Dell’s E6430 supports triple display output when docked! (including LCD)

Dell’s E6430 supports triple monitors! This came as quite a shock to me when I was setting up my new laptop. ๐Ÿ™‚

My current setup is as follows. The laptop is docked and uses:

  • One displaylink to dual-link DVI adapter (driving a 30″ display at 2560×1600)
  • One DVI cable (driving a 20″ Dell display at 1600×1200)
  • Internal LCD (14″ 1600×900)

I can definitely verify that it is possible to use two external displays simultaneously with the internal LCD.

This beats the setup on my old Lenovo X220 as it could only drive dual displays and could not use the internal display when doing so.

Performance is alsoย surprisinglyย good on the E6430 considering the rather meager integrated graphics (HD4000) and the modest internal graphics (NVS 5200M). No lag/delays while dragging windows between displays and even graphically intense apps (like Photoshop) work well. ๐Ÿ™‚

Current rating: 4.5/5 stars to Dell for a very capable triple-display laptop ๐Ÿ™‚

Good job Dell!

13 comments

  • JD

    I have used the triple display as described above for about a month, then I came into work today and put my laptop on the dock and I keep getting a message that the NVS 5200M can only support two displays. Even though the NVIDIA website says you can use 4 displays at once.

    http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-nvs.html

    I update the driver to version 320 and dell bios to A11 and still can not get my three displays to all work at the same time.

    • Hello fellow JD,
      Bummer about your loss of triple monitor support!

      It sounds like a driver update, potentially even an automated one (that MS Windows Update might have performed without your knowledge), may have disabled your triple monitor support. Thus giving you the message about only two displays being supported.

      A couple relevant items that may addres the issue:
      #1 Try going into Device Manager and reverting to a previous driver
      (Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Devices and Printers -> Device Manager -> Display Adapters -> NVIDIA NVS 5200)
      Go to the properties of your NVIDIA NVS 5200 listed there, and under the Driver tab of the resulting properties dialog box you should have an option to ‘Roll Back Driver’.

      -or-

      #2 My E6430 w/5200M uses this driver
      http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=WXGWV
      and as mentioned in my blog entry it supports triple monitors just fine, so as a last resort you might want to try that one.

      Finally, if none of that helps it is conceivable that an Intel HD4000 driver update could have caused the issues since the NVIDIA card works (via Optimus) with the HD4000 GPU so they are not totally independent of each other.

      I hope this info helps, please let me know how it goes!

      Best regards,
      -JD

  • JD

    Sucks, I had already tried a driver roll back and nothing was there to roll back to. The driver link provided did not work on my system (64bit Win8) but I did try to install the driver from http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/555/DriverDetails/Product/latitude-e6530?driverId=FW2RY&osCode=W732&fileId=3111115485&languageCode=en&categoryId=VI and the driver from the disk. Same results.

    For now I just changed my settings to do nothing with the lid closed and went on. Dell says the only way is to completely restore my laptop back to factory, and thats not gonna happen.

    JDM

    • Hi JDM,
      Man that stinks, I really wish Dell had been more helpful! ๐Ÿ™

      If I come across anything that might be useful I will let you know, and please update us if you resolve the issue before then. ๐Ÿ™‚

      Good luck and best regards,
      -JDH

    • Anon

      You might check your bios and see if Optimus is enabled. If that is enabled you should see the integrated Intel card under Device Manager.

  • Matthew

    I’m also having the issue where I came to work this morning and now only 2 monitors work. The only updates I’ve had in over a week are a few security updates and a Silverlight update. Other than that, nothing has changed in the OS.

    • Hi Matthew,
      I am sorry to hear about your multiple monitor display issues ๐Ÿ™ It sounds like you have verified that nothing has changed, so my only suggestions might be to re-check all connections (possibly even using different cables), try restoring to a previous system restore point, or as a last resort reinstall Windows.

      I apologize for not having any better solutions, sadly these dock display issues are particularly difficult to troubleshoot ๐Ÿ™

      Best regards,
      -JD

  • Tos

    I don’t have a displayport to DVI adapter yet, but after a week of despair I booted the laptop this morning in the docking station and my VGA and DVI external monitors both came on. The internal screen remains blank, but that’s of minimal concern because the partial success encouraged me to find this site and now I know the adapter I need to get. Thanks.

    • Hi Tos,
      It can be very frustrating when dock/display issues pop up, so I am glad you have had some luck with getting your dual displays going! ๐Ÿ™‚

      Best regards,
      -JD

  • Tos

    The Display Port to Dual-Link DVI cable, could that be a single-link for lower resolution displays?

    Does the cable need to be an active converter or is a passive converter good enough?

    • Hello Tos,
      Thank you for your good questions!

      #1 Yes, single link is sufficient for resolutions like 1920×1200 and lower

      #2 For single link, a passive adapter like this one ($11.99 at Amazon) will work great!

      Please let me know if you have any other questions ๐Ÿ™‚

      Best regards,
      -JD

  • boothat

    That’s awesome! It’s too bad you didn’t give one shred of a clue as to how to make this happen. What a completely useless article. ๐Ÿ˜€

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