[lj1960]

O.K., I have a brand new 17" MacBook Pro and I'm dying to have it drive a 30" Cinema Display. Seems pretty straight forward, since during the Boot Camp install it copies the display driver for you.

So, I took my MBP to the local Apple store and asked them to allow me to hook-up to one of the 30 inchers. It obviously drives the display fine in OS X. But, when I booted XP, it came up a lower resolution. I then opened the control panel and switched the resolution. Unfortunately, it only went as high as 1680 x 1050 - which is the native resolution of the laptop.

Has anyone gotten their MBP to drive an external monitor at a resolution higher than that of the MBP? Is there anything I can do to get that 30 incher to work?

Thanks!

[lj1960]

Wanted to update everyone with my latest findings.

After my experince in the Apple store, I took it home and played with it some more (I'm not that familiar with WinXP) and found that it WILL go to a higher resolution. You have to pick the #2 monitor and then it allows a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 at 32bit color. This is nice to know, but unfortunately, it's not the same maximum resolution of the GPU when it's booted as OS X.

To recap: A 17" MacBook Pro running OS X will drive a 30" Cinema Display at native resolution, but when you Boot Camp into WinXP, you are limited to 2048 x 1536. Terribly disapointing for me. Has anyone overcome this limitation?

[lj1960]

Turns out I was wrong. In WinXP you need to turn off the laptop display (aka: lid closed) and then go back to the resolution settings. Now, the full native resolution is available. Set that and save the configuration and Viola! You're done!

Now I've got a bitchen 30" Cinema Display powered via my 17" MacBook Pro.