Thinkpads Forum

My laptop:
Thinkpad P50s (Basically a T560)
6th Gen Intel i7 6500U (2.5GHz)
8G RAM
250G SSD
Nvidia Quadro M500M & Intel HD Graphics 520 (Integrated)

Dock:
ThinkPad Ultra Dock - 90W
Part number: 40A20090US

Monitor:
BenQ BL2711U CAD Professional Monitor
3840 x 2160 Resolution


The Problem:
My laptop's meager Nvidia M500M cannot support a high-res laptop at more than 30HZ via HDMI
However the integrated Intel HD Graphics 520 is designed to support high-res displays at up to 60HZ via Display Port.
I went into Nvidia Control Panel and set the Preferred Graphics to Intel and hooked up the Display Port to the Ultra Dock and there is no response by the monitor.
The Ultra Dock should be capable of this resolution @ 60HZ via Display Port.
Here's where it gets weird: When I set the resolution in the Intel Graphics Settings to 1920 x 1080 @ 50p HZ the monitor works fine. As soon as I try increasing the monitor to any high resolution it becomes unresponsive. The Intel settings will register the monitor as functioning at 3840 x 2160 @ 59HZ - but the monitor will be blank - the indicator light on the monitor will show it is connected - but the screen is dark.
The screen works with HDMI at 30HZ - but is a slow and glitchy, occasionally showing distortion bars across half the screen until being rebooted.
All the drivers are up to date. I even deleted them and re-downloaded them.
I tried calling Lenovo Support and the tech genuinely didn't seem to understand how computers work in general, I ended up realizing the recommendations he was giving me were verbatim from online PDFs I had already read.
I would appreciate any help.
I would also like to know Lorita is and why she is missing, is she the cockatoo? < This may be the most important question of my life.

Lorita was a Cockatoo that belonged to our Forum owner Bill Morrow.
Sadly she took off to the Happy Hunting Grounds.

BAM, the powers of deduction.
Poor Lorita, may her feathers never fade.
"I knew I had fallen in love with Lorita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lorita."

I got a DP to Mini DP cable and connected it directly to the laptop and the monitor runs perfectly, still unsure why I can't use a DP to DPwith the dock, maybe a bad dock?
Any help with this would be much appreciated.

Please check the reviews of your docking station @ lenovo store/web page. As far as I remember this dock is fairly bugged especially when it comes to an display output interfaces. And I do have a question - can you multiplex your graphics card outputs to an DP connector or is it soldered directly to Intel GPU and nVidia card cannot use it? If this is a case we are talking about example of horrible engineering.

I just checked the reviews, everyone seems to agree the dock is a paperweight.
This is a shame.
I'm not sure what kind of hardware changes I can make to the mini DP on the laptop. I have been able to use Nvidia software to switch the preferred graphics card for external monitor to the intel graphics - as I'm pretty sure the Nvidia m500m cannot handle 4k at 60hz - only 30hz.
It sucks, but It looks like I might have to return the dock and just pain stakingly plug and unplug every component every time.
Unless there are better docks out there?