Hey all, looking for some help and guidance here (long post warning, so TL; DR
included at the top)
TL;DR: Am I just being unreasonable in hoping I can run multiple monitors with
just my integrated Intel Iris XE graphics card on my new laptop and just use it
for Zoom/Discord video mtgs w/o issues? Not talking about gaming even-just
basic daily productivity stuff! (Also, pls read the PS at the end for the
bonus resolution weirdness question on my TV!)
More details:
I got a new 17" LG Gram laptop with Intel Iris XE graphics a few months ago.
It's super light and portable (like 3 lbs) and I love that, but I'm starting to
regret not have discrete graphics b/c I guess I didn't realize that there is a
limit to how many pixels it can push just in terms of how many monitors I can
connect at a decent resolution...and also just doing basic video on Zoom and
Discord/other video collab SW seems to cause perf issues...
Currently I have 2 27" monitors both connected through a Dell D600 dock
connected via a USB-C port-the monitors are diff max res:
2560x1440 for the Lenovo P27h connected via HDMI to the dock (on left)
3840x2160 for the Dell P2721Q connected via DisplayPort to the dock on right)
My laptop can do 2560x1600 at max res and I also have a 85" Samsung TV mounted
above and behind which can go up to 4096x2160 (not just 3840x2160 which is a
separate subdiscussion I'll bring up below...)
When I first got it, I was (I think naively) running everything at max res and
doing some scaling in Windows 10 and things seemed to be fine for a hot
minute-but then the system would eventually slow down and even get really
choppy-esp when I would join a Zoom meeting-that's when I noticed it most-tho
also when doing Discord video meets too, etc-i.e. anything with video causes
the machine to slow to a crawl and become basically unusable...even watching YT
videos sometimes caused issues.
So I started doing stuff to step it back to see if it would help-the main first
thing I did was reduce the resolutions a bit at a time and try and eliminate
the scaling as I saw delays as I moved windows across monitor-but it didn't get
better til I set all the other monitors to 1920x1080 (which seems like a waste)
and set my laptop to 1920x1200 so there's no res changes across the system and
I'm pushing fewer pixels overall...
But even so, while it improved the slowness on Zooms and Discord video
sessions, I still got SOME slowness/choppiness. It was better, but there was
still enough present that it was annoying-so what I'd do is I'd turn off the 2
monitors connected to the dock and then I noticed that things immediately
improved as they disconnected from the system-so it really seemed like it had
to do with how many pixels the card was trying to push and the integrated Intel
Iris XE graphics not being able to keep up-but you'd think a Zoom or Discord
video meeting wouldn't be *that* taxing, no? I'm not even talking about
running a game at 60 fps here...!
Anyway just wanted to sanity check if that's the issue or if I might be missing
something else that I should check. Any suggestions on a config that would let
me have more monitors at higher res or am I SOL?
Also, would it be worth it to get one of those external USB-C enclosures and
put a discrete card in it and connect it to my machine (better than connecting
it to the dock, right?) such that it would utilize it and I could use all the
monitors (which is most of the time nowdays since I'm still at home and not
traveling for work mtgs). It would be worth the $$ for me if it didn't get
bottlenecked and have issues, so I'd look into it if you guys thought it would
help-has anyone done this/know anything about it?
That's basically it; thanks for any info/help guys!
BINO
P.S. Here's the bonus weird thing. Ever since I connected all these monitors
to this system and had everything like this, the TV has had black bars on the
side at 1920x1080-and also at 3840x2160. (When I was on my older MSI laptop
and before I got the dock, when I used the same HDMI cable and connected to the
tv at either HD or 4K it never had any bars on the sides, and it only showed
the standard res).
But note that this is a normal Samsung 4K TV that says in its documentation
that its normal max resolution is 3840x2160. But my PC show the max res as
actually 4096x2160, and when I looked it up, I found some links that said that
this was the actual "FULL 4K" res, and that 3840x2160 wasn't actually full
4K-which I always thought it was!
In any case when I set the TV to 4096x2160 the black bars on the side of the TV
disappear. I can't actually select 2048x1080 as a res tho from Windows, so I'm
stuck with it at 1920x1080 with black bars on the sides, which is kinda
annoying since I don't want to run it at 4K and push too many pixels and do
scaling to make it readable, so yeah...
I found lots of links about how to fix it if you have discrete graphics like
Nvidia and you go into the software and remove overscan and people got rid of
the black bars on the sides but this is very confusing to me. Anyone know
anything about all this?
