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cosmicjoke

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 3, 2011
484
1
Portland, OR
since the new rMBP has thunderbolt 2, which I think has displayport 1.2, i was curious if anyone had tried daisy chaining non thunderbolt mini displayport displays. I have two U2713H displays that support daisy chaining, but I can't use the feature, as I have the early '13 Ivy rMBP, but am curious if some day I will be able to take advantage of that feature when I eventually upgrade, as it would be kindah tight...
 
since the new rMBP has thunderbolt 2, which I think has displayport 1.2, i was curious if anyone had tried daisy chaining non thunderbolt mini displayport displays. I have two U2713H displays that support daisy chaining, but I can't use the feature, as I have the early '13 Ivy rMBP, but am curious if some day I will be able to take advantage of that feature when I eventually upgrade, as it would be kindah tight...

Did you have any luck with this?
 
Apple released an update to enable MST on Thunderbolt 2 ports so In theory this should work...Prior to this update only Thunderbolt Displays could be daisy chained in OSX. In Windows, this worked regardless.
 
Apple released an update to enable MST on Thunderbolt 2 ports so In theory this should work...Prior to this update only Thunderbolt Displays could be daisy chained in OSX. In Windows, this worked regardless.

When, I'm not seeing anything in firmware updates stating anything with MST. Also in 10.9.3 beta they have only enabled MST for 2 desktop cards, nothing for the Retina
 
When, I'm not seeing anything in firmware updates stating anything with MST. Also in 10.9.3 beta they have only enabled MST for 2 desktop cards, nothing for the Retina

Well in order to support 4k monitors under OSX, they needed to enabled Multi Stream Transport (MST) so I was assuming this would enable daisy chaining and spilters to work within OSX on non Thunderbolt Displays. This is only an educated guess, though. Sorry.

There is no official notes on the update but people have been noticing..

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1713876/
 
Did you have any luck with this?

nah, i still have the early '13 15" w/ thunderbolt 1, i have the two daisy chaining u2713h displays but unfortunately I have to use both TB ports for the moment.... i did get hdmi working actually at 1440p w/ mavericks but i could not get the script to work for hdmi for RGB color /shrug (the display overrides work fine w/ mDP)
 
MST is supposed to be enabled on the rMBP as well under 10.9.2. It enables 60hz 4k output on the MacBook Pro as well.
 
MST is supposed to be enabled on the rMBP as well under 10.9.2. It enables 60hz 4k output on the MacBook Pro as well.

I dunno, I've read about MST and 60hz 4k yadda, but this thread is more about two 1440p displays (ideally say dell u2713h displays) to thunderbolt 2... would be nice to see a confirmation and maybe a picture of it being done
 
this is a really important thread for me, as I'm trying to use 2 x Dell U2713h in a daisy chain.

I bought the, because I need to use the D-DVI to connect a second machine to them like cosmicjoke does which the Apple TB displays can't do, plus there is no way I'm buying a new MacBook pro (as I have done) or a new macpro with TB2 and USB3 to then connect to a legacy looking display that also downgrades thunderbolt2 to thunderbolt1 and usb3 to usb2 at premium prices.

Like comsicjoke I need to use both thunderbolt ports to power both displays, which is a real problem for me as I also need a firewire 800 connection, and the only way I can get this is to use a thunberbolt -> firewire converter, which I can't use if I'm powering both monitors.

I'm pretty frustrated with this whole situation as while I didn't ask apple directly, and with hindsight I should have done, all the documentation suggests that the new mbp retinas support displayport 1.2 - which the dell U2713H also support, so on paper it should work just fine, but it appears to be a software limitation that is being held back instead of a technical limitation
 
this is a really important thread for me, as I'm trying to use 2 x Dell U2713h in a daisy chain.

I bought the, because I need to use the D-DVI to connect a second machine to them like cosmicjoke does which the Apple TB displays can't do, plus there is no way I'm buying a new MacBook pro (as I have done) or a new macpro with TB2 and USB3 to then connect to a legacy looking display that also downgrades thunderbolt2 to thunderbolt1 and usb3 to usb2 at premium prices.

