7490 w Thunderbolt and D6000 Dock: How to Connect to LG 4K TV as Monitor?

Wow, thank you for your reply!

Yes, I should have said "nothing higher than 1080p video." Your reply gives me so much to learn including your previous post referenced.

Looks like the straightest path to my goal of using this LG 4K TV is to consider the WD19TB dock and compatible cables, which I shall do.

I believe on Karma and invite you to PM me should there be something I can help you with. I'm an older guy, CPA with lots of tax experience and have helped growth businesses raise millions and grow world-class teams. 

Again, many thanks for your kind reply, @jphughan 

@tkdenny   happy to help, and thanks for the reciprocal offer!  As it happens though, my dad is also CPA and one of the two partners in his firm that does work very similar to what you're doing.  Still, karma points absolutely awarded for extending the offer.

Hopefully you get this sorted with whatever hardware you end up deciding to use, and if not, feel free to ping me again here or via PM!

Hey,

I came across this post after spending a fair amount of frustration trying to figure out why my LG TV is not displaying in 60Hz.

Here's my set up: I have a Dell xps 15 9570 hooked up to a Dell D6000 Hub.  I have this connected to my LG 49 UM 7400 4k TV, using an Active Display Port to HDMI cable (this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078M18G5F/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

I can't get it to run in 60Hz - it doesn't even come up with the option in Display Settings

You're right about the LG's HDMI Ultra HD Deep Colour setting - and it's off currently.  The reason I know about this (and where things get interesting) is that I also share this TV/monitor with a desktop that work has given me while I work from home.  It is a Dell Optiplex 7060 w 32 GB ram and an i7-8700 proc.  It has 2 graphics cards - the motherboard one (UHD Graphics 630) and a NVIDIA Quadro P1000.  When I pplug the LG TV into the UHD Graphics 630 DP port, I can get it running at 60Hz - and that's with 2x HD monitors plugged into the Quadro P1000.

So I'm a bit stumped:

- the TV can display in 60Hz

- the cable I have is definitely working

- the D6000 has nothing else connected into it (except a USB keyboard)

and yet the display adapter properties don't even list in "List All Modes" 4k @ 60Hz 

I've used DisplayLink Installation Cleaner to remove all DisplayLink drivers and reinstalled the latest drivers - but still no joy.

Any ideas whatsoever what may be causing this?!

Thanks in advance for your help!

@Comedydave1980  have you updated the D6000's firmware?  The latest release as of this writing is here.   If that doesn't get 60 Hz available, based on everything else you've done and tested, I don't have any immediate suggestions for fixes.  The D6000 supports 4K 60 Hz from its DisplayPort outputs, the active cable you linked specifically says it carrying 4K 60 Hz, and you've verified that 4K 60 Hz works on the TV with another source.

So at this point all I can suggest would be some simpler options that would likely work, and also call out that since you're using an XPS 15, in addition to my earlier guidance as to why the D6000 isn't an ideal dock choice in general -- all of which still applies -- it's actually an even worse choice with the XPS 15 in particular, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

First, the simpler options.  The XPS 15 9570 includes an HDMI 2.0 output, so as long as you have an HDMI cable rated for HDMI 2.0 (sometimes noted as High Speed or 18 Gbps), you should be able to get 4K 60 Hz that way.  Alternatively you could use a USB-C to HDMI 2.0 cable connected directly to the system's USB-C port.

As for the D6000, in case you weren't aware, the D6000 only provides up to 60W of power to attached systems, and the XPS 15 is designed for a 130W power source.  So I hope you're keeping the XPS 15's own power adapter directly attached along with the D6000, because if you're only giving the XPS 15 the 60W available from the D6000 even though it's designed for more than twice that, it will respond by dramatically reducing its CPU and GPU performance as well as its battery charging speed.  If you're NOT already keeping the power adapter connected, I suspect you'll notice substantially improved performance if you start doing so.

If you want a dock that can power the XPS 15 without needing a power adapter directly connected as well, your only options are a small handful of Dell docks.  The reason is that the XPS 15's 130W power requirement is above the 100W of the official USB Power Delivery spec.  Dell did something proprietary on some of their systems and docks to stretch the spec in order to run 130W over USB-C/TB3, but that's not deployed everywhere.  And if you also want to run even a single 4K 60 Hz display, that would rule out conventional USB-C docks.  The only docks that would satisfy both requirements are the WD19TB with its standard 180W power supply and its predecessor the TB16 with the optional 240W power supply -- but considering that the TB16 had more than its fair share of problems, I would strongly recommend the WD19TB instead.  It would allow you to run dual displays up to 4K 60 Hz each or triple displays up to QHD each and power your XPS 15 properly.

