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Can a MBP power dual 27" Apple Cinema Displays?
- Thread starter skinnylegs
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there's no hardware that currently let you do that. it would require some kind of adapter because without anything a display must go at the end of the thunderbolt chain.
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Really?
You're talking about Oranges, when the OP asked about Grapes and then your info about Oranges is incorrect as well.
No - currently, Thunderbolt only supports one external monitor (I believe the laptop screen is also connected via Thunderbolt).
while thunderbolt supports two bidirectional 10GBit/s channels only one can be used for driving a screen, the other is a PCI express channel and cannot be used for driving a display unless a graphics card is added.
2x27" is a little too much but the new GPUs support Display Port 1.2 which may or may not work with this whole mini DP Thunderbolt thing. Anyway DP 1.2 supports daisy chaining and two 24" displays should work. It doesn't have to be just one display at the end.
Also adding an external GPU should help make it work.
Also adding an external GPU should help make it work.
Thunderbolt is based on DP 1.1a.
Agreed, but it's not a bandwidth issue. Your original post was confusing.
It is. Thunderbolt can only provide 10Gb/s via its DisplayPort. Two 27" ACDs require more than that. The other 10Gb/s is for PCIe. With some kind of an external GPU it might work but with current equipment, this is not possible.
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We don't know how the display port side things will behave when intel upgrades to optical light peak. It could be bi directional 100gb/s an one for mini display port an one for thunderbolt however it is more likely that the spec for display port will have to updated first. I think what I have said is correct, I like to keep up to date but don't always get it right.
We don't know how the display port side things will behave when intel upgrades to optical light peak. It could be bi directional 100gb/s an one for mini display port an one for thunderbolt however it is more likely that the spec for display port will have to updated first. I think what I have said is correct, I like to keep up to date but don't always get it right.
It will most likely require a new controller. Your USB 2.0 port won't become USB 3.0 if you use a USB 3.0 cable. I haven't seen an interface where the controller would be able to provide better performance than the available cables. Otherwise Intel would have demoed it with optical already, and show that it really gets 100Gb/s.
As long as they need less than 10Gb/s of bandwidth, it should work fine. Two 1920x1200 monitors should work as they require ~9.8Gb/s.
Last I heard Intel was intending to create optical cables that have the optical transceiver built into the end of each cable. Therefore you would not need a new controller to see improved speeds...
Sweet! That's one thing I've been wondering about. Are there existing adaptors for this to work with VGA/DVI? Or is that something we're still waiting on?
There is no device that lets you do this, yet. You will need a some kind of hub or a display that supports daisy-chaining, when they become available.