Arch Linux

AngryBeing

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 12

[SOLVED] Problems connecting laptop to external monitor through HDMI

Hello,

I'm experiencing issues with my Arch install while attempting to connect my Dell G15 laptop (with dedicated Nvidia GPU) to an external Ultrawide display through HDMI.

My GPU is:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA107M [GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile] (rev a1)

My iGPU is:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation TigerLake-H GT1 [UHD Graphics] (rev 01)

And my DE is KDE Plasma. I am using Nvidia's proprietary drivers.

And I currently have both Xorg and Wayland installed; the behaviors when I use each while connected to the external display are:

XORG: Works, outputs the desktop to the second monitor, but behaves noticeably laggy; The external display has 60hz and 75hz options but it runs noticeably lower than that. I suspect this might have to do with the fact that by default my Arch install is using the iGPU instead of the Nvidia GPU. I can only use the GPU if I explicitly run prime-run.

Wayland: Does not work. The external monitor outputs a black screen and it isn't even detected on Plasma's display config.

Is it related to the GPU drivers, or is it something else within Xorg and Wayland that requires workarounds?

Thank you

Last edited by AngryBeing (2022-02-19 02:04:31)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,076

Re: [SOLVED] Problems connecting laptop to external monitor through HDMI

Don't think there are good concepts to do this on Wayland yet. For xorg in particular to have the general sync between the GPU's working properly you need to enable PRIME sync, which should happen "automatically" once you've enabled KMS on the nvidia drivers: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … de_setting if just the kernel parameter is insufficient and you need to set up the initramfs, you need to add i915 as well as the nvidia modules.

AngryBeing

Member

Registered: 2020-05-05

Posts: 12

Re: [SOLVED] Problems connecting laptop to external monitor through HDMI

Don't think there are good concepts to do this on Wayland yet. For xorg in particular to have the general sync between the GPU's working properly you need to enable PRIME sync, which should happen "automatically" once you've enabled KMS on the nvidia drivers: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … de_setting if just the kernel parameter is insufficient and you need to set up the initramfs, you need to add i915 as well as the nvidia modules.

Thank you, this seems to have fixed the problem.

What I did:

# nano /etc/default/grub

Added nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line

Then lastly

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Rebooted, and now my external HDMI connected display operates as it should on Xorg.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,076

Re: [SOLVED] Problems connecting laptop to external monitor through HDMI

Glad to hear, please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in the first post (might have to shorten it a bit, i.e. drop the "ultrawide")