Hi, I am about to get the new M1 MBP 8GB and 512 SSD and I will use it with an external 4k monitor, and I wonder how the experience is in terms of animations, etc.
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MBP M1 owners, how's the experience with an external monitor?
- Thread starter Kraizelburg
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Crazy good. On the 4K monitor the M1 was so much smoother with YouTube, Apple TV, Photoshop, etc than the Radeon dGPU. I was shaking my head. For the first time in years I don’t glaring fans and throttling. This feels like a pure Mac experience instead of a computer that is crippled by Intel and AMD inefficiencies.
Wow! glad to hear! then I just made my mind now, sadly here in Spain M1 with 512 GB supply is still short.
What about RAM management is yours 16GB or 8GB, some people say that 8GB RAM with the new chip is like having 16GB with intel one.
Get the 16GB. The people saying 8GB feels good are also saying there’s only 2GB free and lots of swapping to virtual memory. The disk is fast so virtual memory today is not like virtual memory in the old days. But if you have apps that need real RAM then you should always get it.
Yeah, a lot of people are saying a lot of different things about memory. Perez is dead on in his facts, but not sure about his conclusion.. It is sorta like, seems to do well, but... lol.
Anyway, yes, Perez is right (I have M1 8 gb) that 1) it always seems fast fast fast, 2) it always seems to hover around 6 gb used, 3) it seems to cache a fair amount (case files about 1.2 gb), 4) it seems to reserve about 1.7 gb for the system, 5) it reports a fair about of swap used in an hour... and a lot of those things would worry me except...
No matter what I do, load in memory hogs from the past like YouTube, photoshop, run Apple TV, download movies, while playing music and editing in MS Word, I can't seem to budge the needle for the worse, in fact the things I think should cause memory problems often causes the memory pressure to go down (activity monitor). it is always in the green. always. I can't get it to spike up to yellow or red and Perez has me watching lol...and btw, I can get it to spike up on my Intel MacBook Pro 16 with 16 gb. No clue what is going on.
All this means is.. how M1 uses memory is indeed different from Intel. I don't think anyone really knows how yet (besides Apple). I know that sounds like voodoo magic talk, and I typically hate that, but like I said, I can't get this machine to bog down or have memory problems like I can with my intel Macs. I don't know what all this means in the long term, don't know if all that fast swapping is good for the SSD or not, don't understand why it seems to be more memory efficient, but my own observations are that it does indeed seem to be different and that so far, no matter what I throw at it, 8 gb seems fine.
Shrugs. Wish I understood why. So for now people who are basing their experience on intel Macs will say get 16 gb. and they may be right. If I had been willing to wait for my M1 I probably would have gotten 16. But as it stands, I wanted it now, bought 8 gb, and so far have no regrets. Its only money right? (16 vs 8 gb).
wish I could be more help. but as you see, it is different. I don't think anyone really knows.
I rarely buy base anything but got the base MBP today as a separate laptop as my separate work MacOS VM on my 2020 MBP i5 2.0 wasn’t cutting it (Zoom was horrible). Within about an hour I was using it, connected to a TB2 dock (via adapter), 4K monitor and external keyboard and Magic Mouse. Works amazingly well, and no noticeable slowdowns anywhere. Even writing transferred files was blisteringly fast.
Tested my 38GL950G on my Mom's M1 Air and it worked fine at max refresh (which requires DP 1.4).This one works. I had to put the display into DisplayPort 1.2 mode (it doesn't seem like M1 supports DP1.4?) but other than that, the display works without a hitch. Scaled resolution works as well as it does on my 16".
Might depend on cable? I used a short 1m cable.
Seeing how well it works and runs convinced me to buy a 13" Pro. I'm selling my 16" MBP now. I'll miss the 32GB RAM, but can deal with that for now.
The same cable works with DP1.4 on an Intel Mac, so I can rule the cable out. It's really the M1.
Maybe it just doesn't really support DP 1.4 on this display specifically. The LG 5K 27" is also doing 2 streams of 2560 x 2880 IIRC? This display is doing 2 streams of 2560 x 2160 right now.
I had a weird situation happen this morning after waking the MBP M1 from sleep - the Elgato TB2 dock didn’t restore display to the monitor. Unclear what the problem is but moving HDMI to the USB-C hub works for now.
Also, unplugging the TB dock restarted the Mac...
Also, unplugging the TB dock restarted the Mac...
I also have issue with DP1.4 on on m1 Mac mini when used with the LG5k2k ultrawide. And I think 1.4 is required to turn on HDR? Cuz the hdr option is hidden in the display control panel.
My 38GL950G runs great, even at 160 Hz. With the MBP 16" if I ran at this refresh rate it would heat up like crazy and the fans started blasting, just at idle. Using this M1 Mac is such a better experience with the monitor, and the insane thing is it cost about half what my 16" config did.
I'm using this TB3 dock: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08438H4GM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
HDR works with the monitor as well, though I have it turned off.
I'm using this TB3 dock: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08438H4GM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
HDR works with the monitor as well, though I have it turned off.
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Having dock means you are using the TB controller in the dock, I think. Is it connecting with DP 1.4 or 1.2? And why are you turning off HDR?
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yes, that's correct. It is 1.4, although this monitor doesn't show which DP version is being used in the OSD I know it is 1.4 since running at 160 Hz requires that. Connecting to a GPU that only supports 1.2 will limit your options to 120 Hz.
In the macOS UI, everything looks oversaturated with HDR on, that's why I turned it off. I'm sure it's fine if you are watching HDR content though. Maybe could be fixed with calibration but I switch between this and my Windows PC at times (where I also don't turn on HDR), so rather keep things the same.
That's rather disappointing. You and I pay for the HDR feature and is either unable to use it or don't want to use it. Anyway, let me check with Apple support and see what happens.
I'm running an LG 27GN950 on my M1 MacBook Air. Performance should be identical to the Pro.
The display works flawlessly with a USB-C to DisplayPort cable and a 1.5x scaled resolution of 2560x1440 ("more space").
System Preferences shows 60, 95, and 144 Hz refresh rates and all work as expected. The display's 160 Hz overclock mode does not appear to be supported. HDR also works without dropping frame rate or color depth, thanks to VESA Display Stream Compression support on both the GPU and display.
The display works flawlessly with a USB-C to DisplayPort cable and a 1.5x scaled resolution of 2560x1440 ("more space").
System Preferences shows 60, 95, and 144 Hz refresh rates and all work as expected. The display's 160 Hz overclock mode does not appear to be supported. HDR also works without dropping frame rate or color depth, thanks to VESA Display Stream Compression support on both the GPU and display.