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Anyone getting 4k on their 2014?
- Thread starter bulldog212
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Genius! Do you know if the Mac Mini supports wide gamut (AdobeRGB) displays at 4k?
Thinking about getting NEC 24" EA244UHD. Do you still get a retina like experience on 28" or dpi too low? I found the switch from WIN to Mac shocking in terms of font (lack of) sharpness so need a lot of dpi.
Thanks
Hey, thanks for posting this! I have a quick question, are you still able to use HiDPI Mode while maintaining 50Hz? For example, if you selected one of the scaling options offered in the 'Displays' menu, would it maintain the 50Hz refresh rate? I'm thinking native UHD resolution of 3840 x 2160 may be too tiny, even on a 27"
Gamut and resolution is unrelated, color information is still 32bpp over displayport when using wide gamut display, so yes, Mini should support wide gamut displays at 4K. You'll be able to run at 1080p pixel doubled mode. 27-28" displays are mostly used in 1440p, so you may find the interface a little bit on the large side.
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You'll be able to use 1080p HiDPI mode. Unfortunatelly Mac Mini and 13" rMBP does not support scaled retina resolutions (pixel doubled 1440p and 1692p).
This is because Intel Iris can't provide a framebuffer larger than 4K).Gamut and resolution is unrelated, color information is still 32bpp over displayport when using wide gamut display, so yes, Mini should support wide gamut displays at 4K. You'll be able to run at 1080p pixel doubled mode. 27-28" displays are mostly used in 1440p, so you may find the interface a little bit on the large side.
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You'll be able to use 1080p HiDPI mode. Unfortunatelly Mac Mini and 13" rMBP does not support scaled retina resolutions (pixel doubled 1440p and 1692p).
Perfect! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, your response, and for your help. I look forward to running a UHD monitor @ 50Hz!
Gamut and resolution is unrelated, color information is still 32bpp over displayport when using wide gamut display, so yes, Mini should support wide gamut displays at 4K. You'll be able to run at 1080p pixel doubled mode. 27-28" displays are mostly used in 1440p, so you may find the interface a little bit on the large side.
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You'll be able to use 1080p HiDPI mode. Unfortunatelly Mac Mini and 13" rMBP does not support scaled retina resolutions (pixel doubled 1440p and 1692p).
Thanks. Whats the difference between HiDPI and scaled (retina) resolutions?
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Pasting from another forum:
You can get also 50Hz with SwitchResX
sure - but will it be 4k 50 Hz real image information or 4k 25 Hz x 2 ?
On my rMBP 13" I can get UHD at 60 Hz with no extra tool but it will be 30 Hz refresh rate for information and transmitted 60 Hz for the monitor - showing the same content 2x
You can see that clearly and it is different from the Appearance on my Mac Pro which easily does 60 Hz of whatever resolution.
IMHO the GPU has not the chance to put out more - I did not find any evidence that the HD 5X00 can reach 4k 50 Hz refresh rate - would be surprised - but - you'll never know
DisplayPort* 1.2 / eDP*
H-Processors: 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz (Ultra-HD)
U-Processors: 3200 x 2000 @ 60 Hz, 3840 x 2160 @ 30 Hz
I'm running 4k at 1080p HiDPI on a retina MBP 13" (Iris 5100 gpu). Here's a screen shot with frame rate.
Attachments
yes, if you are able to run 1080p HiDPI @50hz, you'll be able to run 2160p @50hz.
Thanks, excuse my ignorance, this means beyond any doubt that it is a true 50hz and not 25x2?
It's 50Hz...When I plugged in the same monitor via HDMI, It defaulted to 30Hz and was noticeably choppier.
What I meant is that you can get HiDPI 1080p (pixel doubled, 3840x2160) resolution on a 2014 mac mini or rmbp 13" with Intel Iris, but you won't be able to achieve pixel doubled 1440p or 1692p resolutions (these are availabe on the rmbp 15", nmp and new imac). These scaled resolutions use an internal resolution that is higher than the physical display resolution (for example the using a scaled HiDPI 1692p mode on a UHD display renders everything on a 6016x3384 internal resolution, which is then scaled to 3840x2160 and sent to the display). Display preferences has a nice nice selection panel where you can change the scale factor for Retina display if the graphics adatper supports these larger internal framebuffer resolutions. Again, this is not the case for the 2014 mini.
I have to agree with stempsons. Intel Iris has a max pixel clock of 450MHz. UHD@60Hz requirees 533,25MHz. Now it's easy to see that 450/533*60Hz is about 50Hz. You can get an additional 2-3Mhz by gradually reducing porch and blanking settings and experimenting with your display when will itt loose sync. So 53Hz is a hard max limit.
Theoretically you could work around even this hard limits to achieve UHD@60Hz if you reduce the bandwidth by reducing the color information (if you use less bits per pixel, then suddenly you have more than enough bandwidth for 4K@60Hz). For example you can have 4K@60Hz using even HDMI 1.4 if you use YCbCr 4:2:0 encoding (this retains the 4K resolution, but the color will be approximated in 4 pixel groups which is mostly OK for 3D games and videos). Unfortunatelly OS X display drivers do not support any of these special modes.
Thanks this is very helpful. So that means I cannot get more real estate than a Full HD monitor (which isn't bad). So the choice is to run it at native resolution (where everything will be too small or 1080 scaled?
Is 1080 scaled crisp and clear? Especially the fonts, I have issues with Apple blurry rendering. Any screenshot?
