Considering there is no adapter on the market that can turn two TB2 ports into a single TB3 stream, nor a display that supports both MST and single cable 5K input, I don't think it's as easy to make it backwards compatible as you make it sound.
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LG UltraFine 5K Display Works at Lower Resolution With Older Macs Using Adapter
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You are correct , I meant they could have added additional ports to the display to support their exsisting products still on sale . No reason it has 1xTB3 apart from being a partner product to the new MacBook Pro.
regarding iMac - yes, would be probably better solution, if they come up with a new one... and most imporant, if the new 5k one supports display passthrough...
Only if you're planning on upgrading your computer soon. Otherwise seems a bit pointless, you're paying a premium for 5k that you're not using and prices will continue to fall. Unless you have fallen in love with its design...
The Dell UP2715K supports input of 2 Displayport 1.2, which means iMac 5K 2015 and nMP can actually use it at 5K and the OS X interface scaling works with it. This new LG could have at least included that ability, and then each individual Displayport on the unit can then act as solo input for sub-4K DP Macs, or any other computer for the matter. This could have made the product 20 times more attractive, even for non Mac users.
I repeat: making a 5K display support TB2 and TB3 is difficult if not impossible. When we see the teardowns come through we will probably all sorts of trickery going on in the LG 5K.
Heh, I can run a 5K monitor with my 2008 Mac Pro if I put a newer ~$250 GPU in. But there isn't much point for me unless I want to laugh at 2013 Mac Pro owners.
I know Apple is notorious for the "Apple hardware tax," but their all-in-ones (iMac and rMBP) are often great deals when you consider the display you get. The 5K iMac was pretty OP when it first came out... Too bad Apple never updates their stuff anymore.
I know Apple is notorious for the "Apple hardware tax," but their all-in-ones (iMac and rMBP) are often great deals when you consider the display you get. The 5K iMac was pretty OP when it first came out... Too bad Apple never updates their stuff anymore.
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I am very curious as to how they managed 5K 60Hz with a single cable as well, my bet is that it uses similar trick as the Dell in taking dual streams of DP 1.2. The thing is that with the MBP2016, with a single TB3 connection you are at max getting DP 1.2 as Intel decided to not put 1.3 in TB3 specs yet, despite the MBP already using Skylake.
Now if my guess is right, the difference is that the Dell exposes the dual links in form of 2 user accessible DP ports at the back panel, whereas the LG simply internally runs the dual DP 1.2 streams over a single TB3 stream. If that is the case, it would mean LG or some other manufacturer could in theory make a board which accepts both dual-DP1.2, and a TB3 input. But I do agree with you we may need to wait for the teardown to happen, as there may be Apple trickery going on, similar to how they managed Thunderbolt display daisy chain.
Most 5K monitors just take two DisplayPort cables. I don't see what the problem is. https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-UP2715K-27-Inch-LED-Lit/dp/B00OKSFXZU
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Yes, I find it strange that it doesn't also have regular dual DisplayPort as an input option.
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Yes but it's still only 60Hz...sitting here with my two 144Hz monitors. If I turn down to 60Hz, it all gets noticeably slower.
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The 5K iMac should be able to run this at 5K no problem. Not sure about the 4K.
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The 5K iMac should be able to run this at 5K no problem. Not sure about the 4K.
A 5K display by itself used to cost more than an entire iMac, but that was only when they were first introduced. Also, you can't / could never use a 5K iMac as a standalone display, which shot down my plans... But yeah, the iMac is clearly the better deal iff you want to use its computing hardware.
If LG were to release a 5K display on their own there would be zero chance that it doesn't have DP and HDMI.
The rest of the monitor industry almost rely exclusively on DisplayPort as a standard, since it is the only connection that can tackle the higher bandwidth requirement of 4k/5k or high Hz use cases. If this display were Apple branded it would have been understandable, having exclusively TB3 can be seen as a drive to push the TB3 standard, and being Apple branded companion for MBP2016 and future Macs that supports it. They could have shoved in a few USB-A ports and ethernet or SD crd slots to basically shut up half if not all of the dongle hell opinions, albeit with an ultra expensive TB "hub".
