Need a favor from the 7710 owners

Optimus by its nature was built to run both at the same time. It uses Intel for low power stuff and kicks the Nvidia card on when needed or on an application by application basis.

 

Yes but not like this. Typically the intel always run the screen, meaning an optimus system that can change gpu which the monitor is connected to is rare and also new to me.

Also, apparently your bug is normal. There is a big thread here on the forums about the same issue youre talking about and multiple people have this issue, so far no fix.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hands-on-dell-precision-7710.785166/page-80

 

The internal display is run by the Intel video until the Nvidia card is needed. That is how switchable graphics works.
"Switchable Graphics" is on-the-fly-switching - just look in the settings and you'll see you can trigger it by launching one or more apps.

 

Thanks for the link, but that is a separate issue. My issue is my internal display does not work with 'Switchable Graphics' disabled and 'Discrete Output' enabled.

 

The laptop display isn't connected to both GPUs at the same time... The system configuration changes based on what option you have set in the BIOS setup. (Meaning, you have to reboot in order to change it.)
* Switchable graphics ON => Optimus is engaged, Intel GPU drives display output, NVIDIA GPU provides rendering support only (behavior can be configured in the NVIDIA control panel)
* Switchable graphics OFF => Intel GPU is disabled, Optimus is disabled, all displays are powered directly by the NVIDIA GPU

Being able to switch which GPU the laptop display is connected to isn't very complicated in terms of the hardware required. It's just a multiplexer. Think of it like a monitor that has multiple inputs with one hooked up to each GPU (except the input selector is actually on the motherboard and not in the monitor).

It seems like most systems these days are locked into the first state with no way to disable Optimus, so the laptop display is always driven by the Intel GPU. Basically, you are locked in the "Switchable graphics ON" state as I have described them above. This is probably what you are used to. In the Precision systems, you have always been able to turn Optimus off and run with the discrete GPU only (without sacrificing the use of the laptop display). I'm pretty sure most workstation-class laptops have this capability, but I am only familiar with the Precision.

Actually I take it back, you cannot disable Optimus in the Precision 5510/5520, only in the larger systems.

Have you tried disabling "Discrete output"? It shouldn't make any difference if switchable graphics is disabled anyway...

 

I thought so. Yeah this is also how the MSI notebooks behave, so in a nutshell the discrete output is a useless setting to begin with. So I was right in the end. The only part I was wrong about is how his dGPU would be disabled if he turned the discrete option off.

@ccvortex
No the thread is covering exacly your problem.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hands-on-dell-precision-7710.785166/page-80#post-10499346

The reason why this doesn't work is as I explained to you before.

You gotta think it like this,once you turn optimus on, the intel graphics handles the screen and if you tell the system that it has to let NVIDIA handle the outputs, obviously it cannot give you a screen because optimus tells the NVIDIA card to send all signals to the intel graphics instead of sending information to the screen.

 

If I disable Discrete option then everything works fine... DELL is replacing the mobo and Nvidia card so we'll see if that fixes it.

 

After showing DELL what is happening they agree that this is not normal behavior, so maybe you're just used to using it in a mostly broken state

 

Let's see how many times you will swap boards until you understand that dell support is as useful as indian tech support.

I think the record is from a stubborn guy with an alienware notebook that sent his notebook 7 times back to dell until he realized that they legit have no idea what they're doing.

Keep us updated. I love comedy.

 

Dude, with all due respect, that is some racist sh1t.

There is no configuration in BIOS where it should be disabling the internal video. I spoke to an engineer at DELL yesterday - an American engineer from the U.S. that is not involved in day-to-day tech support. This person is very high up in their engineering division so they know what they're talking about. I will not tell you her name but her title is Senior Engineer.