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"Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports support native DisplayPort 2.1 speeds" - M5 Max only or also M5 Pro?

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kasakka

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M5 Pro

  • Supports up to three external displays over any combination of Thunderbolt and HDMI ports:
    • Three displays up to a native resolution of 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 144Hz or
    • One display up to a native resolution of 8K at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 240Hz plus a second display up to a native resolution of 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 200Hz
  • Supports up to three external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
  • Simultaneously supports the built-in display at full native resolution
M5 Max

  • Supports up to four external displays over any combination of Thunderbolt and HDMI ports:
    • Four displays up to a native resolution of 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 144Hz or
    • Two displays up to a native resolution of 8K at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 240Hz
  • Supports up to four external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
  • Simultaneously supports the built-in display at full native resolution
  • Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports support native DisplayPort 2.1 speeds
From https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

"Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports support native DisplayPort 2.1 speeds" appears under Macbook Pro M5 Max tech specs but is oddly absent from M5 Pro section despite other content being repeated.

What do you think? Does only the Max variant support DP 2.1?
 
This is of interest to me because I use the Samsung G95NC 8Kx2K @ 240 Hz superultrawide. It's notoriously problematic with MacOS, which I've written about in depth on Reddit. So of course I'm curious if I can run it with appropriate HiDPI scaling on a M5 Pro instead of having to splurge on a M5 Max.

I'm currently using a M2 Max MBP 16" with it and it works fine when connected as two displays via Picture by Picture mode, with the benefit of dual virtual desktops. But I need to get a new work machine (leasing deal) so M5 MBP is up for grabs, but the M5 Max is hideously expensive (above my employer's "your computer can cost this much" limits) and I don't really need its capabilities.

I'm hoping the M5 Pro would be good enough for this.
 
All we have for now is the specs page, and you can read it as well as I can. It shows DP 2.1 only on the M5 Max.

Is it accurate? Is it a mistake? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No one here will be able to say, until March 11.
 
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FreakinEurekan said:
All we have for now is the specs page, and you can read it as well as I can. It shows DP 2.1 only on the M5 Max.

Is it accurate? Is it a mistake? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No one here will be able to say, until March 11.
Click to expand...
Yes, unfortunately, Apple does not write their video specs very clearly.
They do a very good job at implementation, but not a great job at telling us what resolutions and frame rates they support, whether they have DSC or not, and so forth. We aren’t going to know until people start plugging them into displays.
 
kasakka said:
From https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

"Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports support native DisplayPort 2.1 speeds" appears under Macbook Pro M5 Max tech specs but is oddly absent from M5 Pro section despite other content being repeated.

What do you think? Does only the Max variant support DP 2.1?
Click to expand...

I expect the Pro variant will also support DP 2.1 speeds on the TB5 ports as I understand it to be a requirement of TB5.

I agree Apple's spec page made this ambiguous by presenting this inconsistently. It's clear that the M5 variant only supports DP 1.4 speeds on its DP TB4 ports and the M5 Max supports DP 2.1 on its TB5 ports and is just simply missing the bullet point either way for the Pro.

However, I would be very surprised if Apple claims its M5 Pro chips support TB5 but do not support DP 2.1 speeds on them. The Pro supports the same maximum 8K at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz or 4K at 240Hz as the Max (just on 1 instead of 2 monitors).
 
This is new. M4* Macs only support two monitors connected to a TB5 dock, but the TB5 spec allows three.
The new TB5 Macs support this, which has to be a TB5/DP 2.1 compliance thing? 😀

M5 Pro
  • Supports up to three external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
M5 Max
  • Supports up to four external displays over a single Thunderbolt port
 
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Screenshot 2026-03-07 at 2.03.32 PM.png


If you look at the full tech specs including the M5 non-Pro/Max, you see the "Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports support native DisplayPort 1.4 speeds" under the M5 non-Pro/Max, which only has TB4.

Then you have the ways M5 Pro and Max are different, with the TB5 disclaimer at the bottom of the entire Pro/Max section. To me, this means that all TB5 systems support DP2.1.

If you look at the tech specs page for the M4 Pro/Max MBP, it calls out the TB->DP versions separately. I think this is just a confusion of the formatting of the page on the current models.

Screenshot 2026-03-07 at 2.05.57 PM.png
 
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Yeah this is one of the things I hate about Apple specs. While they are less vague than they used to be, it's still totally guesswork to figure out if higher res ultrawides etc will fit within these outlines.

