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2018 MacBook Pros Have New 'Titan Ridge' Thunderbolt 3 Controller, But DisplayPort 1.4 Isn't Truly Supported
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And I've got some follow up as well. Apparently VESA quietly released the DisplayPort 1.4a standard this past April (not to be confused with the Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a standard which came out back in 2015 to much fanfare), and Parade has already announced an updated version of the PS176. It's called the PS186 DisplayPort 1.4a to HDMI 2.0b protocol converter chip, and I'd imagine the adapters you were searching for will be incoming soon.
However, I'm not sure about whether current generation AMD or NVIDIA display controllers can be updated to support the new DisplayPort 1.4a spec, or if this will require GPUs that haven't been released yet. Seems like this should be manageable with just a firmware / driver update, but who knows.
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HDMI 2.1?8k??
8K?!
Did you say 8K!!!???!
Great Scott 8K?! Where are we going to get the power to generate 8K through TB3??? Optical cables don’t grow on trees Marty!?
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Just FYI--the MBP doesn't come with a thunderbolt cable--that is a normal USB-C. You have to buy the TB 3 cables separately.
Seems your macbook could use a good ole opening up and cleaning out of its fans and heatsinks with compressed air!
That should restore its youthful vigor again.It's going to take some years for 8K to become affordable, and much less mainstream I would think. Especially as 8K displays are ridiculous overkill as far as screen resolution is concerned in pretty much any circumstance.
So don't sweat it, enjoy what's on offering now, if you even do need to upgrade. In the future, by the time 8K possibly does become the screen rez of choice, it'll probably be time for yet another upgrade anyway. It's not going to happen in just a year or two. Most people haven't even migrated to 4K yet.
People said much the same thing when Apple removed the floppy drive, serial and parallel ports, ethernet jack, optical drive, *ahem* headphone jack...
...And the sky still hasn't fallen.The thing is here, four thunderbolt 3 ports gives very high I/O capacity in a very small package. One port easily supports a whole battery of older ports via a breakout box leaving 3 other TB ports for other stuff like eGPU, storage drive array and so on, and you get rid of port clutter. On my old laptop I have two USB-A ports, firewire, ethernet and SD card. If I need to plug in 3 or more USB devices at the same time, none of the other ports help me the least bit. They're just legacy baggage taking up space. Not to mention the curious nature of USB-A plugs in that you need to turn them over at least twice before they'll fit into any receptacle...
Gods the number of times I've been fighting and swearing, fumbling around in a computer's dark recesses trying to get a combative USB-A plug to fit... Good friggin' riddance to that nonsense I say! Plus, the only time you actually need a dongle is when you have a gizmo with a fixed male USB-A connector. If your gizmo has a female USB connector you just use a cable with the appropriate connectors in either end.
In the end, USB-C is "the future". It's where the industry is going, if only slowly - in no small part thanks to people who reason like you, clinging on to their old interfaces.
When you have gear that plugs natively into USB-C, you're not going to be complaining about what a pain in the you-know-what USB-C is, will you? Heh.Not really no, as long as the single monitor you want to connect isn't an 8K display...
It's not that 4x PCIe is "so great", but rather that now people can easily and conveniently connect a high-power graphics board to a laptop on the fly, and immediately get almost peak graphics performance, depending on the eGPU model.
Anyhow, 4x PCIe loses only a slight amount of graphics performance versus 8x (which in turn loses almost nothing vs. 16x.) Only if you do certain types of GPGPU work that depends on communication back to the host system might the thunderbolt interface become a bottleneck; graphics is comparatively frugal in its bandwidth needs.
When they announced and launched the LG Ultrafine's, they only worked with that era of MBP and above, so it wouldn't surprise me if there is something in the 2019 MBP or Mac Pro
Yes about the fiber. But what from what I have read about future iterations, fiber is pretty much going to be needed to go any faster and keep the port size small. You think Apple gives a **** about changing to another port?
Apple doesn't get to choose the port used by Thunderbolt 4 - Intel does.
...whatever we might say about Apple's choice of USB-C it is a standard that will probably become widely used. Replacing it with a proprietary socket without a very good reason would be a new level of stupidity.
I knew Intel Gen9.5 Graphics were getting a bit long in the tooth, but I decided to do some digging into the capabilities of the AMD Polaris 21 chip that is at the heart of the Radeon Pro 5xx[X] graphics in the recent MBPs.
