Will Iris Pro 5200 support 5120 x 1440 at 60Hz over Thunderbolt 2 DisplayPort connection?

[anton_ogarkov]

Hello!

I am planning to buy a Dell U4919DW 5120 x 1440 monitor for my MacBook Pro that hosts an integrated Intel® Iris Pro 5200. It claims to support up to 3840 x 2160 at 60hz over DisplayPort connection.

Dell does not list this graphics adaptor as a supported one here but has an Intel® HD Graphics 520 that is veeery similar to the one in my laptop.

My dilemma is will Iris Pro 5200 support monitor's 5120 x 1440 at 60Hz if connected via mini DisplayPort 1.2 compatible Thunderbolt 2 port on my laptop or will it go to a downscaled 3840 x 1080?

[n_scott_pearson]

Regardless of the higher transmission capabilities of Thunderbolt, the overall solution is going to be limited by the DisplayPort output capability of the processor. In your case, this is 3840x2160@60Hz. Now, in theory, the communications required for 5120x1440 is less than that for 3840x2160, so you would think that this should work. I have seen cases here, however, where folks were complaining that they could not get this to work - but this is almost exclusively with Windows drivers.

That's as close as I can come to an answer (and obviously pretty wishy-washy). I have no experience with Mac OS or its drivers. For issues related to their products, Apple has requested that we redirect folks to them. Therefore, I suggest that you contact Apple and ask them.

...S

[anton_ogarkov]

Yeah, this is the most tricky part - the card supports 1 million pixels more than requested by the display. But there may be some other limitations that we are not aware of. Good point about contacting Apple. Will do as you suggest. I have decided that it will be okay for me even with the worst case - 3840x1080 as I was planning on upgrading my computer this year anyway.

In any case I will update this thread with any new findings I will have stumbled upon.

[anton_ogarkov · Accepted solution]

Here is a small followup on my question and the results I have got.

Once I have plugged the monitor in for the first time I got an upsetting situation: MacBook was not able to support the whole resolution, only downscaled. For both HDMI and mDP.

After playing with settings I have finally managed to run full 5120x1440 on HDMI but the image was blurry. As if something has downscaled it to 3840x1080 and then stretched back to 5120x1440. Interface elements were on their places but it was a mush.

Then I have decided to do an experiment. I have plugged both HDMI and mDP into the monitor and ran it in split mode. So it was emulating two equal monitors side by side - one plugged through HDMI, another - through mDP. And... It worked like a charm! Yes, these were not a single monitor but I have got it running in a full resolution in total 🙂

So my takeaway is that Iris Pro 5200 can render appropriate 5120x1440 image but cannot squeeze these pixels through a single port on MacBook for some reason. I have eventually bought a new 16 inch Mac Book with discrete graphics and monitor now works in the full resolution single monitor mode.