Meanwhile few outlets even test external display support, let alone with oddball displays like ultrawides. My experience is that MacOS is really bad at figuring out what to do with displays that are outside the norm.

On M2 Max with my Samsung G95NC:
  • Single input DP or HDMI 7680x2160. Max HiDPI scaling "looks like 3840x1080" which is too large. This is hitting the 8K framebuffer limitations MacOS imposes, which is also why scaling levels are limited on 5120x2160, 5120x2880 and 6K displays.
  • Dual input split with 2x 4K. No problems, both work at 120 Hz over HDMI or DP.
  • Dual input split as 5120x2160 + 2560x2160.
    • MacOS often has trouble with the 2560x2160 side, like it doesn't know what to do with it.
    • 2560x2160 side doesn't work above 60 Hz over HDMI for some reason, only Displayport. Yet 4K was fine in the previous scenario.
    • HiDPI is not enabled for 2560x2160. I need to use BetterDisplay to enable it. Then it works just fine at "looks like 1920x1620".
    • 5120x2160 side sometimes gets detected as 3440x1440 when coming out of sleep. I need to use "Reinitialize external displays" in BetterDisplay to fix this.
It does seem that M5 Pro has higher bandwidth than M4 Pro. "Three displays or two at 4K @ 240+200 Hz", when the M4 Pro was "two at 4K 144 Hz".
 
@Alameda “But each Thunderbolt port on the MBP is independent, so that isn’t a problem.”

Each Thunderbolt driver chip only has one output ‘independent’ port, but the TB controller chip needs DisplayPort input(s) from the SoiC Display Engine(s) - enough channels for a separate stream to drive each of the attached or daisy-chained monitors.

With M4 Pro/Max and earlier, there were only two DP channels (or streams) to each TB controller chip, but with M5 Max there are now four DP streams per TB5 port, so up to four monitors can be daisy-chained.

Remembering, each Display Engine output stream can only be used by one TB (or HDMI) port (at a time), but which TB5 output port it is going to is selected by attaching a powered-up monitor to the port.

So an M5 Pro SoiC has up to three Display Engine output channels, to go to whichever TB5 (or one to the HDMI) output port has monitors attached or daisy-chained to it.
With an M5 Max, there are four Display Engine output channels to go to the TB5/HDMI ports.

So what is new with M5 Pro/Max SoiC is that each TB5 controller chip now has an additional one to two DP input channel(s), 3 or 4, instead of the two channel limit per TB port of M4 or earlier P/M Macs.
 
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PaulD-UK said:
@Alameda “But each Thunderbolt port on the MBP is independent, so that isn’t a problem.”

Each Thunderbolt driver chip only has one output ‘independent’ port, but the TB controller chip needs DisplayPort input(s) from the SoiC Display Engine(s) - enough channels for a separate stream to drive each of the attached or daisy-chained monitors.

With M4 Pro/Max and earlier, there were only two DP channels (or streams) to each TB controller chip, but with M5 Max there are now four DP streams per TB5 port, so up to four monitors can be daisy-chained.

Remembering, each Display Engine output stream can only be used by one TB (or HDMI) port (at a time), but which TB5 output port it is going to is selected by attaching a powered-up monitor to the port.

So an M5 Pro SoiC has up to three Display Engine output channels, to go to whichever TB5 (or one to the HDMI) output port has monitors attached or daisy-chained to it.
With an M5 Max, there are four Display Engine output channels to go to the TB5/HDMI ports.

So what is new with M5 Pro/Max SoiC is that each TB5 controller chip now has an additional one to two DP input channel(s), 3 or 4, instead of the two channel limit per TB port of M4 or earlier P/M Macs.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
The details we’ve received so far have been quite vague. I appreciate the added info.
 
It was possible during the Thunderbolt 3 era to add additional DisplayPort Input Adapters to a Thunderbolt chain starting in the middle of the Thunderbolt chain. This is done with Thunderbolt eGPUs that have a downstream Thunderbolt port to connect Thunderbolt displays (BlackMagic eGPUs and Sonnet eGPU Breakaway Puck RX 5500 XT/5700).
I don't think anyone tried using 4 DisplayPort Out Adapters after the eGPU to prove that 4 DisplayPort signals (SST, no MST) could be tunnelled on the same Thunderbolt segment.
It would look like this:


Code: 
                   Mac                               eGPU                         Dock                Dock        Dual DisplayPort Adapter
    |-------------------------------|   |-------------------------------|   |---------------|   |---------------|   |---------------|
    |    GPU            TB Host     |   |                 TB Peripheral |   | TB Peripheral |   | TB Peripheral |   | TB Peripheral |
    | |--------|   |----------------|   |               |---------------|   |---------------|   |---------------|   |---------------|
    | | DP Out-=---=-DP In  TB Down-=---=---------------=-TB Up         |   |       TB Down-=---=-TB Up         |   |        DP Out-=----- Display 4
    | | DP Out-=---=-DP In  TB Down-=   |     GPU       |       TB Down-=---=-TB Up         |   |       TB Down-=----=-TB Up        |
    | |--------|   |----------------|   | |--------|    |               |   |        DP Out-=-\ |        DP Out-=-\ |        DP Out-=-\
    |                               |   | | DP Out-=----=-DP In         |   |---------------| | |---------------| | |---------------| |
    |                               |   | | DP Out-=----=-DP In         |   |---------------| | |---------------| | |---------------| |
    |-------------------------------|   | |--------|    |        DP Out-=                     |                   |                   |
                                        |               |---------------|                  Display 1           Display 2           Display 3
                                        |-------------------------------|

Two of the displays would get DisplayPort from the Mac's GPU.
The remaining two would get DisplayPort from the eGPU's GPU.
Thunderbolt 3 only has 40 Gbps bandwidth, so these 4 displays would need to be something like 1440p each (without DSC).
 
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bumping this. There's been some discussion where M5 Pro/Max having some serious regression or bug on supported external display setting combos (resolution/refresh rate/hdr) when compared to previous gens like m4/m3 Pro/Max
 
dbzr said:
bumping this. There's been some discussion where M5 Pro/Max having some serious regression or bug on supported external display setting combos (resolution/refresh rate/hdr) when compared to previous gens like m4/m3 Pro/Max
Click to expand...
Do you have a link?
 
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kasakka said:
****ing Apple. That looks like a proper ******** again. I hope it's just a software bug, but since Apple's external display support is a pile of **** in the first place...I'm not too hopeful it gets fixed.

Are they vibe coding their external display handling?
Click to expand...
tbh it’s horrendous.

I have an M1 Max, M3 Pro, M4 Pro, and M5 Pro on hand, and I’m testing them with an LG 45GX950A monitor, which is a 5K2K display running at up to 165Hz. I tested both the monitor’s USB-C input and its DisplayPort input. The DisplayPort connection is routed through a CalDigit TS5 Plus.

M1 Max
  • USB-C: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 100Hz, no HDR
M3 Pro
  • USB-C / DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, HDR enabled
M4 Pro
  • USB-C / DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, no HDR at this resolution
  • HDR is only available at lower resolutions
  • 10-bit, full color range
M5 Pro
  • USB-C: Maxed out at 3360×1418 HiDPI @ 100Hz ⚠️
  • DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, no HDR at this resolution
  • HDR is only available at lower resolutions
  • 8-bit, limited color range
The regression here is pretty bad, though TB5 is supposedly to provide higher bandwidth. At this point it really looks like Apple may have broken something in the display handshake or in how display bandwidth/resources are being allocated. It’s hard not to come away with the impression that they are only optimizing for their own studio displays and don’t give a s**t about broader display compatibility
 
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dbzr said:
tbh it’s horrendous.

I have an M1 Max, M3 Pro, M4 Pro, and M5 Pro on hand, and I’m testing them with an LG 45GX950A monitor, which is a 5K2K display running at up to 165Hz. I tested both the monitor’s USB-C input and its DisplayPort input. The DisplayPort connection is routed through a CalDigit TS5 Plus.

M1 Max
  • USB-C: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 100Hz, no HDR
M3 Pro
  • USB-C / DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, HDR enabled
M4 Pro
  • USB-C / DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, no HDR at this resolution
  • HDR is only available at lower resolutions
  • 10-bit, full color range
M5 Pro
  • USB-C: Maxed out at 3360×1418 HiDPI @ 100Hz ⚠️
  • DP: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, no HDR at this resolution
  • HDR is only available at lower resolutions
  • 8-bit, limited color range
The regression here is pretty bad, though TB5 is supposedly to provide higher bandwidth. At this point it really looks like Apple may have broken something in the display handshake or in how display bandwidth/resources are being allocated. It’s hard not to come away with the impression that they are only optimizing for their own studio displays and don’t give a s**t about broader display compatibility
Click to expand...
Thanks, these are great data points as it's an oddball res and high refresh rate.

What about the native HDMI port on the M5 Pro? Does that work also with 3840x1620 HiDPI @ 165 Hz?
 
kasakka said:
Thanks, these are great data points as it's an oddball res and high refresh rate.

