HDMI Detection - How Does Yours Work?

When you plug in a HDMI monitor/TV into your laptop does Windows recognize the change right away, does it take a few seconds, or does it require a reboot/sleep to be recognized. If you then unplug the cable and plug it back in does it detect it again?

I just received a new Alienware 15R3 with Nvidia 1070(G-Sync) and when I plug in a HDMI cable I have to either put it to sleep and wake it up or reboot it in order for it to detect the connection. I just want to know if this is normal for this laptop? My older Windows 8 laptop recognizes the new display right away every time. I have tried different cables and TV ports. I even reinstalled windows with the latest drivers and got the same results.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

While connecting, open nvidia control panel and see if your external monitor is detected or not?

 

When the connection isn't working the monitor isn't detected in nvidia control panel. I did more testing and found that it would connect to an old monitor without trouble but my new LG TV caused it problems unless I was using a very short HDMI cord and even then it would fail sometimes. Maybe HDMI 2.0 is more picky? It always finds the monitor if I put it to sleep and wake it up after the connection is made which is strange. My brother's Macbook and my older laptop are fine. I don't know if the Dell is defective or just some software glitch.

 

Does the issue occur even after updating to laest BIOS?

 

Yes. My system started out at 1.0.5 and I have tried the latest and now flashed back to 1.0.9 since it seems to have slightly better performance. All of them had the same hdmi problem. vbios is 86.04.54.00.09

 

It may have something to do with the Alienware systems having their HDMI output directly from GTX GPU (instead of the iGPU). IGPU must be switched off... but I thought G-sync models already have iGPU turned off

 

@HappyCow: You might have to double check the cable compatibility with HDMI 1.4 and above.

 

No the G-sync models still have the iGPU running. It is directly connected to the thunderbolt output. One strange thing I found was that if you connect a second display through thunderbolt and set it up as an extended display you can then start a 3d window on the thunderbolt display and it will be rendered through the iGPU (slow). If you drag that window to the laptop display it will be displaying through the GTX but still be rendered by the iGPU (reverse optimus?). I haven't tried starting on the laptop display and draging it to the thunderbolt yet.

Cable quality definitely has an effect. I just had my motherboard replaced today and it seems to be better but it still happens sometimes that it will not display on HDMI until a sleep or power cycle. If I connect through thunderbolt via an HDMI adapter and therefore going through Intel's GPU it always picks up on the connection even if it takes a few seconds so it must have something to do with NVIDIA's driver's/bios.