Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Consumer Hardware & Components > 'Retina' 24 inch LCDs out there?

'Retina' 24 inch LCDs out there? (Page 2)
Thread Tools
FireWire
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Montréal, Québec (Canada)
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 2, 2013, 07:13 PM
 
So apart from the Mac Pro, no Mac can use these monitors?
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 2, 2013, 10:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
I understand, but I think you will see a problem anyway. GPUs designed for 4K resolutions like the GTX 780 and the new R9-290 series have 48 and 64 ROPs respectively. You have 16, and they're clocked lower to boot. No matter how you slice it, you will be rendering a 4K 3D scene 60 frames per second, and even if it doesn't change much between frames and the effects are low, this is an issue. Heck, the 360 has 16 ROPs as well, and it can't manage to render games at 1080p - a quarter of the pixels you're trying to push.
And this is precisely why we won't see any of these in any iMac anytime soon.

Let the bitching begin.

-t
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 3, 2013, 04:26 AM
 
The top iMacs have significantly more powerful graphics than the MBP. The 775M that is the base in the top 27" has 32 ROPs (and about 4 times the shaders of the MBP) - Apple can make a Retina iMac by simply making that chip the standard. If they don't want to spend that much, they drop down a notch to the 770M (24 ROPs) and overclock it as required - they have much more cooling capacity in the iMac than in the MBP,, and they don't have to care about battery life. When Apple made the Retina MBPs, they had to upgrade the GPUs as well to make it work - they simply have to do the same thing for the iMacs.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Dec 3, 2013, 05:31 AM
 
So, as for the comment that the pixel density of the 24 inch display is about as low as the one from the original iPhone - again, the viewing distance is totally different.
In the case of the 24- inch, I think personal judgement might make or break here, making the difference eigher noticeably different or a bit too underwhelming. I don't know about the bigger screens, though.

Again, could you just plug these screens into a Mac Pro and the software would support a scaled experience? Merely the problem of a quick software update? How about Creative Suite, Office etc?

Pete
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 3, 2013, 08:41 AM
 
Originally Posted by PeterParker View Post
So, as for the comment that the pixel density of the 24 inch display is about as low as the one from the original iPhone - again, the viewing distance is totally different.
Granted. I was bored and did a little regression analysis on Apple's current Retina displays, their sizes versus the ppi, and this display would fit quite well on it. In fact, if you compare to the old Mac standard from the original up until the mid-nineties, the resolution is too high.

Originally Posted by PeterParker View Post
Again, could you just plug these screens into a Mac Pro and the software would support a scaled experience? Merely the problem of a quick software update? How about Creative Suite, Office etc?
How can we know if neither the new MP nor the displays have launched yet? At a guess, you have to hack to enable the Retina mode in the first place, and after that it will work as well as the current Retina MBPs. Could be that Apple detects the high resolution and switches to HiRes mode automatically - if so, that's the best indication we'll ever get that Retina displays for the MP are on the way.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Dec 3, 2013, 12:28 PM
 
Why is he resolution too high? Huh?

Anyway, as a side note, people used to argue a good way to Retina would be doubling pixels (both dimensions). So, that's what they did with the iPhone going Retina, that's the way it went with the iPad, then the MacBook Pro. Now, the original iMac resolution/24 inch standard resolution is full HD I believe, UHD is twice the resolution, in both dimensions.
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 3, 2013, 12:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by PeterParker View Post
Why is he resolution too high? Huh?
The original Mac - and every display Apple made after that until the mid-nineties some times - had a resolution of 72 ppi. Doubling that would be 144 ppi, which we exceed. In effect, a Classic or ported Classic app would look too small on that 24" 4K display, compared to the "intended" size. Easiest way to see how this affects things is to print out a page of text for Word or Pages or something and hold it up next to the display, zoomed to 100%. The text on the paper will be larger.

Originally Posted by PeterParker View Post
Anyway, as a side note, people used to argue a good way to Retina would be doubling pixels (both dimensions). So, that's what they did with the iPhone going Retina, that's the way it went with the iPad, then the MacBook Pro. Now, the original iMac resolution/24 inch standard resolution is full HD I believe, UHD is twice the resolution, in both dimensions.
Almost. The 24" iMac was 16:10 display with 1920*1200. The current 21.5" display is regular HD,1920*1080. Hence my comment about a 22" display.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Dec 4, 2013, 05:48 AM
 
How about the ports? Are there any ports that can connect to anything that displays anything seriously higher than UHD?
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 4, 2013, 09:42 AM
 
DisplayPort 1.2 supports 4K resolution for 10 bits per color channel, which means that if we settle for the regular 8 bits per channel, we have at least 20% capacity free. We could increase the resolution by that much and still be OK, but we're getting close to it. HDMI 2.0 is absolutely full at 4K, however.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
mduell
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 4, 2013, 06:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by FireWire View Post
I didn't see that one coming, I just bought an ultrasharp 27"... I have a 30 days return period, I'll see what I do... Would driving such a monitor severely impact performance on a 15" rMBP with the 2 GB graphic card?
Nah, should be fine.