What about the native HDMI port on the M5 Pro? Does that work also with 3840x1620 HiDPI @ 165 Hz?
Click to expand...
Built-in HDMI port:

M3 Pro: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, HDR enabled
M4 Pro: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, No HDR, 10bit full RGB
M5 Pro: 3840×1620 HiDPI @ 165Hz, No HDR, 10bit full RGB

I think this could be two separate issues:
1. ultrawide support regression after M4 series
2. usb-c/thunderbolt 5 regression on M5 series
 
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Honestly, I am fed up. Pissed actually. LG 5k2k 45". MUST have it for work as I remote into peoples computers to repair them and if someone has an ultrawide the Studio Display is honestly useless. 3840x1620 at 165HZ on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro. Now with the new M5 Pro MacBook Pro, I can't get above 100HZ and only LoDPI at 3840x1620. M5 getting returned. No reason to shell out this kind of money for this.
 
Ok so I got my new Macbook Pro, so can add my own experiences. The following is with

  1. Macbook Pro 16" M5 Pro
  2. MacOS Tahoe 26.4.1.
  3. Samsung 57" G95NC 7680x2160 superultrawide
It seems to behave mostly identically to my MBP 16" M2 Max for display support, with one key exception:

If the Samsung is set to single input mode, and I have both my CableMatters USB-C -> DP 2.1 adapter and the native Mac HDMI 2.1 port connected to the same display, the M5 Pro sees the Displayport input as max 5120x1440 LoDPI resolution. This is likely that regression mentioned in this thread.

The M2 Max running Sequioa sees them both as 7680x2160 @ 120 Hz displays, with 3840x1080 HiDPI as the max scaling.

If only one input is connected, both port types work at 7680x2160 w/ 3840x1080 HiDPI @ 120 Hz on the M5 Pro.

Thankfully my normal usecase, 5120x2160 + 2560x2160 @ 120 Hz in Picture by Picture mode works with HiDPI scaling of 3840x1620 + 1920x1620. I still had to use BetterDisplay to enable HiDPI scaling on the 2560x2160 side because MacOS still does not understand what to do with it.

So people looking to use the Samsung with new Macs, you no longer need to buy the Max.


But a concerning thing is that the M5 Pro does not seem to work at DP 2.1 speeds. I can't say whether this is a problem with the adapter or not. It behaves almost the same as my Nvidia 4090 GPU in my PC, dropping down to 60 Hz if I enable 240 Hz on the display OSD. Similarly the HDMI 2.1 port only goes up to 120 Hz in this scenario - which is even more inexplicable considering the DP should perform better or equal.

For reference, the Nvidia 50 series, AMD 7000 and 9000 series allow for 8Kx2K @ 240 Hz over both DP and HDMI.

I don't know if M5 Max is the only thing that actually supports DP 2.1 speeds then, or is this just an issue with MacOS.
 
My guess it is an issue with MacOS. They way macOS handles screen mirroring is also bonkers.

Thank you for this information. I have been thinking about a new monitor, although I am looking at the 40" LG 5k2k 120Hz model, which should be fine. But I am going to run it at native res more than likely.

Too bad there is not a 7680 x 3200 monitor floating around; would love to run something like that at HiDPI to match my existing 3840x1600 Dell, but with twice the clarity.

At this point I am opting out of installing Tahoe. Just seems to be too many weird flaky problems.
 
I've actually found some regressions with M2 Max on Sequioa 15.7.5 vs M5 Pro on Tahoe 26.4.1:
  • Using my Cablematters USB-C to DP 1.4 adapter, the M5 Pro refuses to show any image unless I drop the OSD to DP 1.4 as well. Then it limits the display capabilities to 60 Hz only, despite DP 1.4 being very much capable of 120 Hz.
    • M2 Max works without a hitch with the OSD DP version set to 2.1 or 1.4. 7680x2160 @ 120 Hz @ 10-bit over both.
  • Using my Cablematters USB-C to DP 2.1 adapter, the M5 Pro limits the color space to 8-bit YCBR 4:2:2, instead of 10-bit RGB full range.
    • M2 Max works exactly like with the DP 1.4 adapter, 7680x2160 @ 120 Hz @ 10-bit.
  • Native HDMI 2.1 port does not have these issues. It allows 7680x2160 @ 120 Hz @ 10-bit w/ HDR.
So for now, it might be best to use the HDMI 2.1 port with displays like the Samsung. HiDPI scaling with one input is still a major problem though.
 
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