M1 MBA and external 4k monitor scaling

[m0nkeyb0y]

Looking into a m1 Air, which will often be hooked up to a 4k monitor doing non-integer scaling. Anyone had any slowdown issues with that? Will the 7 vs 8-core GPU make a difference? Will 8 vs 16 Gb RAM make a difference in the Air?

TIA

 

[steve217]

I have an 8/8/8 M1 Air with a 27” LG 27UL850-W 4K external monitor running at 2560x1440.

I’ve noticed no slowdowns and only VERY minor text fuzziness.

 

[xraydoc]

M1 MacBook Air. 32" Dell 4K running at 3008x1620 (or something like that -- not connected at the moment). Performance is excellent. I see zero perceptible difference between 2x scaling and fractional scaling.

 

[jdb8167]

Looking into a m1 Air, which will often be hooked up to a 4k monitor doing non-integer scaling. Anyone had any slowdown issues with that? Will the 7 vs 8-core GPU make a difference? Will 8 vs 16 Gb RAM make a difference in the Air?

TIA

Using a 24" LG 4K display, usually running 1920x1080 but I also switch to 2560x1440 frequently. I've never noticed any performance difference between the two. Usually I'm using the external display with the M1 MacBook Air in clamshell mode. My M1 MBA is an 8-core GPU with 16 GB of RAM but I doubt either of those will make any difference.

Running sudo powermetrics --samplers gpu_power from the command line shows how much GPU power is used and what the GPU active frequency is. When running 1920x1080, in the Finder, I see about 100 MHz with GPU power at about 150 mW to 170 mW when doing things like switching desktops or using Mission Control. For 2560x1440 I see about 120 MHz and up to about 200 mW. Nothing particularly significant though fractional scaling is a bit more power hungry.