5K2K at 120Hz with Mac Mini M4

[WhisperingBobcat]

LG 34WK95U here. Better HIDPI mode on my 2018 i5 Mac Mini. Looks much better running BetterDisplay mirroring but that is a hack. I'll probably take the M4 back and get stuck with $800 worth of Apple gift cards applied to my account. I don't trust that Apple will ever to anything about this. Why would they? The can just tell us to buy the Pro or an Apple monitor. It just works, live with the limitations or return it.

Edit: Does anyone really know that they will fix this, or is it all speculation? Have they ever fixed anything like this before? I have 4 more days to return the M4 and if I don't, I imagine I'll be living with BetterDisplay permanently.

 

[rezwits]

I used this solution with Better Display on m2 MacBook Air. It worked.

Wow Better Display!! Thanks for that, what an ingenious app(roach)!

 

[brandaopj]

Such a well-balanced Mac, but it’s very particular about the monitors it works with.
So typical of Apple, deciding what monitors users are allowed to use.

 

[Ed M.]

Well, I’m the running the ASD, so I’m not experiencing the issues… I feel the pain some folks are having regarding display and monitor issues though I’m still trying to understand what the issues are other thank perhaps sub-par text appearance. Is it color and image issues as well? I’m actually tempted to plug the mini into a 7 year old LG 60” just for SAGs.

Has it occurred to anybody that the sheer number of display and monitor manufacturers offering thousands of display options and varying specs—ofttimes of questionable quality, lack of standards, or both—are responsible for a lot of the headaches? Or how about some of the seemingly awesome “higher end” models saddled with ports (and port specs) that are actually holding the full potential of the panel back?

Not all displays are the same, even if they *appear* spec’d the same on paper. Build quality, component quality, standards (or lack thereof) all have an effect.

It might be worth keeping in mind that not all displays are meant to be used for the same purpose, and there might be trade offs and compromises. I’ve used a 32” Samsung TV as a monitor and it sucked for that purpose, even though I had the correct HDMI cable and the HDMI input set to “computer”, and that was when I had a Windows Laptop connected. Lots of marketing and hype to be had from the various monitor manufacturers for sure. So YMMV.

 

[apple_lh]

It might be worth keeping in mind that not all displays are meant to be used for the same purpose, and there might be trade offs and compromises. I’ve used a 32” Samsung TV as a monitor and it sucked for that purpose, even though I had the correct HDMI cable and the HDMI input set to “computer”, and that was when I had a Windows Laptop connected. Lots of marketing and hype to be had from the various monitor manufacturers for sure. So YMMV.

I've a brand new Monitor with my Dell U4021QW (2 years old). It has (not should ) to work as expected.

 

[ClassicMartini]

Has it occurred to anybody that the sheer number of display and monitor manufacturers offering thousands of display options and varying specs

The number and type of "wide screen" panels are actually fairly finite, just 'packaged' in many different ways. Apple have the know-how to program the HiDPI appropriate algorithm(s).

But fail to do so...

As you know, It IS a esoteric subject though.

 

[WhisperingBobcat]

The number and type of "wide screen" panels are actually fairly finite, just 'packaged' in many different ways. Apple have the know-how to program the appropriate algorithm(s).

As you know, It IS a esoteric subject though.

My 5k2k screen works better with HIDPI settings with my Mac Mini 2018 i5 than my Mac Mini M4 unless I use mirroring with BetterDisplay. They know what they have done and have so far chosen not to fix it. I have no confidence that Apple will fix this and have about 6 hours to decide to live with running Better Display forever or to return the M4.

 

[davewolfs]

I am using M4 Max and cannot get the same resolution as my M2 Pro. 3840x1620 with high res.

 

[Chancha]

I can plug a Mac to a $30,000 SONY reference display and the scaling and subpixel rendering issue will still be there. I have no idea why that above poster bothered to write an essay on a topic he didn't know or didn't invest to know.