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https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207448
That's not what the documents say. They say you can use TB3 to TB2 adapter with the 2015 iMac and get 4k out of it, not 5k.
Certainly was... it's still in the spec too...
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP719?locale=en_GB&viewlocale=en_US
I have that model and currently use a Cinema 30 inch display @1x 2560x1600... waiting until the 5k situation is sorted properly before I invest again. I was really hoping it was sorted now but how "future-proof" will the LG 5k display be?
My Cinema 30 is 7 years old.
Any word on whether the camera, microphone, speakers, and USB-C ports function when the 5k display is used through the Thunderbolt 2 adapter or do we just get the display?
A MacMini is often just used as a server, and all you want is to be able to plug in a monitor sometimes - without having an additional monitor on your desk. If it displays a picture, it's usable for that purpose.
I'm not sure it will be quite the same. On an iMac and MBPro, the local computer scales the image by first rendering an enormous pixel doubled version, then downscales that to an output resolution of 5K (or 2880x1800 for the 15" MBPro). So the final video feed sent to the display is still the full resolution - in this case it would need to be 5K. All the scaling is done in software.
By contrast, for these displays, the display feed itself will be limited to 4K, and the screen will instead have to upscale it to the native 5K output. I think the result will be less sharp. However, it may not be a noticeable difference due to the very high resolution (low pixel size) of the 5K display.
The only way to tell would be to compare the side-by-side output of a new MBPro and an older MBPro both set at 4K resolution. Although the icon/text size will be identical, I think the new MBPro will appear sharper because it will render a pixel-doubled 8K version locally, and downscale this to 5K in the feed.
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I am afraid the answer is only the display plus audio/speakers via DP 1.2.
Why? Because TB2 does not support USB ("USB-C mode; i.e. USB 3.1 Gen 2/1 + native DP 1.2 in Alternate Mode")
TB2 tunnels DP 1.2. And does not offer power delivery, of course.
That's why I prefer standard interfaces like DisplayPort and USB though. It was the same old saga with USB and FireWire, the former was more compatible the later was better technically. TB is great but as an additional port not as the only port unless they can work out the backward compatibility issues. Also, why doesn't the display come with alternative connectivity built in?
MBP 15" 2015, iMac 5k 2014+, and trash can Mac Pros all can output 5k 60Hz but ONLY with use of 2 mDP cables. These are the only Macs that shipped with 2+ TB2 ports, which by spec supports DP 1.2 per cable, and 5k 60Hz requies the bandwidth of 2 such streams, on top of the dGPU being powerful enough to drive them.
The catch with this new LG display is that either Apple or LG decided to only accept such bandwidth through a single TB3 connection.
Ummm, because neither of those connections offer enough bandwidth to drive the display properly obviously.
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You don't seem to get Thunderbolt 3 ports at all...
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Considering all iMacs and all MacBook Pro's are 60hz I don't think this is an issue for anyone.
Yup - Thunderbolt 3 only supports DisplayPort 1.2 which can't support single-stream 5k@60Hz - but it can cram two DisplayPort 1.2 streams down a single cable.
Once upon a time I saw this confirmed on an Intel website, but I can't find that again, although if you read between the lines on this (PDF) its pretty clear.
AFAIK the LG/Apple Ultrafine is the only single-cable 5k display on the market, so you're kinda extrapolating from a single data point there... The other 5k displays are the Dell (which seems to be discontinued) and HP which both use dual DisplayPort 1.2.
Plus (see above) since single-stream 5k@60Hz needs DisplayPort 1.3 and Thunderbolt only supports DisplayPort 1.2 then its almost certain that the LG is also MST once you get past the Thunderbolt controller.
Unless there's a bone fide display designing engineer in the audience who wants to enlighten us, there's absolutely no reason to believe that it is technically impossible to make a 5k display that can run off both TB3 and dual DisplayPort.
In any case, they could have added a single MiniDisplayPort input that just supported lower resolutions.
Most other mid/high-end displays support multiple inputs (including the Dell 5k and LG's own USB-C 4k display) - its always been a weak spot of Apple's displays, which they seem to have passed on to LG.