According to an AMD whitepaper on the Vega architecture, Polaris 10 is limited to 1 single-cable 5K @ 60 Hz display. Polaris 21 is the second generation of Polaris 11, which is a considerably smaller chip than Polaris 10. It's hard to imagine that Polaris 11 would be in any way more capable than Polaris 10, although it is possible that the display controllers in both were updated for the 2x generation. Nevertheless, that makes me question the "two 5K displays at 60Hz, each over a single stream" bit, unless they're talking about 5K Thunderbolt displays that can be driven over a single cable despite using 2 display streams internally. However, that same table in the whitepaper shows the Polaris 10 as capable of driving 1 dual-cable 8K @ 60 Hz display, or 3 dual-cable 5K @ 60 Hz displays, which makes the 1 single-cable 5K @ 60 Hz limitation appear odd.
The language on Apple's technical specifications page for the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018):
is subtly different from the 2017 model:
indicating that all 4 ports on the 2018 model are indeed HBR3 capable.
Dell's UP3218K 8K display uses dual DisplayPort HBR3 links instead of implementing DSC. Polaris can definitely drive this display, so I can't see why the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) couldn't. Although Apple did remove mention of the 15-inch MacBook Pro from the dual-cable displays section of this support document a while back, so they may no longer work under macOS.
AFAIK, most current generation GPUs claim to have DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, but none of them support DSC.
My best guess is that the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) can in fact drive either 2 single-cable 5K @ 60 Hz displays, or 1 dual-cable 8K @ 60 Hz display, but will likely never support DSC. Support for the Dell UP3218K or other dual-cable displays under macOS may require updates to the system display overrides.
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Actually, if history is any indicator, Apple kinda does get to choose the port used by Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2 both used the Mini DisplayPort connector which Apple developed and then turned over to VESA, despite Intel's plans to use an optical extension to the USB Type-A connector.
Then Apple sent a whole bunch of engineers to the USB-IF working groups to help develop the Type-C connector. It was compact and reversible like their proprietary Lightning connector, but was also designed from the outset to support Thunderbolt and DisplayPort via alternate modes. Low and behold, Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB Type-C connector.
Apple is still the single largest customer for Thunderbolt chips, so they tend to have a fair amount of influence over Intel in that regard.
Thunderbolt 4 will almost certainly continue to use the USB Type-C connector and copper cables for short hauls, but will switch to PAM4 signaling, which effectively doubles the throughput while keeping the Nyquist frequency the same. The Thunderbolt PHY pretty much follows along the lines of whatever Intel has going on for transceivers in the converged network adapter and FPGA spaces.
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I’ll answer your question:
I have no idea what that app is.
And with your attitude, I’m not sure if anyone is going to answer you even if they DO know the app.
Cheers.
yeah..? that attitude wasn’t existent until SEVERAL DAYS AND SEVERAL REPLIES LATER. i asked POLITELY. i bumped it POLIITELY. but no one should EVER get upset about being completely ignored. wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s delicate internet feelings.
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No, I don't think anyone should be upset re: being ignored on an Internet forum. Happens to me all the time. My feels do not get hurt.
I can’t tell if you’re kidding or not. Nearly everything you’ve said in this post is blatantly wrong. Sigh.
Contact the MacRumors billing department. They'll issue you a prompt refund of your forum dues.
Finally Apple gets onboard with modern dp version. Too bad they forgot to name it. It doesn't matter if it's TB4 or TB3b, but now we have a port with same , but different specs.
Apple doesn't want to make this big news, because it shows how outdated TB3 has been?
Apple doesn't want to make this big news, because it shows how outdated TB3 has been?
So, about that adapter... First of all, those are miniDP and DisplayPort on the host side, not USB Type-C. However, Club3D does offer the CAC-2504 which is essentially the same adapter but for USB Type-C hosts. The CAC-2504 looks an awful lot like it's based on the same reference design as an UPTab adapter that is no longer for sale but tended to be a bit flaky in my experience.
I've got nothing against Club3D, AFAIK they're pretty darn reputable. However, without knocking them for their command of English, their marketing department may take some liberties with language. It would seem that all three adapters, the CAC-1080, CAC-1180 and CAC-2504, are based on the Parade PS176. The explanation for the differences in the way their capabilities are described can be found in this thread on their forum.
This is the typical trap that comes along with specification version numbers and how the actual capabilities of devices are marketed to consumers. HDMI 2.1 is the current version of the HDMI specification, which superseded the previous 2.0b, 2.0a and 2.0 versions. The same goes for DisplayPort 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.4, 1.3, 1.2a, 1.2, etc. As long as a device meets the normative requirements of a given specification, it can pass testing and/or certification for that version and be marketed as such. Optional features are optional, even when we consider them to be the raison d'être of that particular version. Hence we get situations where a USB device with a maximum signaling capability of SuperSpeed USB 5 Gbps might just as well be marketed as "USB 3.0", "USB 3.1 Gen 1", or "USB 3.2 Gen 1 x 1".
