Mac Studio M2 Ultra- Refresh Rate Monitors

[JaredAppleHead]

Greetings, I'm trying to understand Mac Studio M2 Ultra's compatibility with high refresh rate Monitors. Please read below.

Does that mean that it will never be compatible with a 5K or 6K Monitor above 60Hz? Does it also mean that it is not compatible to run 144hz with a 2K 1440 Monitor?

Thanks!

One external display​

Supports one external display in any one of these configurations:

• One display up to 6K at 60Hz (or 4K at 144Hz) over Thunderbolt
• One display up to 8K at 60Hz (or 4K at 240Hz) over HDMI

Two external displays​

Supports two external displays in any one of these configurations:

• Two displays up to 6K at 60Hz (or 4K at 144Hz) over Thunderbolt
• One display up to 6K at 60Hz (or 4K at 144Hz) over Thunderbolt, and one display up to 8K at 60Hz (or 4K at 240Hz) over HDMI

 

[tstafford]

Does that mean that it will never be compatible with a 5K or 6K Monitor above 60Hz? Does it also mean that it is not compatible to run 144hz with a 2K 1440 Monitor?

That's how I read it.

And interestingly the new M3M MBP also doesn't seem to support 5K Promotion (or higher).

Beginning to think the whole ASD Promotion thing is way far out there.

 

[PaulD-UK]

Out there beyond a wide uptake of USB5/Tthunderbolt 5.

 

[TheBigApple2006]

That's how I read it.

And interestingly the new M3M MBP also doesn't seem to support 5K Promotion (or higher).

Beginning to think the whole ASD Promotion thing is way far out there.

The bottleneck is clearly Thunderbolt 4 and its 40Gbps bus. Thunderbolt 5 paves the way for it, since it shoots up to 80Gbps. But of course, Apple needs to be make Thunderbolt 5 machines before it can produce a 5K/120Hz display, so the whole thing seems to be at least 2025...

 

[kasakka]

Does that mean that it will never be compatible with a 5K or 6K Monitor above 60Hz? Does it also mean that it is not compatible to run 144hz with a 2K 1440 Monitor?

No. Nobody makes 5K/6K panels above 60 Hz atm. Apple does not report their specs in a way that is easy to extrapolate to what might be supported for 1440p-4K 120+ Hz displays. On top of that it can be a display model based crapshoot on what actually works, MacOS is generally terrible when it comes to external monitor handling compared to Windows.

It's all about what bandwidth is supported. Macs support Display Stream Compression to fit high res/high refresh rate displays within the bandwith limitations. This has no visual drawback you can notice.

For example I use two 28" 4K 144 Hz displays from my M2 Max Macbook Pro 16". One connected via USB-C to Displayport adapter and cable, one directly to the HDMI port on the laptop. Both work at 144 Hz, but HDR does not work at above 60 Hz if scaling is used. Why? Who knows.

If DSC was used, 5K @ 120+ Hz would be possible over both USB-C to DP and HDMI on M2/M3 Pro/Max machines. 6K @ 120 Hz would be possible via the HDMI port.