 

[Tapash]

Ok, I really didnt understand all the geeky things about resolution & scaling in macos.
However, I am going to have M4 pro mac mini soon, and need a decent monitor. My concerns are
- Does Dell 4025QW runs at 120HZ on M4?
- Is there any performance issue?
- I am coming from 2019 27" iMac 5k, would I notice any fuzziness in the texts on this screen?

Thanks

 

[davewolfs]

Ok, I really didnt understand all the geeky things about resolution & scaling in macos.
However, I am going to have M4 pro mac mini soon, and need a decent monitor. My concerns are
- Does Dell 4025QW runs at 120HZ on M4?
- Is there any performance issue?
- I am coming from 2019 27" iMac 5k, would I notice any fuzziness in the texts on this screen?

Thanks

Apparently the Dell is the only monitor that works at the correct resolution. The LG monitors can work but require a virtual display which is a bit of a hack and doesn't work for certain things e.g. streaming full screen and screen saver.

Keep in mind CES 2025 is around the corner and LG is expected to drop their 45" and 39" OLED monitors with the new sub pixel layout which could be vastly superior.

 

[Beau Slim]

However, I am going to have M4 pro mac mini soon, and need a decent monitor.

At this point, I would avoid purchase of an ultra-wide for use with macs.

 

[Tapash]

At this point, I would avoid purchase of an ultra-wide for use with macs.

Why?

 

[davewolfs]

BetterDisplay virtual display isn’t a good solution. The mouse periodically locks. The screen saver doesn’t work.

The max resolution right now is too big and the screen looks like garbage without HiDPI.

I can’t justify the Apple Tax if my screen doesn’t work properly and I am not going to go and buy a new one.

 

[Ed M.]

Someone here needs to explain to me how they expect a larger size screen with the same resolution to look as good as a smaller one. And before we start up the flamethrowers, yes, there seems to be a difference between using a TV as a computer display and a monitor intended for the purpose. Can it be done? Sure. Will it be optimal? Unlikely. YMMV.

However, some might find this site useful:

Display distance, retina and dimension calculator.

A display recommended distance and retina calculator..

tools.rodrigopolo.com

Apologies if it’s been linked to already.

That aside, would someone explain to me the issues people are having? I’m using and an ASD and not experiencing any issues at all. However, I may be interested in exploring other options in the future and I’m trying to wrap my head around The issues folks are having. What I do know is that currently Apple has disabled sub-pixel antialiasing but there seems to be a fix:

How to fix the font rendering on macOS 10.14 Mojave

Here is how to make the fonts of macOS Mojave look like High Sierra's!

stanislas.blog

How To Fix MacOS 10.14 Mojave Blurry Fonts | Chris Schiffner's Corner of the Web

"Always thinking one step ahead… Like a carpenter, trying to build stairs. "

www.schiffner.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/p6uin7/pro_tip_subpixel_rendering

 

[davewolfs]

Someone here needs to explain to me how they expect a larger size screen with the same resolution to look as good as a smaller one. And before we start up the flamethrowers, yes, there seems to be a difference between using a TV as a computer display and a monitor intended for the purpose. Can it be done? Sure. Will it be optimal? Unlikely. YMMV.

However, some might find this site useful:

Display distance, retina and dimension calculator.

A display recommended distance and retina calculator..

tools.rodrigopolo.com

Apologies if it’s been linked to already.

That aside, would someone explain to me the issues people are having? I’m using and an ASD and not experiencing any issues at all. However, I may be interested in exploring other options in the future and I’m trying to wrap my head around The issues folks are having. What I do know is that currently Apple has disabled sub-pixel antialiasing but there seems to be a fix:

How to fix the font rendering on macOS 10.14 Mojave

Here is how to make the fonts of macOS Mojave look like High Sierra's!

stanislas.blog

How To Fix MacOS 10.14 Mojave Blurry Fonts | Chris Schiffner's Corner of the Web

"Always thinking one step ahead… Like a carpenter, trying to build stairs. "

www.schiffner.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/p6uin7/pro_tip_subpixel_rendering

This isn’t anything to do with a TV.