Club3D has decided to advertise some of their Parade PS176 adapters as "DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.0b HDR" because they tested them and they appear to pass an HDR signal successfully. They claim:
and
I'm guessing this means that both HDR10 (static metadata, added in DisplayPort 1.3 and HDMI 2.0a specs) and Dolby Vision (dynamic metadata, proprietary extension to HDMI 1.4b or later) will work. That does not say anything about support for HLG (tacked on to the HDMI 2.0b spec), SL-HDR1 (Technicolor amendment to ATSC standard), or other dynamic metadata formats such as HDR10+ (included in HDMI 2.1).
Where I started to go astray was thinking that when someone calls for HDMI 2.0b by name, they're specifically looking for HLG support, because that is the marquee feature of that particular version. Turns out HLG wasn't even part of the 2.0b spec, but upon review it seemed like it would work fine without any additional changes, so they just rolled it into the feature list. In fact, HDMI 2.0b is such a minor revision that I have no idea how it really differs from 2.0a, seeing as I'm not a licensee and don't have access to the actual specs. I also got caught out by Wikipedia incorrectly stating that HDR support was introduced in DisplayPort 1.4, when it was actually adopted by the previous DP 1.3 spec.
If we look at the original press release for the Parade PS176, it is billed as a DisplayPort 1.2a or 1.3 to HDMI 2.0a protocol converter. Although the top signaling speed is only HBR2, and zero mention is made of HDR. The product page has been updated at least three times to include the following labels:
• 8/5/2015 - DP 1.2a or DP 1.3 to HDMI 2.0a
• 8/6/2015 - DP to HDMI 2.0a
• 5/1/2017 - DP to HDMI 2.0b
• 5/16/2018 - DP 1.4a to HDMI 2.0
Were there firmware updates or new hardware steppings? Did the feature set change? Were there any changes at all except to the specification numbers in their literature? Probably not, but if we take it at its greatest extents, we could justifiably call the PS176 a DisplayPort 1.4a to HDMI 2.0b protocol converter, just like the PS186. However, the PS186 adds support for "optional" features including:
In other words, exactly what I'd expect from something called a DisplayPort 1.4a to HDMI 2.0b protocol converter. So the the PS176 based adapters are kinda like a DisplayPort 1.4a to HDMI 2.0b adapter, but it really depends on what features you're looking for. And I'd still vote for the Accell U187B-005B as being the one to get.
But all have to consider that those chasis were designed for CPUs Intel promissed to deliver sooner and was not desined to host such heat beast as current i9. And power hungry memory as well. But Apple probably felt that they can loose number of users when won't release machine with 32 GB of RAM now. So it is compromise. They could be more predictive and have backup plan/design but it is easy to be smart afterwards.
Can you tell what is i9’s TDP and what was the TDP the chassis was designed for?
That’s the thing, the only reason I wanted to upgrade was for screen resolution. My current mbp otherwise performs well enough for now. With 5k dead, and my mbp already handling 4K (which is good, not great), I guess I don’t have much reason to upgrade until 8k comes around.
Except 8K is overkill, absolutely, in every meaning of the word. Unless you literally have eyes like an eagle there's no reason to go 8K, other than if you fall for marketing material. At normal viewing distance the pixels are so tiny there's just no point in having so many, you're just wasting computing resources redrawing the screen at that rez. Even 4K is overkill in many regards. A cinema I've been to a number of times with a fairly small screen shows movies at 2K rez. I seriously don't notice a thing.
You don't need 8K. Nobody needs 8K!
Except 8K is overkill, absolutely, in every meaning of the word. Unless you literally have eyes like an eagle there's no reason to go 8K, other than if you fall for marketing material. At normal viewing distance the pixels are so tiny there's just no point in having so many, you're just wasting computing resources redrawing the screen at that rez. Even 4K is overkill in many regards. A cinema I've been to a number of times with a fairly small screen shows movies at 2K rez. I seriously don't notice a thing.
You don't need 8K. Nobody needs 8K!
For most. You don’t know my use case.
I already said that 8k is overkill for me (I’m assuming, I haven’t actually seen 8k). But 4K and 5k are definitely not.
I use a Cintiq which requires a very short viewing distance. Even looking at Apple’s 5k retina display at a Cintiq viewing distance I can (barely) see pixels. I would be satisfied with 5k, but again, it’s dead. 4K isn’t awful but with large Cintiq displays the pixels can be easily seen. This only leaves me 8k to look forward to.
If it’s either too little or too much, when it comes to work I’d rather go for too much.