UD-3900 on MacBook Air is slow on external monitors in mac apps, but Youtube plays fine @ 1080P. Is there a setting wrong?

USB Docking Stations UD-3900
1

I just switched to Mac and pleased that the Dock pretty much just works!

However, I’ve noticed the applications (Word, Safari, Mail) are sluggish at scrolling on the external (UD-3900 connected) monitors. Both are 1080P.

I assumed it was a bandwidth thing, but youtube just played fine at 1080P full screen on one of those external monitors.

Is there something I can do to speed up the applications?

Thanks,
Ben

2

Hi Ben,

Thanks for posting! I’d be happy to help.

Many users experience issues running DisplayLink-attached USB displays with OSX 10.9.x (Mavericks) as well as 10.10 (Yosemite). Because the behavior can be undesirable on many Macs, since the release of Mavericks we have not been recommending our USB graphics devices for use on Mac systems.

We outline some of the more troublesome issues on our site if you’re interested:
http://plugable.com/2013/10/22/multip…
http://plugable.com/2014/10/22/to-10-…

All that being said, recently DisplayLink released a beta version of there driver that does offer some improvements. We wrote about it here –> http://plugable.com/2015/03/16/displa…

If you haven’t already I would try installing the beta driver (http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/…) to see if that changes the behavior.

Let us know the results when you have a moment and we can go from there.

Thank you,

Bob
Plugable Technologies
www.plugable.com/support

3

Thanks for the input. I actually have been using the DisplayLink 2.4b1 driver from the start, so I guess I have to live with the situation.

4

Hi Ben,

The key issue here, as I understand it, is the way OS X 10.9+ handles graphics acceleration in some programs. It can result in sluggishness which can be more pronounced when DisplayLink devices are being used. (I’ve found Mission Control to be about the best/worst example of this behavior.)

This is one of the key outstanding issues with DisplayLink on Mac. We can’t say much as far as specific details, but I do know that DisplayLink is trying to improve this behavior with ongoing driver development.

Thanks!
Gary