Q: Boot Camp on iMac Retina 5K?

Just curious — does Windows look better at 2560 x 1440?  I'd have thought that would display sharper.

I have a Retina MacBook Pro, and I had the same confusion as you at first regarding the resolution.  When it was brand new, only a few programs supported it, so I often used it in the native 2880 x 1800 using Set Res.  But as more and more programs added support, that gradually stopped, and I haven't put it in that resolution for over a year now.

In my experience, "Best for Display" means that the screen is at full resolution, but with text and graphical elements scaled to look the same physical size as they would at half that resolution.  You can verify this by checking web pages that have Retina support and comparing them with those with no such support.  In fact often some elements within a web page will have support, while others don't.  For example, put your monitor in "Best for Display" mode and look closely at this page.  The Apple web site menu at the very top looks sharp, but all the other icons on this page are pixelated, right?  This is because you need quadruple the pixels to display each icon at double size on a Retina display.

Here are two links to verify this with:

http://www.apple.com/choose-your-country/

http://www.apple.com/support/country/

Even though these are effectively the same thing, it seems that Apple has added Retina support to its main web site, but not to the support section.  Do you see how the icons in the first link are pixel perfect, while the others are all blocky?  Try viewing one of the flags from each page, and you'll see that the sharp-looking one is double the size of the other: 60 x 60 compared to 30 x 30.

The simple truth is that relatively few web sites have this kind of Retina support at this point.  You can choose whether to put up with this pixelation, or put up with smaller text and graphical elements in your UI.  But for now you can't have the best of both without putting up with pixelated web icons on a great many pages.

That's the bad part.  The good part is that a lot of programs now support Retina scaling.  This includes things like Photoshop and Lightroom.  Sure, they will work fine at full resolution, but they also work fine at "Best for Display" resolution.  All that's happening there is that the UI elements are doubled (meaning that their art has all been drawn at double the resolution — verifiable if you take a screenshot), while the photograph/art you are working on is not.

Desktop wallpaper is the same, shown at its full resolution.  Again, you can verify this with screenshots.

I'm surprised to hear your comment about screensavers.  Which screensaver were did you find a difference with?  It may be that they have not been updated to be Retina-compatible yet.  Personally I use Apple's Floating screensaver, and it is definitely showing full resolution for me.

Retina is a new technology and it's not supported everywhere yet.  Things have really come a long way since 2012, when the first Retina Mac came out, but there's still a long way to go before we get full support.  The amazing clarity of the screens makes it all worthwhile, though.  My advice is to keep going back and forth between "Best for Display" and full resolution, and see which is best for each activity.  You'll soon work it out.

I hope this is some help to you.

Thorf.

fredz85: Its just a mini displayport cable (although some won't support the full resolution so I would say make sure its a decent cable).

Thunderbolt is the same connector as DisplayPort and they are essentially the exact same thing (when it comes to running displays) the difference is Thunderbolt is capable of doing PCI-E passthrough so you can use it with non-monitors (Nics, raid, disk enclosures, etc...) at high rates of speed.

So on Saturday I went to the apple store and checked out the retina imac. The display is awesome. I am also happy that SetResX (the free one) worked fine without sudo/super user privileges so I was able to run the native 5120x2880.

Another example of crappy HiDPI mode is in Safari when as a test I viewed a high resolution image it was pixel doubling it making the quality crap instead of dispaying it natively pixel for pixel (fixed when I disabled HiDPI and ran 5120x2880 native). Seems really stupid to me for a browser to do pixel doubling on an image when you are linking straight to the image (not a href on a web-page).

HiDPI is far from perfect and very often will be wasting a bunch of pixels which is why I still think native 5120x2880 is by far the best way to run it.

Removed bootcamp partition and restarted from scratch.

Now running the free Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9841.    Still 3840x2160 max, with the bootcamp drivers and the latest ATI catalyst package.

You're right about Safari displaying high resolution images at 200% when you point the browser directly at them.  I agree that is very silly.  It's just another example of the ongoing nature of HiDPI support.

The thing is, running at native resolution, without enlarged UI elements is not exactly a great option either.  I can't speak for the Retina iMac (yet), but on the 15" MacBook Pro at least the menus and especially buttons are just too small to use comfortably.  Sure, it's far from unusable, but it's not very efficient.  I don't view the doubled UI elements as a waste of pixels.

Where I strongly believe HiDPI is the way to go is with graphics applications.  I use Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign a lot, and all of these are great in "Best for Display" mode.  They only pixel double the UI, leaving the work area and anything in it at full native resolution.  This is what all HiDPI experiences should be like — and hopefully will be some day.

Unfortunately I do not have immediate access to parallels and I had to hand off the new Retina iMac to the final end user for their desktop publishing work.  

I agree that it's likely a driver issue at this point.  What perplexes me a bit is that in Win8.1/Win10 beta, device manager/displays shows "Standard VGA" and uses a Microsoft built-in driver dated 2006.   On my PCs, device manager generally lists a mfr & model specific item. 

