Laptop display as external display for egpu

DarthSmartt · June 19, 2019

I have a Lenovo y500 that has a decent 16:9 1080p display. I recently created an egpu system using the m.2 slot and an exp gdc adapter. It works great however I have to use an external display and even with my 1070, running the display back through my onboard graphics card causes the FPS to drop into the 20s. I’ve seen adapters that work with laptop displays that allow for hdmi input. I want to find a way to be able to plug my laptop display into my external gpu or use it with my laptop without having a huge mess of things.

DarthSmartt · June 19, 2019

4 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

USB3 Capture Cards. you might have a bit of display latency through that pipe, but the USB overhead is way less than sharing the same bus with the GPU over PCIe.

if you want it on the same laptop, it'll depend on your capture card (does it already have a viewport monitor in the driver installer; does it support newtek NDI streaming, etc)

keep in mind that your capture card will be treated as a second display, especially when you set it as your primary display (for games that can't fullscreen to a secondary display) and you unplug your capture card and eGPU later.

That is a good idea. I’m just curious about how much the latency would be. I play games that depend on having a low latency. Also, what application would I use to view it in full screen? I’ll definately consider this. My dad has a capture card i might be able to borrow to try this out.

DarthSmartt · June 19, 2019

22 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

don't expect miracles though ._. might be somewhat noticeable. fine for work, but things like competitive FPS I don't generally recommend unless I test the hardware out.

depends on the card you have right now. if it comes with a program to preview your stream then you could use that. otherwise see if it pops up in NDI tools's studio monitor.

I just looked at Elgato’s hd60s which is supposed to have almost no latency. Their software also offers a fullscreen feature. I’ll probably pick up a used one. Thanks for your help.

DarthSmartt · June 19, 2019

14 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

that's for the HDMI-out on the card itself. I can't really vouch for it over USB, so like I said don't expect miracles ._.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/7fj13o/elgato_hd60s_usb_30_low_latency/

I saw on the video preview on the pc that it has zero latency I could notice. I’m sure there is a few ms but nothing crazy. The only time I saw latency was when using the scene editor.

Edit: After looking at various youtube videos and slowing them down, it looks like the latency is less than 100ms, so less than most tvs. It isnt at all noticable in realtime.