@Comedydave1980  Happy to help!  In terms of the XPS 15 9570's HDMI output, I remember reading some posts that it would not support HDR, and I suspect that the reason for that is that even though that is possible over HDMI 2.0, the XPS 15 9570's HDMI 2.0 output is driven by a DisplayPort 1.2 output from the GPU, with an "LSPCON" chip in between that handles the signal conversion -- and DisplayPort did not gain proper support for HDR until DisplayPort 1.4.  So you might find that that's a problem.  But barring any weird firmware issues, driver issues, or interoperability issues that might exist with specific combinations of devices, I would expect 4K 60 Hz to work fine.  (In that category of weird issues though, it is ALSO known that the XPS 15 9570's HDMI output will not work with DVI displays.  This has been confirmed by multiple owners using all sorts of displays and adapters/cables.  Dell has not even officially acknowledged the issue, much less explained underlying cause or committed to providing a fix.  I'm actually very curious as to what's going on there, because HDMI and DVI signals up to 1080p are supposed to be identical at an electrical level, so I wouldn't have thought it possible that an HDMI output would be unable to run a DVI display.  But it's been confirmed several times over at this point.)

Hi @jphughan ,

Thank you so much for the lengthy, clear and concise answer!  

I tried updating the firmware of the dock - unfortunately no avail.

Re the 60W from the D6000 - I had seen the warning on startup that it couldn't charge the battery as fast - and had googled that and considered it not much of an issue - it was still charging the battery so I figured I could live with it. Having read your response, however, I've plugged in the 'main' adaptor.  I was hoping that this might fix the 60Hz issue, but unfortunately no dice!

Thanks for the info re the docks.  I think what I'll do is get a high speed HDMI first and try that.  I didn't realise that the HDMI output was in fact 2.0 - I had read somewhere that although the output supports 2.0 there was an issue in that the driver behind the port didn't actually have enough oomph in it to drive 4k @ 60Hz - so thanks for clarifying that it does in fact!  Should this not work I'll have a look at another dock.  The D6000 is from work, so it's not like I've spent money for no reason.

Again, thanks very much for spending time responding.  Appreciate it very much!

All the best

David

I have a similar issue. 

i have 2 Benq EL2870UE (4k 1ms 60Hz HDR monitors with 2XHDMI and 1xDisplayport) monitors currently using the HDMI cables that they shipped with. 

laptop: Latitude 7490 non thunderbolt (haven't checked bios yet, but doubt it is thunderbolt)

configurations i have tried:

1) 1x HDMI connected directly to the machine, the other to a D6000 dock connected via USB-C

2)1x HDMI connected directly to the machine, the other to a D6000 dock connected via USB-A

3)1x HDMI connected directly to the machine, the other to a Letscom USB-C hub.

I have 2x 8K capable Displayport cables on the way. 

Currently only configuration 3 allows HDR and that is via the monitor connected via the Letscom hub. 

all configurations set the monitors at 29Hz by default and i have to manually set them to 30Hz with no higher option being available. 

if it is a limitation of the 7490 then that i can live with, but i'm trying to get to 4K @60hz with HDR enabled. I just want to be sure it isn't a limitation of the dock. 

@RolfMoleman  the HDMI output built into the Latitude 7490 is only HDMI 1.4, which means it only has enough bandwidth for 4K 30 Hz and does not support HDR.  As for the D6000, I don't think it supports HDR either.  Its DisplayPort outputs are 1.2, and DisplayPort didn't gain formal HDR support until DP 1.4.  And even if it weren't for that, I'm not sure the DisplayLink "indirect display" technology chipset and software that run the D6000 support HDR at all.  The D6000's HDMI output is driven by DisplayLink unless there are two other displays already attached via DisplayPort, in which case the HDMI output is driven by the USB-C port's DisplayPort Alt Mode GPU output (only available when using USB-C).  So in that case the HDMI output wouldn't be subject to DisplayLink's potential limitations, but the system's DisplayPort Alt Mode interface would be a DisplayPort 1.2 output, so once again no formal HDR support there.  And when used with the D6000, the DisplayPort Alt Mode interface would only be half bandwidth since the other half of the link is being used for USB 3.x to interface with the dock, which means the DisplayPort Alt Mode interface would only have enough bandwidth for 4K 30 Hz.

So the only way you could potentially get 4K 60 Hz at all would be through the D6000's DisplayPort outputs -- although it seems there might be issues even there if you're trying to run that into an HDMI 2.0 input.  But I don't know if HDR would be available even at 4K 30 Hz.  And if you wanted 4K 60 Hz with HDR, that requires more bandwidth than is available on DisplayPort 1.2, and far more than is available on HDMI 1.4.

Aha - I must have been reading about HDR in that case.  I have no specific requirement for that - i'm just using it as a monitor; the issue is that the refresh rate at 30Hz is a bit too laggy!

I've pinged DisplayLink too - they sent on a link for a support program, so I've run that and sent my logs to them in case it's something wrong with that. I'll post their response on here. Hopefully it will be a solution.

That's also interesting about the DVI display.  I guess there's a nefarious bug in there somewhere that's not worth the $ to fix!

Once again, thank you for your help and time.

David