(non) coherent digital displays

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(non) coherent digital displays

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Apple/Mac and knew to this forum.

Found it when looking for an affordable, (preferably) pivotable 24" screen that would work with a mac mini that I'm thinking of buying (to replace my PC).

I read that some people have had problems especially in higher resolutions.

B Steely pointed in some posts to the limitations of the Mini in supporting (non)coherent digital displays, but when I try to find out from the various monitor suppliers no-one seems to be able to tell me in advance (i.e. before purchasing the mini and before purchasing the monitor) if the desired combination will work. For instance, the specs of the HP LP2475w mention a maximum pixel rate of 205Mhz, but HP cannot tell me if that means that it will or will not work with mac mini (and there are reports that it doesn't with the older 202Mhz 20"" model, the LP2065 : http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=836030&tstart=0 )

Waiting for a response from Iiyama at the moment, re their affordable B2403WS ( http://www.iiyama.com/en_GB/Product/specifications/27)

A second issue/question is: in case a particular doesn't work satisfactorily, will SwitchRes X always make sure it does?

Any other ideas to tackle this?
All suggestion more than welcome - thanks in advance !

PC, Windows XP, reluctant Windows user, keen to switch to Mac mini & OS X

Posted on Nov 13, 2008 7:49 AM

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Answer 1

BSteely

Level 5

7,643 points

Nov 13, 2008 9:05 AM in response to strawbale

Welcome to Apple Discussions, strawbale.

About coherency vs. non-coherency in TMDS receivers, that is a really obscure technical detail relating to how the TMDS clock is recovered and reconciled against the incoming TMDS video data streams and I seriously doubt you will ever get a good answer back from a monitor manufacturer about which scheme is present in their TMDS receiver. Even though it is an obscure matter, it certainly manifested in serious consequences for a number of end users that experienced total failure of having their monitor and mini display a screen at the expected (native) high resolution and timing. Obscure detail? Yes. Impacting a lot of people? Also, yes. So your concern is understandable and justified.

This issue, or problem, was much more evident with the original mini that had ATI graphics on board. Even though Apple has rolled over the disclaimer about non-coherency from the original, G4-based mini's spec to the new Intel mini's spec, it seems this issue hardly ever comes up for owners of the Intel mini, or for that matter the original MacBook, both which use the Intel GMA950 for graphics.

What I am trying to say with the later point is that you don't have much to worry about with a Mac mini and monitor incompatibilites relating to display non-coherency if you are going to be getting an Intel mini. As long as whatever monitor you buy has a well formed Plug and Display driver, things should work out just fine for you. And if they don't, yes to your question, "will SwitchRes X always make sure it does." That is a safe bet if not a 100% guarantee.

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Answer 2

strawbale Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 13, 2008 11:18 AM in response to BSteely

B Steely, thanks very much for your reply!

It assures me enough to go ahead with my switch to OS X and now "only" have to decide whether to buy a mini now/soon or wait till early next year - with the risk that there will be new mini at all...

As I'm a light user - roughly 60% web surfing, 10% light photo editing, 10% email, 10% office apps, and 10% watching DVDs (as we don't have a TV) - the current mini should actually be sufficient I assume. My current PC is a 5 year old XP machine with an AMD athlon 1800 cpu, an ATI 9000 128MB graphics card and a 80GB HD (though 7200 rpm), but I've no idea how that relates to the current mini specs (the PC was already pretty low end when I bought it if I remember correctly).

As I'm looking for a non-glossy screen ànd because my budget is rather limited, an iMac or an Apple LCD are not in the picture. As I'm looking for low energy consumption I think a mac mini and a good third party screen is the best combination for me. I "Just" have to decide on which monitor...

How/where do I find out whether a monitor has "a well formed Plug and Display driver" ? (sorry for my level of question, I have never really looked into these kind of issues)

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