I am debating whether I should get a Dell UP2414Q for my mac mini, or wait and get the Dell 5k UP2715K with Apple (yet to be released) or Windows hardware able to run it. I am on a Dell U2412M and would be nice to upgrade also the size and not just pixel count.
Anyone using the UP2414Q?
thanks!
PS What is Apple suggested ("Best for..") scaled resolution for a 4k 24" monitor?
As I'm also interested in 4k possibilities with the 2014 mac mini:
Does this mean that text and icons etc are the same size as if the screen would have been 'just' 1920x1080, but that they look sharper/cleaner as they are in fact 3840x2160; and that images uses the full 4k resolution?
Edit: As I understand from your post #36 ("Display preferences has a nice nice selection panel where you can change the scale factor for Retina display if the graphics adatper supports these larger internal framebuffer resolutions. Again, this is not the case for the 2014 mini.") the 1920x1080 is the only/best HiDPI resolution you can get with a 2014 mac mini, so anything larger than 24"-27" 4k is sort of useless?
Is the same restriction true for all 13" MBPs (iris 5100) and 15" MBPs with integrated graphics (iris pro 5200) or can the later do better?
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1920x1080 HiDPi is gonna be the best high resolution setting with the crispest text possible with any of the machines listed (IMHO). The difference with the 15" MBP, is that you'll probably be able to run a faster frame rate (60Hz). Either way, the screen looks killer at 1080p HiDPi on the 24". It's like a giant retina screen
Steve, any downside in pushing for 53hz vs 50hz? Will make the mac mini slower?
Is anyone having difficulty with Swithresx? I cannot save my custom resolutions no matter what I try.
It'd still be bloody expensive.
I did it with a 15" rMBP, GTX 780 Ti + Sonnet IIID enclosure.
Dammit!
Own macbook pro, iphones, ipads, timecapsule (huge letdown), atv3 (huge letdown) and wanted the deathstar to be complete ....the puzzle to be finished with a mac mini media server. Been waiting for so long for that mini only to be let down with soldered ram but most important only 30hz 4k!
Starting to feel the 1gb ram on ipads and lack of multitasking also
Got a 100$ acer 8" windows tablet and its now my favorite:-S
Im not going to wait again for apple to make up for their mini mistake (one/two years is a lifetime in techworld) so have decided to get rid of my apple devices only to keep the iphone 6 plus.
Im going the windows way instead. A surface pro tablet/laptop and a windows mediaserver. When windows 10 arrives i will propably sell my iphone also.
ALL because of a freakin mac mini!
The microsoft surface will replace both macbook pro and two ipads... One device to replace 3.
I really really wanted that apple watch also but to quote pablo francisco "what good is a spagetti if you got **** all over it"
Own macbook pro, iphones, ipads, timecapsule (huge letdown), atv3 (huge letdown) and wanted the deathstar to be complete ....the puzzle to be finished with a mac mini media server. Been waiting for so long for that mini only to be let down with soldered ram but most important only 30hz 4k!
Starting to feel the 1gb ram on ipads and lack of multitasking also
Got a 100$ acer 8" windows tablet and its now my favorite:-S
Im not going to wait again for apple to make up for their mini mistake (one/two years is a lifetime in techworld) so have decided to get rid of my apple devices only to keep the iphone 6 plus.
Im going the windows way instead. A surface pro tablet/laptop and a windows mediaserver. When windows 10 arrives i will propably sell my iphone also.
ALL because of a freakin mac mini!
The microsoft surface will replace both macbook pro and two ipads... One device to replace 3.
I really really wanted that apple watch also but to quote pablo francisco "what good is a spagetti if you got **** all over it"
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I'm kind of like that too. Besides just using Macs I am also a Mac fan so some of why I like Macs has to do with their future. Last year I bought and upgraded a couple of great minis (i7, 16GB, SSD) and was all pumped up on minis.
Now with soldered RAM and no quad-cores it looks to me that the mini's future is one of small, sealed, ARM-powered appliances. I have already sold one mini. The other is likely to go soon. Even though both minis were excellent they just seem to have lost their magic to me.
Dell UP2414Q
I just turned on my new Dell UP2414Q.....in one word, WOW!! It is amazing.
I switched from Windows to Mac and hated it because of the blurry font rendering of the Mac, now this is what I call crisp!!
I wanted to cry when I learnt (while the monitor was in transit) that with this monitor the SwitchresX trick would not work. I thought I would just try it and send it back to get the P2415Q but to be honest cannot be bothered by the 30Hz, I can barely tell the difference (I just do MS Office, Web and Lightroom), I am definitely keeping it (subject to further checks, have to calibrate, test uniformity, pixels etc). I got it for a good price (£450, and for the price difference - £80 - I will not downgrade to the P2415Q).
So far really plug and play, no glitches.
I just turned on my new Dell UP2414Q.....in one word, WOW!! It is amazing.
I switched from Windows to Mac and hated it because of the blurry font rendering of the Mac, now this is what I call crisp!!
I wanted to cry when I learnt (while the monitor was in transit) that with this monitor the SwitchresX trick would not work. I thought I would just try it and send it back to get the P2415Q but to be honest cannot be bothered by the 30Hz, I can barely tell the difference (I just do MS Office, Web and Lightroom), I am definitely keeping it (subject to further checks, have to calibrate, test uniformity, pixels etc). I got it for a good price (£450, and for the price difference - £80 - I will not downgrade to the P2415Q).
So far really plug and play, no glitches.