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Can we set the screen resolutions of silicon MacBook Pro 16" to 5K?
- Thread starter hajime
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If you go into System Settings then Display and choose your display, you should see the display resolutions below. They default to icons with labels like Larger Text and More Space.
Right-click and choose List to see a list of resolutions (dimensions).
Then you should see a toggle to Show all resolutions.
I don’t think you can select a resolution larger than the physical resolution of the display which is 3456x2234 as mfram started.
Exactly! Do they list 5120x2880 as an available option?
Could you please clarify the last sentence under Note. Not familiar with framebuffer so no idea what you were trying to say.
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When macOS renders the display it does so at either 1x the normal size (such as when using a FHD or QHD display) or it renders the display at 2x. If you were to connect a 4K monitor to a Mac and set the "looks like" resolution to 2560x1440 then macOS will render the display at 5120x2880 and then scale it down to fit the pixels available in the physical screen. That is what the framebuffer does; it's what renders the display and scales down the final output.
As many users in this forum have noted this scaling method degrades the quality of the display output and impacts performance. You can trick macOS into rendering 5120x2880 on its built in display but it will be scaled down to fit the available pixels, which are 3456x2234. Your image quality will suffer as a result, especially with such extreme scaling. This is especially true if you try to render the display 1x at 5120x2880; the scaling will make the display effectively unusable.
The internal displays of MacBooks (either Air or Pro) are set to specific Retina resolutions. It's impossible to get true 5K or even true 4K on these displays because they lack the physical pixels to render them.
As many users in this forum have noted this scaling method degrades the quality of the display output and impacts performance. You can trick macOS into rendering 5120x2880 on its built in display but it will be scaled down to fit the available pixels, which are 3456x2234. Your image quality will suffer as a result, especially with such extreme scaling. This is especially true if you try to render the display 1x at 5120x2880; the scaling will make the display effectively unusable.
The internal displays of MacBooks (either Air or Pro) are set to specific Retina resolutions. It's impossible to get true 5K or even true 4K on these displays because they lack the physical pixels to render them.
If I run a Windows 10 application on a Silicon MacBook Pro 16" while connecting it to an external 5K display, I need to adjust the windows if I drag them across the screens. Having both the internal and external screens at the same resolution can avoid this problem. Is there a better way to solve this problem besides buying two 5K monitors? Doing that leads to another unsolvable problem since unlike PC, Silicon Mac cannot remember display settings and contents/settings get swapped after reboot or wake from sleep. Apple is aware of this problem but there is no fix.
Are you running Windows 10 in a VM on both displays? If so you shouldn't need to set the the resolutions to match, you just need to set the display scaling factor to match. If the 5K external screen is set to a scaling factor of 200% (which would give the equivalent of a QHD display) then the MacBook's internal screen also needs to be set to 200%, this should eliminate issues with windows having to rescale or re-size when dragged across displays. This may need to be done in both the macOS system settings app as well as in the Windows settings app within the VM.
This isn't a Mac-specific problem, if you had a Windows laptop with a FHD or even 4K built-in display you'd run into scaling issues going to a High DPI display like 5K unless the scale factors in the Windows setting are set to be identical.
I don't have a silicon Mac to test now. By VM, do you mean Parallels or VMware Fusion or both? Last year I tried Parallels, it was working fine but not VMware Fusion. However, I don't want to pay every year for the Pro license or stuck with RAM limit of the perpetual license. I hope VMware does a better job this year. Is there another good way to run Windows software on silicon Mac?
Right now I am using a desktop PC with two 4K monitors. No problem. Every time Apple releases a new MacBook Pro, I connect those two monitors to the new Mac and got the Mac forgetting settings issue. I don't think Apple wants to fix it as they want us to buy their Studio Display. One way is to forget about Mac and just get a Windows PC laptop but I cannot find a silent Windows laptop that support dual 5K monitors yet.
Right now I am using a desktop PC with two 4K monitors. No problem. Every time Apple releases a new MacBook Pro, I connect those two monitors to the new Mac and got the Mac forgetting settings issue. I don't think Apple wants to fix it as they want us to buy their Studio Display. One way is to forget about Mac and just get a Windows PC laptop but I cannot find a silent Windows laptop that support dual 5K monitors yet.
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There is no supported way to run Windows on ARM Mac without some VM software.