G5 5587 Thunderbolt to Display Port GPU

@Vogelvision  in addition to my general answer above, if you want to check your system's wiring, try connecting an external display to that Thunderbolt/USB-C port if you have a suitable cable/adapter, then open NVIDIA Control Panel and go to either the PhysX or multi-display configuration section.  One of those will have a graphic showing each of your active displays, both your Intel and NVIDIA GPU, and which GPU each one is actually wired to.  You can repeat that experiment with the HDMI output.

If you find that you're stuck, since your system actually has Thunderbolt 3, you could consider an eGPU.  Basically you buy a desktop GPU enclosure that connects to your system via Thunderbolt 3 (like a Razer Core X or Akitio Node), install whatever desktop GPU you want, and connect your Rift S to that.  Obviously that's more cost, but you can get a much better experience if you choose a solid GPU for that enclosure.

I posted some general info about this topic in this Reddit thread.  Might want to take a look.  The short version is that VR requires that the display output port the headset is using is wired directly to the GPU you want to use.  So for the Thunderbolt port, it depends on whether that system has that port a) wired to the Intel GPU with the NVIDIA GPU working through Optimus, which won't work for VR, or b) wired straight to the NVIDIA GPU, which will work fine.  On most Dell systems I've seen, the Thunderbolt port is wired to the Intel GPU, even on Alienware systems that also have other outputs wired straight to the NVIDIA GPU.  As for the HDMI 2.0 output, even IF that output is wired to the NVIDIA GPU, converting an HDMI signal to DisplayPort isn't really done; the other way around is common, but that's not what you need.  The OP of that Reddit thread found an active adapter that will convert an HDMI signal to DisplayPort, but I'm highly skeptical it would work for the reasons I already explained in my posts there.

And fyi, the 1060 Max-Q probably won't give you a great experience anyway, at least not with some of the higher-end VR titles already starting to arrive.

Hi there, is it possible to use an external gpu node like the from aikitio and also with the internal screen from the 5587. or only with an external display connected to the node itself? Best Great_Inquisitor

@GreatInquisitor  As long as you use an NVIDIA eGPU and the built-in display is wired to the Intel GPU, which you can verify in NVIDIA Control Panel > PhysX Configuration, then you can use an eGPU to accelerate content displayed on the built-in display, since in that scenario your eGPU is operating through NVIDIA Optimus just like the built-in NVIDIA GPU would for accelerating content on the built-in display. You’ll take a bit of a performance hit compared to using displays directly attached to the eGPU, but it does work. I’m not sure if this would work if the built-in display is wired directly to the internal NVIDIA GPU (not sure “NVIDIA to NVIDIA Optimus is possible) or whether it would work with an AMD GPU (not sire AMD has an Optimus equivalent), but I do know that for laptops that have a built-in discrete GPU, it’s better to use an eGPU from the same vendor, meaning if you have an NVIDIA built-in GPU, then get an NVIDIA eGPU.

Hi jphughan, okay as I understood, little impact if using internal display from laptop and better connecting external TFT to the node. And do I need to disable my internal nvidia 1060 QMax if I would to use a Nvidia 2060 rtx in the node for example??

best GreatInquisitor

@GreatInquisitor  I haven't personally used an eGPU setup, but my understanding is that if you have NVIDIA GPUs for both your built-in GPU and your eGPU, then the NVIDIA drivers will detect when the eGPU is attached and will automatically disable the built-in NVIDIA GPU, so you shouldn't have to do anything special to make it work.  But again, I haven't done this myself.

Ok, and how many lanes are connected from pci-ex 4x and tb3 is with 40gbps bidirectional available? There are to many should and could be....

@GreatInquisitor  40 Gbps relates to Thunderbolt 3 overall.  It does not say anything about how many PCIe lanes or DisplayPort interfaces are wired to the controller itself.  This is a common mistake.  Just because you have 40 Gbps available on a TB3 link doesn't necessarily mean you can use all of it for PCIe or DisplayPort.  Unfortunately Dell's product page for the G5 5587 doesn't specify how many PCIe lanes are wired to the TB3 port, and the Setup and Specifications document doesn't either.

Ok, means I could only check it with buying all the stuff and hoping it would work?

thats always the Problem that vendors not describe transparent, see here customer your laptop could this and this definitely not....

always the same *hi*