Like comsicjoke I need to use both thunderbolt ports to power both displays, which is a real problem for me as I also need a firewire 800 connection, and the only way I can get this is to use a thunberbolt -> firewire converter, which I can't use if I'm powering both monitors.

I'm pretty frustrated with this whole situation as while I didn't ask apple directly, and with hindsight I should have done, all the documentation suggests that the new mbp retinas support displayport 1.2 - which the dell U2713H also support, so on paper it should work just fine, but it appears to be a software limitation that is being held back instead of a technical limitation

While this doesn't solve everyone's problem, you can purchase a Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock. It has two thunderbolt ports. one in and one out. So one monitor connects to the dock and the other monitor your second thunderbolt port.

I got the dock because like you I needed FW800 support and didn't want to use the spare thunderbolt port just for firewire.

Right now I have an ASUS PA279Q (connected to dock), and an old 23" Apple Cinema display (using other thunderbolt port) connected to the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock. I have both monitors connected and my late '13 15" rMBP (w/ 750m). So three displays running.

The Belkin is kind of expensive but it gave me extra USB 3 ports and more importantly FW800. It's still thunderbolt 1. I hope they make one that supports thunderbolt2 with 3 ports to daisy chain more monitors or other thunderbolt devices.

If I need to connect a thunderbolt device, I'll just unplug the 23" cinema display.

but yeah, Apple really needs to get on this.
 
this is a really important thread for me, as I'm trying to use 2 x Dell U2713h in a daisy chain.

I bought the, because I need to use the D-DVI to connect a second machine to them like cosmicjoke does which the Apple TB displays can't do, plus there is no way I'm buying a new MacBook pro (as I have done) or a new macpro with TB2 and USB3 to then connect to a legacy looking display that also downgrades thunderbolt2 to thunderbolt1 and usb3 to usb2 at premium prices.

Like comsicjoke I need to use both thunderbolt ports to power both displays, which is a real problem for me as I also need a firewire 800 connection, and the only way I can get this is to use a thunberbolt -> firewire converter, which I can't use if I'm powering both monitors.

I'm pretty frustrated with this whole situation as while I didn't ask apple directly, and with hindsight I should have done, all the documentation suggests that the new mbp retinas support displayport 1.2 - which the dell U2713H also support, so on paper it should work just fine, but it appears to be a software limitation that is being held back instead of a technical limitation

Oh wait, so you actually have the haswell 15" rMBP and are confirming it does not work? What happens when you try to daisychain, is it mirroring? That's a real pisser, I don't suppose you've tried bootcamp to verify that it's an OS X issue?

But yah, I've never even tried daisychaining w/ my u2713h displays as I own the old early '13 ivy rMBP and have to use both thunderbolt ports as it has displayport 1.1a, but was kind of hoping that my next rig would be able to daisy chain 'em... seemed good on paper like it would work w/ TB 2... There's no way on earth I'd ever use Thunderbolt displays, I have a GTX 680 SLI gaming rig, so apple displays are never going to be a viable option...

Alternatively, have you tried HDMI w/ your u2713h on your rMBP? my early '13 15" will output 1440p but i can't get the override to force RGB mode to work with it :/
 
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just to confirm I'm using the very latest 13'' MBP retina 11.1 i7 and the display port 1.2 functionality does not work at all.

I have to use 1 x thunderbolt to one display
1 x hdmi to the second display


current latest stable mac 10.9.2 patches (no beta/pre-release updates)
 
just to confirm I'm using the very latest 13'' MBP retina 11.1 i7 and the display port 1.2 functionality does not work at all.

I have to use 1 x thunderbolt to one display
1 x hdmi to the second display


current latest stable mac 10.9.2 patches (no beta/pre-release updates)

Have you retried with the final release of 10.9.3?
 
I've not tried it with 10.9.3 as I've no reason to, there is nothing in the release notes about any enabling of display port 1.2 , so I saw no reason to unplug and reconfigure my monitors in the blind hope that they may add a major functionality change, but not document it, that seemed unlikely.
 
just tried this with the current 10.9.3 release for sport,

still fails, so still no sign of apple actually enabling display port 1.2 capabilities.
 
to confirm more clearly - it's still mirroring displays as opposed to showing them as 2 different displays
 
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