Some large widescreen displays use a resolution of 5120x2160.

In weirdo Mac land to use the equivalent of 150% scaling for HiDPI this somehow turns into 1.5x(5120x2160) / 2 which is a resolution of 3840x1620.

For some reason the M4 no longer allows the use of 3840x1620 with HiDPI. It only allows it if the target monitor runs at 120Hz. Many wide screen monitors at this resolution are 60-72Hz.

Other displays are also experiencing the same issues where they cannot run HiDPI mode with appropriate font scaling at their native resolutions.

This does not apply to the M1-M3 series of chips.

 

[Chancha]

Someone here needs to explain to me how they expect a larger size screen with the same resolution to look as good as a smaller one. And before we start up the flamethrowers, yes, there seems to be a difference between using a TV as a computer display and a monitor intended for the purpose. Can it be done? Sure. Will it be optimal? Unlikely. YMMV.

No one made that claim. Even without knowledge of the issue before hand, just reading through this thread it would be quite difficult to have come to that conclusion of this being what people are struggling with.

However, some might find this site useful:

Display distance, retina and dimension calculator.

A display recommended distance and retina calculator..

tools.rodrigopolo.com

Apologies if it’s been linked to already.

While the optimal distance and subsequently the optimal angular resolution of a given display use case scenario is ultimately the matter at hand, but in the context of finding out Macs / macOS limits to output a certain UI resolution we can disregard that.

That aside, would someone explain to me the issues people are having? I’m using and an ASD and not experiencing any issues at all. However, I may be interested in exploring other options in the future and I’m trying to wrap my head around The issues folks are having.

Here is what you have missed. I don't know what Mac you are using with the ASD, but I can use my iMac 5k 2017 as an example. The attached screen shot is the Ventura display settings but alt-click to show all readily available UI resolutions. You can see and I assume you are also using the 2560x1440 default. This for many people is the optimal setting, with consideration of typical desktop sitting distance in mind. But let's for the sake of argument assume you are sitting much closer than someone with normal vision, or you absolutely need more UI real estate, or you want a 1:1 UI for full screen UHD 4k content, then you would want a 3840x2160 UI option. But that option is missing, because there is a limit in how the dGPU of this Mac and it is in the horizontal pixel of a single frame buffer, judging by the 3200x1800 option being the ceiling we can assume the limit is 6400px wide. The presence of 5120x2880 doesn't mean the limit is 10240px as this is simply the 1:1 native res of the 5k panel. All the rest of the UI res on this list are "retina" 2x render except when it says "low resolution".

Now try to imagine the given limitation is moved to an other external display with some other combination of size and resolution thus another pixel density (or scientifically, angular resolution). In order to get to the optimal setting one would likely run into similar limits. The most typical scenario is probably >3840x2160 on 27"-32" displays.

One could try to use BetterDisplay or other hacks to find out if the 6400px of this iMac 5k is indeed a hardware limit or otherwise could be broken through by software means. The matter of discussion in this thread on on the M4 / M4 Pro chips on the new mini, is what's the out of the box limit and also what's the post-hack limit.

What I do know is that currently Apple has disabled sub-pixel antialiasing but there seems to be a fix:

How to fix the font rendering on macOS 10.14 Mojave

Here is how to make the fonts of macOS Mojave look like High Sierra's!

stanislas.blog

How To Fix MacOS 10.14 Mojave Blurry Fonts | Chris Schiffner's Corner of the Web

"Always thinking one step ahead… Like a carpenter, trying to build stairs. "

www.schiffner.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/p6uin7/pro_tip_subpixel_rendering

Subpixel rendering behaviour indeed was drastically changed during Mojave due to MS's ClearType licensing to Apple expiring, and Apple probably thought it no longer necessary to implement because the shift to "retina" class displays across its own products' internal screen. There are band-aid style workarounds but none of them address the fundamental issue, the actual colors of the aliasing, or let's say the user has little control over it. Therefore, in the context of this thread, some people want to use a 2x buffer, sometimes even virtual, to combat the sub-optimal rendering, and this seems to be the part the M4 for unknown reasons actually inferior than M1 M2 M3.

