Laptop external hdmi primary display lag

Just installed manjaro with minimal gnome. My laptop screen is broken (Very low brightness) such that in a dark room I can read it, but practically I need to use an external monitor over hdmi.

When changing the primary display to the monitor, the system becomes unusable due to lag. The mouse moves smoothly, but the time it takes to register an input such as clicking and typing is long. Using the second monitor in a side by side config has no problems though.

Thanks in advance for any pointers

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If it’s an NVIDIA GPU, then this is a known issue. One workaround is to mirror the displays, and lower the brightness of the laptop display.

Thank you!

Mirroring displays just turns off the display for me though…

Can you post the output of inxi -Gazy in any case?

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 
  v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:3e9b 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP106M [GeForce Gouveau v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 
  chip ID: 10de:1c20 Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 630 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 
  v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:3e9b 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP106M [GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile] 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: nouveau v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 
  chip ID: 10de:1c20 
  Device-3: Quanta HD Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 1-5:2 
  chip ID: 0408:a060 serial: <filter> 
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.10 compositor: gnome-shell v: 3.38.3 driver: 
  loaded: intel,nouveau unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,nv,vesa 
  resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo> 
  OpenGL: rende
  Device-3: Quanta HD Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 1-5:2 
  chip ID: 0408:a060 serial: <filter> 
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.10 compositor: gnome-shell v: 3.38.3 driver: 
  loaded: intel,nouveau unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,nv,vesa 
  resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo> 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.3 
  direct render: Yes 
    indent preformatted text by 4 spaces

Well, one thing you could try is the proprietary NVIDIA driver: sudo mhwd -a pci nonfree 0300.

Thanks, will have a try. Otherwise just changing my primary display whilst keeping it joined works well enough.