLink driver cannot talk to the graphics card and is unable to give it any job to do.
DWM sends the compute job to do to the GPU, which is then handed over to the Microsoft graphics kernel mode driver... which then hands over already computed pixels to DisplayLink driver.

Still, I will give this very valuable data to the engineering team currently investigating performance as I think it will be extremely useful!

Kind regards,
Alban

[KsaRedFx]

A little extra info on it;

Disabling my iGPU allows me to completely kill all latency caused by DisplayLink.

Thus, relying on my GeForce 980M instead of my Intel HD 530.

It still uses a lot of CPU power, and it consumes 10% of the GPU
But everything works fine.

Maybe look into a settings window where a user could pick what GPU it runs on? I'm not that farmilar with what access the new driver system has for you guys.



Another notable issue;

When the main monitor is set to DisplayLink in a system with more than one GPU and relies on Nvidia Optimus, DisplayLink actually somehow manages to completely disable Optimus. This means even if things are set to dGPU, they run on whatever WDFHost is on.

Setting my main monitor to hard wired fixed the issue entirely.

[AlbanRampon]

Thank you, very useful information as well.
I added a link to this thread in our internal tracking system.

We have asked for next versions of Windows 10 that the GPU being used is the beefiest, not the first. Today, Windows uses the graphics card used at POST (boot). It tends to be the low end one. The choice of graphics card used is down to the graphics kernel mode driver... which we don't have anymore as we have native support.
What is possible as well, but I cannot say for sure, is that the issue with OpenGL support on the Intel graphics for Windows 10 Anniversary Update new graphics subsystem means that the GPU has much more work to do. I do not know.
1080p monitors can be handled by the Intel graphics card. I mean we can drive much more from a laptop as you can see attached.

The CPU in use is under analysis at the moment. We think a few changes in memory management will help... among other changes.
If you are using Optimus on the Windows 10 builds above 10586, then you would be meeting the same issue as your discrete graphics where the Windows kernel mode driver comes first. Optimus is unfortunately an extremely complex stack. It depends on the priority of the adapters. In our old driver architecture, Optimus made all our engineers pull their hairs out. Could it be possible that the nVidia driver you are using are not recent enough to implement the new graphics architecture of the OS?

Kind regards,
Alban

[KsaRedFx]

Well, I know my GPU can handle quite a bit as before Win10 Anniversary update I was able to do everything with 2 1080p monitors linked via DisplayLink without noticing an issue or high GPU usage.

The current drivers are still using a lot of the Nvidia GPU when they're forced to. So I don't think it's an Open GL with the Intel graphics. 10% on a 980M is a fair amount of power in comparison to a HD 530.

It quite literally just appears to be issues with the new "Native Integration" for now. I guess new things means new bugs.


I'm also definitely using the latest drivers available from Nvidia, I keep it relatively up to date and double checked all drivers an reinstalled them all clean during my debugging. You should be able to see it's up to date in the zip file I provided.


But yes, Optimus does work fine once the "Main Monitor" in Display Settings is hard wired instead of DisplayLink. Regardless of what monitor the program is running on (Except in the case of certain DX12 games that will swap on the fly depending on what monitor they're on.)

Before, I was unable to run a game on a hard wired monitor and tell Optimus to run it on the 980M, it just would not listen.