Originally Posted by P View Post
I understand, but I think you will see a problem anyway. GPUs designed for 4K resolutions like the GTX 780 and the new R9-290 series have 48 and 64 ROPs respectively. You have 16, and they're clocked lower to boot. No matter how you slice it, you will be rendering a 4K 3D scene 60 frames per second, and even if it doesn't change much between frames and the effects are low, this is an issue. Heck, the 360 has 16 ROPs as well, and it can't manage to render games at 1080p - a quarter of the pixels you're trying to push.
Originally Posted by P View Post
Normally i would say "it depends on what you do with it" but in this case, I think we can say yes. Forget about shaders, you simply don't have the ROPs you need.
I'm not buying this argument. Can you provide any sources that 16 ROPs at modern clockrates are a constraint for compositing/rendering typical desktop apps?

Intel integrated graphics can easily do 2 displays at 2560x1600 each (15" RMBP + 27" Tbolt display) which is just as many pixels as 4K.

edit: Actually Intel HD Graphics can do 3 2560x1600 displays, which is 150% as many pixels as 4K.

Originally Posted by PeterParker View Post
How about the ports? Are there any ports that can connect to anything that displays anything seriously higher than UHD?
HDMI 2.0 or DP 1.2 are both fine for 4K at 60Hz.
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 5, 2013, 05:55 AM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
I'm not buying this argument. Can you provide any sources that 16 ROPs at modern clockrates are a constraint for compositing/rendering typical desktop apps?

Intel integrated graphics can easily do 2 displays at 2560x1600 each (15" RMBP + 27" Tbolt display) which is just as many pixels as 4K.

edit: Actually Intel HD Graphics can do 3 2560x1600 displays, which is 150% as many pixels as 4K.
I have conjecture. We know a few points:

1) 16 ROPs is not enough for gaming graphics at 1080p. Both nVidia and AMD have put in more in their cards focused on 1080p, and the lack of ROPs is being blamed for the Xbone's performance issues at 1080p - no matter how they dial down the effects, it's hard to get a 1080p game to run smoothly.
2) In the same manner, they both consider 32 ROPs to be insufficient for 4K.
3) The first gen 13" Retina MBP reportedly struggles with the OS X interface with an Intel HD 4000 GPU.

That last is what got me thinking that there will be an issue. Intel doesn't advertise how many ROPs its chips have, but the resolution scaling in the early Sandy Bridge HD 2000 tests show that it acts a lot like a Radeon with 4 ROPs:

AnandTech | The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested

Now, Intel might achieve that by having only 2 ROPs and clocking them high, as is their wont, but it doesn't really matter here - it acts as if it were a Radeon chip with 4 ROPs.

So, what does this mean for the HD 4000? My guess is that Intel has doubled the ROPs. It is unclear if they did so for Sandy Bridge, but for Ivy it seems the GT2 has twice the resources of everything. Anand doesn't specifically mention the ROPs, but he does mention the texture management unit being doubled for GT2:

AnandTech | Intel's Ivy Bridge Architecture Exposed

This then makes the HD 4000, which struggles on the 13" Retina, be the equivalent of an 8 ROP machine. The 13" Retina has about half the pixels of 4K.

These three points taken together make me say that the lack of ROPs in the GK107 in the Retina MBP 15" will be an issue for 4K displays.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
FireWire
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Montréal, Québec (Canada)
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 5, 2013, 08:26 AM
 
From GeForce GT 750M | Specifications | GeForce, it says the Nvidia GeForce GT 750M supports 3840x2160, which is exactly 4K resolution. Also, from Apple's Thunderbolt page: Apple (Canada) - Thunderbolt: Next-generation high-speed I/O.

Now with Thunderbolt 2 built into the new Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with Retina display, you can connect the latest 4K desktop displays and get double the bandwidth for your peripherals.
they specifically talk about the MBP. And according to this post on Apple's forum: https://discussions.apple.com/message/23978071#23978071

Intel Demo'd Iris and yes, it can do 4K @ 60Hz.
Anand Tech did an article about it, IIRC.
The performance is OK, it's not great...you can't game at that resolution, for example...no way.
Iris Pro on the other hand, that is a different story. Iris Pro actually can perform well, and you could probably game on it at 4K @ 60Hz.
so it seems even the basic card would be OK.