 

[waydabber]

@Chancha, fyi: just looking at a 2020 5K iMac here - it happily offers resolutions beyond 10000px wide (5000px+ HiDPI) if configured accordingly (these are not available by default). They also work fine.

For example (two examples from the mode list):

```
191 - 5088x2862 HiDPI 60Hz 10bpc
475 - 10176x5724 60Hz 10bpc
```

Interestingly in this regard Intel Macs with AMD GPUs were far ahead of current Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[WhisperingBobcat]

BetterDisplay virtual display isn’t a good solution. The mouse periodically locks. The screen saver doesn’t work.

The max resolution right now is too big and the screen looks like garbage without HiDPI.

I can’t justify the Apple Tax if my screen doesn’t work properly and I am not going to go and buy a new one.

I am using BetterDisplay and think it works well enough that I didn't return my m4. There are some workarounds for the screen saver, see BetterDisplay->Settings (Gear Icon)->Displays->Overview->Additional Virtual Screen Settings. I turned them all on. They aren't perfect but I don't get any screen saver freezes now.

I haven't had any mouse freezes, using Logitech M720 mouse in bluetooth mode and I have a unifying receiver to try if I have issues. I don't do anything that is CPU intensive.

 

[davewolfs]

I am using BetterDisplay and think it works well enough that I didn't return my m4. There are some workarounds for the screen saver, see BetterDisplay->Settings (Gear Icon)->Displays->Overview->Additional Virtual Screen Settings. I turned them all on. They aren't perfect but I don't get any screen saver freezes now.

I haven't had any mouse freezes, using Logitech M720 mouse in bluetooth mode and I have a unifying receiver to try if I have issues. I don't do anything that is CPU intensive.

Thank you. I didn't see those options. That fixes the screensaver. There is still an issue when playing content with Apple TV.

I am not sure what causes the stuttering with the mouse it's not anything intensive really. A click or shake usually get it going again. Very thankful regardless for BetterDisplay and happy to be paying for the software. It fills a huge gap in MacOS.

 

[Ed M.]

I’m exploring monitor options as well and came across this YouTube video:

EDIT: I currently have the ASD which is absolutely perfect. I’ll upgrade if Apple releases a new upgraded model and hand this down to an older relative. Still, I’m exploring other options.

 

[Ed M.]

Glad some folks are getting closer to an acceptable solution to the scaling issues and a big part of that seems to be to utilizing BetterDisplay for non-retina display scaling.

Interestingly, as I was searching the web to see if anyone came up with other workarounds (or explanations), I discovered that there was a similar issue with the M1 Macs and scaling. I grabbed some posts from another forum discussion regarding non-retina display scaling and it seems like BetterDisplay was the fix that emerged at that time as well:

Post #1:

“Here's what worked for me to solve the 4K monitor scaling issue on my M1 Mac:

I installed BetterDisplay, and on that app, I went to settings > displays: I noticed that the native resolution there was incorrect (1920 x 1080) so I changed it to the right one (3840 x 2160) and applied the changes.


Once that happened, macOS finally recognized the monitor as 4K: scaling started working natively in the System Preferences, just like in any Retina display, without needing BetterDisplay.”

Post #2:

“I also was struggling hard with this issue. I had this problem while connecting a Samsung Viewfinity S8 4K display directly via USB-C. I was using BetterDisplay ... The highest HiDPI Resolution I could get was 1080P.

When using HDMI as connection, I could select all resolutions as HiDPI (I wanted to set my external Monitor to 2560 × 1440 HiDPI).

