Dell-U3818DW Display Controls

[haralds]

I just ordered a Dell-U3818DW for my 5,1 to be driven by a Radeon HD-7970.
I suspect, there is no 3rd party tool to control display brightness etc. from the Mac?

Any other tips apart from getting a minDP to DP cable?

 

[h9826790]

I just ordered a Dell-U3818DW for my 5,1 to be driven by a Radeon HD-7970.
I suspect, there is no 3rd party tool to control display brightness etc. from the Mac?

Any other tips apart from getting a minDP to DP cable?

Depends on how you want to do it.

Real control of the monitor brightness is much harder, it’s possible to do that via some extra command line software (if your monitor support it).

https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl

Alter the MacOS output to make the screen "looks" dimmer is very easy, plenty of free software in AppStore can do it. e.g.

https://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/brightness-slider/id456624497?l=en&mt=12

But since the real LED back light brightness never change, the contrast will be affected when you “dim” the screen (especially in very dark environment).

The original package of the 7970 doesn’t include a mDP to DP adaptor? I have this one in my 7950's package. If you have this adaptor, then you don't need a new cable (the DP-DP cable is already included in the Dell-U3818DW's package).

 

[bsbeamer]

I've been using this adapter for years, usually around $5-6:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003N3DTKY

Are there any monitor/color calibration tools that have the control that you're looking for via menu shortcuts?

 

[haralds]

I have the system running under High Sierra. It detects the correct resolution, but I see sporadic crashing.
I cannot recover from sleep without restarting.

Any ideas what could be causing this?
[doublepost=1517455134][/doublepost]Working fine under Windows. So it does not appear to be a hardware issue.

 

[h9826790]

I have the system running under High Sierra. It detects the correct resolution, but I see sporadic crashing.
I cannot recover from sleep without restarting.

Any ideas what could be causing this?
[doublepost=1517455134][/doublepost]Working fine under Windows. So it does not appear to be a hardware issue.

Is your 7970 flashed?

 

[haralds]

Yes. But that should not affect running, once you are in the driver mode.

Rock solid under BootCamp.

 

[h9826790]

Yes. But that should not affect running, once you are in the driver mode.

Rock solid under BootCamp.

Unfortunately, that can make the difference because flashed 7970 use different framebuffer in MacOS.

 

[Fl0r!an]

I'm using this tool for brightness controll on my Hackintosh, works perfectly fine with my Dell display. An additinal Clover patch maps my Apple keyboard's function keys accordingly, but I don't think there's nice way to do this on a genuine Mac.

Regarding your instabilities: Did you flash it yourself? The macOS issues sound more like a dying card to me, but I'd expect the same behavior in Windows.
If you flashed it yourself I'd try running the card in pure PC/VBIOS mode and see if the crashs still happen.

 

[haralds]

It was also now crashing with the 27" Cinema. After much tearing out of hair, it looks like corruption of one of the boot disks with High Sierra Beta (I have High Sierra Releasee, Beta, and Sierra plus Windows 10.) Why that would hard kill the system booted from other disks with just a click sound is beyond me I have never seen that before. I wiped that beta disk and the system appears to be working correctly with the Cinema display. Will test more before trying the new monitor again.
10 hours into debugging this.

 

[haralds]

Just to complete the thread and iterate the agony. I got things working.
- The initial issue corrupted a second boot drive with the High Sierra beta which kept taking all systems down.
- After I reinitialized this volume (beta, not backed up - this will be painful), my Sierra account worked fine and i was able to boot into High Sierra and log into my Admin account (always have second account!) But my personal account on High Sierra blitzed out. After too many hours of poking around, I decided that there was something corrupted I would not find.
- I duplicated my account from Sierra essentially replacing the High Sierra account, rebooted and let it upgrade.

Everything is working. Very suspect are HDMI audio kext and SoundFlower. Might try them with a trash account - tomorrow.

For now, I love this screen!

 

[haralds]

BTW, unlike the Apple Cinema display, this display does not show the first part of the boot using mDP. My card has been Apple EFI flashed. It does show with HDMI, but that limits the display resolution and refresh.

 

[vddobrev]

I'm using this tool for brightness controll on my Hackintosh, works perfectly fine with my Dell display. An additinal Clover patch maps my Apple keyboard's function keys accordingly, but I don't think there's nice way to do this on a genuine Mac.

I have the NativeDisplayBrightness app working on my genuine Mac mini 2014 with Dell P2715Q.

 

[h9826790]

I'm using this tool for brightness controll on my Hackintosh, works perfectly fine with my Dell display. An additinal Clover patch maps my Apple keyboard's function keys accordingly, but I don't think there's nice way to do this on a genuine Mac.

Thanks for sharing about this tool.

I also confirm it works on the cMP with my CHG90. Also, by using Karabiner to make the F1 and F2 always work as standard F1 and F2. This will allow the Apple keyboard able to control the monitor brightness identical to the native way without disturbing the remaining special features keys' functions.

https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

 

[adonis3k]

What is your volume like on your monitor when at 1%? it is really quiet or too loud than its supposed to be?

Dell U3818DW Volume?