For anyone using 4k external monitors

All,

Just a heads up after getting a 2019 Base Razer Blade 15 with RTX 2060. I use this machine for engineering not gaming just to start the thread off.

At my office I use a Dell D6000 Dock (USB 3.0) with dual 4K monitors and at home I use an OWC thunderbolt 3 dock and a single 4k monitor. I was getting horrific performance just using basic productivity apps, Chrome, MS Word, file explorer, etc, and I was wondering why. When I dug into Task Manager I could see that my GPU idling was using crazy high % (30%-75% on single 4k and then 50%-100% on dual 4ks) I did some digging and found that on this laptop the USB-C port is not directly connected to the GPU, thus the integrated Intel graphics have to touch every pixel being produced and pump it out through the USB C port. That ended up being the bottle neck. Had I connected my 4k monitors to the HDMI or Display port outputs (which are piped directly off the GPU) this would not have been an issue, but that defeats the purpose of the single USB C plug dock, as I am taking this laptop on and off the desk multiple times a day. So all and all I think this is a huge design flaw, but I do admit it doesn't affect a huge portion of the population using this laptop.

So for a work around. I am just setting my display resolution to 1440p instead of 4k on them and let the displays do the scaling. The performance issue is gone as the Intel Integrated graphics can keep up now. It's not a great solution but definitely a decent work around.I don't actually need 4k resolution for most of my work but these are the monitors I have so this is how I am going to use the system for now.

I just thought I'd post this here in case anyone else has the same issue I was seeing.