Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Retina iMacs and Apple Displays Within Reach as New DisplayPort 1.3 Spec Finalized

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,622
39,495



imac_27_angle.jpg
With Dell having announced its upcoming 5120 x 2880 "5K" display that would be the equivalent of a Retina 27-inch iMac or Apple Thunderbolt Display and Apple rumored to be launching its own such display later this year, connectivity options for such displays have now taken a significant step forward with today's official release of the DisplayPort 1.3 specification by the Video Electronics Standards Association (via 9to5Mac).

The new standard offers a 50 percent increase in bandwidth to 32.4 Gbps, or 25.92 Gbps of uncompressed video data once overhead is accounted for.
The increased bandwidth enables higher resolution monitors, including recently announced 5K monitors (with pixel resolutions of 5120 x 2880) using a single DisplayPort cable, without the use of compression. It will also enable higher resolutions when driving multiple monitors through a single connection using DisplayPort's Multi-Stream feature, such as the use of two 4K UHD monitors, each with a pixel resolution of 3840 x 2160, when using VESA Coordinated Video Timing.
Click to expand...
Apple has been rumored for some time to be working on Retina iMacs and displays, but connectivity bottlenecks have been one of the factors slowing progress in that area.

The previous DisplayPort 1.2a standard offered enough bandwidth to support 4K displays without compression, but pushing resolutions to 5K has presented difficulties for connectivity. With the new DisplayPort 1.3 standard, which will presumably be built into future Thunderbolt implementations, computer manufacturers such as Apple will be able to fully support the new high-resolution displays set to hit the market in the coming months.

Article Link: Retina iMacs and Apple Displays Within Reach as New DisplayPort 1.3 Spec Finalized
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/09/15/retina-imacs-displays-displayport-1-3/
If Apple forces me to buy a new mac Pro, just a year after purchasing the first machine for 8000 € to be able to drive such a display I will go nuts. They HAVE to figure out a way to drive this on the current machine.
 
chfilm said:
If Apple forces me to buy a new mac Pro, just a year after purchasing the first machine for 8000 € to be able to drive such a display I will go nuts. They HAVE to figure out a way to drive this on the current machine.
Click to expand...

That’s what they do man.
I didn’t buy the latest Mac Pro after the 32/64 bit shenanigans they pulled, thought I’d wait until the first revision.
 
I've been looking forward to a retina display hub for an updated Macbook for a while now. I love the idea of a desktop replacement but I wanted to make sure all the components would be somewhat future proof first.
 
So definitely a Thuderbolt 3 (hardware change) requirement or is there any chance this can be done in software with Tbolt 2? I can guess the answer but I want to ask just in case someone who would know might surprise us (and I see how the article explicitly references future Tbolt implementations).
 
Too bad the current rMBP does not support this standard and requires a hardware update. Or can it be updated by software only?
 
Sorry but there's not enough bandwidth in Thunderbolt 2 (20Gbps) to support this.

You'll have to wait for Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) chipsets late next year for this.
 
Solomani said:
Retina iMac! My precioussssss comes here my precioussss! Comes alreadiess!
Click to expand...

Don't be too optimistic about these 'babies' coming in the near future. In addition to some aforementioned obstacles that need to be overcome, these 5K panels are also still way too expensive to realistically be included in iMacs in the near future.

They are however almost certainly going to appear in the long overdue new Thunderbolt Displays that are so eagerly anticipated by many MacPro owners.
 
Last edited:
Well, for 5K to arrive on Mac, we need Thunderbolt 3, which is part of Intel Skylake due in 2015. Skylake is a successor to Broadwell, which is expected to start rolling out late this year. So calling it within reach is a bit of an exaggeration.
 
chfilm said:
If Apple forces me to buy a new mac Pro, just a year after purchasing the first machine for 8000 € to be able to drive such a display I will go nuts. They HAVE to figure out a way to drive this on the current machine.
Click to expand...
Prepare to go nuts, I think. The height of the irony is that I will be able to buy Display Port 1.3 card for my 2009 Mac Pro...Apple abandoning the cheese grater form factor made for great TV, and provided a machine for buyers who wanted a work of art or a a whisper quiet machine, but all of us who wanted the old workhorse updated mourn.

If only I had bought the dual CPU version back in 2009: little did i know. It is so amazing -- my boot disk is a super fast PCIe flash card, I have 16TB of internal hd space, soon to be upgraded to 24TB now that the 6TB drives are out. I have room for a couple of more 1TB PCIe flash drives -- and I can upgrade the video card whenever I want.

All Apple had to do was release a Thunderbolt capable cheese grater...
 
Last edited:
nutmac said:
Well, for 5K to arrive on Mac, we need Thunderbolt 3, which is part of Intel Skylake due in 2015. Skylake is a successor to Broadwell, which is expected to start rolling out late this year. So calling it within reach is a bit of an exaggeration.
Click to expand...

To add to that, the only Broadwell processors rolling out this year are the Y-editions, which are the low-power editions for tablets and 2-in-1's. The Broadwells that are designed to go into MBP / iMacs / MBA won't start rolling out till Spring of 2015.

So if we assume that Skylake is on the same time schedule as Broadwell, we won't see Macs with Skylate / TB3 until Spring 2016.
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
So definitely a Thuderbolt 3 (hardware change) requirement or is there any chance this can be done in software with Tbolt 2? I can guess the answer but I want to ask just in case someone who would know might surprise us (and I see how the article explicitly references future Tbolt implementations).
Click to expand...

Looks like TB3 to use 1 cable.. but hopefully it will allow 2 TB2's to work. But who knows really.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back