The solution was to go into BetterDisplay Settings for my Monitor and set a Configuration Overwrite for the Native Panel Pixel Resolution (which was shown as 720P). After entering 3840 x 2160 Pixels and rebooting, I could select all HiDPI resolutions also with my USB-C Connection. Perhaps this helps somebody having the same issue.”

Post #3:

“GUYS! just got it to work and finally my display looks amazing with my mac mini m1!

My monitor is a gigabyte with 1440p resolution and is connected with USB C to DP. This is what I did:

1.- installed better display
2.- go to settings/displays
3.- in resolution scaling section:

• set native resolution to 3840x2160(4k) (yes higher than my display's native resolution)
• set default resolution to 3840x2160(4k again) and 144hz (my display higher refresh rate capable)
• click on ''show advanced settings for native smooth scaling'' and check mark ''add a near-native hidpi variant for the native resolution''

4.- apply and restart the mac

5.- Go to system settings/displays (mac settings, not betterdisplay settings) and check mark ''show all resolutions''

6.- scroll and select your hidpi resolution!

With my native 1440p display now I can select 2528x1422 hidipi at 144hz and it's AMAZING!


Screenshots:

 

[davewolfs]

Glad some folks are getting closer to an acceptable solution to the scaling issues and a big part of that seems to be to utilizing BetterDisplay for non-retina display scaling.

Interestingly, as I was searching the web to see if anyone came up with other workarounds (or explanations), I discovered that there was a similar issue with the M1 Macs and scaling. I grabbed some posts from another forum discussion regarding non-retina display scaling and it seems like BetterDisplay was the fix that emerged at that time as well:

Post #1:

“Here's what worked for me to solve the 4K monitor scaling issue on my M1 Mac:

I installed BetterDisplay, and on that app, I went to settings > displays: I noticed that the native resolution there was incorrect (1920 x 1080) so I changed it to the right one (3840 x 2160) and applied the changes.


Once that happened, macOS finally recognized the monitor as 4K: scaling started working natively in the System Preferences, just like in any Retina display, without needing BetterDisplay.”

Post #2:

“I also was struggling hard with this issue. I had this problem while connecting a Samsung Viewfinity S8 4K display directly via USB-C. I was using BetterDisplay ... The highest HiDPI Resolution I could get was 1080P.

When using HDMI as connection, I could select all resolutions as HiDPI (I wanted to set my external Monitor to 2560 × 1440 HiDPI).

The solution was to go into BetterDisplay Settings for my Monitor and set a Configuration Overwrite for the Native Panel Pixel Resolution (which was shown as 720P). After entering 3840 x 2160 Pixels and rebooting, I could select all HiDPI resolutions also with my USB-C Connection. Perhaps this helps somebody having the same issue.”

Post #3:

“GUYS! just got it to work and finally my display looks amazing with my mac mini m1!

My monitor is a gigabyte with 1440p resolution and is connected with USB C to DP. This is what I did:

1.- installed better display
2.- go to settings/displays
3.- in resolution scaling section:

• set native resolution to 3840x2160(4k) (yes higher than my display's native resolution)
• set default resolution to 3840x2160(4k again) and 144hz (my display higher refresh rate capable)
• click on ''show advanced settings for native smooth scaling'' and check mark ''add a near-native hidpi variant for the native resolution''

4.- apply and restart the mac

5.- Go to system settings/displays (mac settings, not betterdisplay settings) and check mark ''show all resolutions''

6.- scroll and select your hidpi resolution!

With my native 1440p display now I can select 2528x1422 hidipi at 144hz and it's AMAZING!


Screenshots:

View attachment 2466627

View attachment 2466628

View attachment 2466629

Your posts are like ChatGPT when it’s hallucinating.

 

[Chancha]

Your posts are like ChatGPT when it’s hallucinating.

And made me realize my long reply above was useless. He didn’t seem to want to get the point of M4 behaving differently than M1, and proceed to made that long of a cross referencing from threads with M1 solutions……

 

[ClassicMartini]

I (also?) posted clear and detailed explanations with screen shots back on page 13.

Parallel track...?