ATI Catalyst does report that the internal display is an iMac, but it states the panel itself is only capable of 3840x2160.      Did Apple hard code something in some sort of machine hardware identifier for the boot camp process?   ATI built both drivers (Yosemete and the latest Winodws beta).  Is the limiting factor the driver or is it the hardware specs that Apple is passing to Bootcamp?

I will keep following this topic, as I'm sure eventually there will be a tested method for Windows at 5120x2880 (preferably using Bootcamp).    When Dell ships their 5k panel later this year I am sure that will force the issue of Windows support.

Hallo,

just found this interesting article about running Bootcamp on an iMac Retina:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gam ing-machine/

Especially this part is interesting:

The first thing I noticed upon booting up in Windows 8.1 is that Windows does not run at the display’s native 5120x2880 resolution. When I logged on, I was greeted by a desktop running at 3840x2160, one of a number of different resolutions commonly lumped under the "4k" banner (this particular 4K flavor is usually referred to as "Ultra HD").

Interestingly, the non-native resolution didn’t exhibit any visible scaling artifacts. The high pixel density seems to more than make up for the loss of resolution from "5K," and the display blends the 8,294,400 points yielded by 3840x2160 into the native 14,745,600 pixels quite smartly. Even sitting with my nose an inch or so away from the screen—a distance my mother assured me when I was younger would ruin my eyes—I couldn’t see any feathering or blurring around edges and lines. Type remained sharp, and everything looked crisp.

Overall Bootcamp seems to run very nice and snappy, even for gaming.

Although it does not do 5k yet, that will be ok for me.

Marc

I received my 5K with M295X GPU and SSD (1 TB). It works great, also in Boot Camp. It's true that the resolution is "limited" to 3840, but that's also the case with OS X (maximum 3200x1800) unless you use the above specified utility. In OS X, I actually set it at 2880x1620, as higher is too straining for the eyes (and boy, do I love huge resolutions, but it's just too much). It really doesn't matter too much, as the screen is glorious and no pixels are visible, even in 3840. I updated the AMD drivers to the latest version and beta, but that doesn't make a difference. If any of you want screenshots or tests to be run, let me know. Boot Camp works fine with Windows 8.1 and also with Windows 10 (which I am currently using) without any unrecognized devices.

Next step is to remove Boot Camp and run Windows 10 in full UEFI mode.

Hey guys, i have problems downloading the "windows support software" via the bootcamp assistent.

It always stops after a quarter. (IMac Retina Windows Support Software)

Could someone maybe upload the package to dropbox or another platform?

Would be very awesome because apple does not offer the download for the latest Imac retina.

Had maybe someone the same issues?

sorry for my english, im not a native speaker

Erikson

Hey ipodtouch245 hope u see this

is there any way you can help confirm if by having windows on Mac, it can run Cisco products? or a PC test that is .msi?

im planning on getting a Mac but not sure if this Cisco thing works on boot camp, anD It's for work

link is this

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/Client/GreatvirtualWorks/?apikey=1b76a201-6 fb7-485f-8e08-1ad71a52a7f2&clientid=999-999

but I'm wondering Cisco software can be installed using bootcamp?

why not just hold down the option key in Yosemite Prefs/Display? Click on Scaled and it will give you all the resolutions, including true 5K.

Sure, I was just responding to the complaints that Apple somehow neglected to provide any way to access the true retina resolution.

y2kpc Do you mind sharing how you managed to install AMD's beta drivers onto your windows 8.1 system? I've tried several times to install both AMD beta drivers as well as the latest update drivers 14.201.1008 for my R9 M295X on my iMac but it still showing my current drivers as 14.200.1002.1002.

I've tried using the boot camp assistant tool to create an updated USB with drivers, I've also tried downloading software from the AMD website and doing a device manager update in windows 8.1 but it fails during installation and I receive an error message after I've selected the "Have Disk" option and located the correct M295X drivers. I also tried using AMD CCC software update and although the installation is successful the new drivers aren't reflected against my GPU.

Name AMD RADEON R9 M295X

PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6938&SUBSYS_013A106B&REV_00\4&104782D1&0&0008

Adapter Type AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6938), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. compatible

Adapter Description AMD RADEON R9 M295X

Adapter RAM (1,048,576) bytes

Installed Drivers aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll,aticfx32,aticfx32,aticfx32,atiumd64.dll, atidxx64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atiumdag,atidxx32,atidxx32,atiumdva,atiumd6a.cap,atitm m64.dll

Driver Version 14.200.1002.1002

INF File oem47.inf (ati2mtag_Tonga section)

Color Planes Not Available

Color Table Entries 4294967296

Resolution 3840 x 2160 x 60 hertz

Bits/Pixel 32

Memory Address 0x90000000-0xA01FFFFF

Memory Address 0xA0000000-0xA01FFFFF

I/O Port 0x00003000-0x00003FFF

Memory Address 0xB0900000-0xB09FFFFF

IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967280

Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\atikmpag.sys (8.14.1.6384, 541.50 KB (554,496 bytes), 11/6/2014 8:11 PM)

I also noticed that your CCC is showing your graphics chipset as having a R9 200 series and not a R9 M290/R9 M295X?