Apple explicitly says the MBP supports 4k, but is currently limited at 30 hz because of HDMI limitation. Some user tested a 4K screen in a MBP under Windows and it works. Multistream doesn't currently work in Mavericks, however.
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 5, 2013, 08:36 PM
 
I'm comparing with the HD 4000. Iris is 5100, and has double the ROPs (and at least double everything else). And I'm aware that it will technically work - the question was if it will "severely impact performance" or not.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
FireWire
Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Montréal, Québec (Canada)
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 5, 2013, 09:30 PM
 
Knowing Apple, would they offer something sub-par? They are known to exclude support for many things because performances wouldn't be terrific
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 6, 2013, 08:26 AM
 
That's not really what they do. They release when it's good enough and then iterate on it. Just look at the iPhone and iPod - the iPad 3 if you want a recent example.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 6, 2013, 06:47 PM
 
     
subego
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Chicago, Bang! Bang!
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 8, 2013, 03:38 AM
 
Aaaaaand... it's gone.
     
Martin84Z
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Dec 2013
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 15, 2013, 05:23 AM
 
too much expensive..typical mac
     
Spheric Harlot
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: 888500128, C3, 2nd soft.
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 15, 2013, 05:43 AM
 
     
turtle777
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 15, 2013, 03:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Martin84Z View Post
too much expensive..typical mac
You registered to post *this* ?

-t
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Dec 17, 2013, 07:31 AM
 
Underwhelming or overwhelming?

lgnewsroom.com/newsroom/contents/64053
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Dec 17, 2013, 09:34 AM
 
Even wider display formats have been pushed from time to time, but they never seem to break through. For movies I can see it in that many are made wider than 16:9, but for other usage, I'd rather have 16:10 than 16:9.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Dec 31, 2013, 07:56 PM
 
Here we go check

It's Anandtech, trying 4k displays with the new Mac Pro. No luck, really, doesn't scale properly. No retina feeling with text etc...

[Edit]: On a sideline, they also did a price comparison. EVEN when you compare pricing to a self-built PC, the Mac Pro is nearly the cheapest pro machine at that speed around the place.
( Last edited by HamSandwich; Jan 1, 2014 at 08:45 AM. )
     
TechieGeek
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jan 2014
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 4, 2014, 03:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Are you sure ?

I don't know if Apple got a trademark for "Retina".
If they have, things get complicated if it turns into a generic word like Kleenex.

ThOse companies have to be very vigilant to not lose their trademark due to generic use. That can be a big headache.

-t
This is exactly right and seems really counter-intuitive. You would think it would be a good thing if your brand becomes so recognizable that it turns into a generic term but it goes against the foundation of what a trademark is. Trademarks are meant to protect consumers, not companies. Essentially, a trademark is meant to distinguish the ORIGIN of wares or services - meaning the individual or organization who is providing those wares and services, which is usually the most important factor potential customers use when trying to determine the level of quality of a certain product.

It's interesting how fundamentally connected technology and intellectual property has become in the last decade or so.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2014, 04:01 PM
 
And now Philips actually introduced a new 27 inch 4k display for 1200 dollars...

look
     
Spheric Harlot
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: 888500128, C3, 2nd soft.
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2014, 05:21 PM
 
That's 28".

Are TN panels substantially improved over the old 20" iMac, or do they still have the blown-out images and crappy viewing angles?
     
mduell
Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jan 6, 2014, 08:41 PM
 
TN is still shit. Fast, but shit.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Feb 2, 2014, 12:00 PM
 
The 24 inch UHD displays from Dell are now available in Germany! I just found them on amazon, for around 1200 Euros, I think. So, how about this whole HiDPI question here? What do they display on a Retina MacBook Pro or on the Mac Pro? Tiny icons or a somewhat retina-like experience, where text for instance is as big as usual but just a lot sharper...?
     
P
Moderator
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 2, 2014, 05:01 PM
 
We talked about that briefly in the MP thread, I think. Anand's testing showed that it worked - possibly using SwitchResX - to just get it into regular HiDPI mode, but that you could not make an even bigger desktop and scale it down the way you can with the integrated display on the rMBPs.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Feb 22, 2014, 12:36 PM
 
So, any news? Should be the retina year, no...
     
HamSandwich
Guest
Status:
Reply With Quote
Mar 7, 2014, 12:47 PM
 
     
 
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:11 AM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,