Using a Mac Mini on Dell U4919DW Ultrawide Monitor.

Hi, I have a macbook air (2015) and recently purchased this monitor. I will be receiving the monitor today and am concerned about the full resolution. Has anyone found a fix for this, or do i go the extended monitor route?

For Intel IG graphics only devices there seems to be no change thus far regarding the resolution availability. It s ucks big time having to deal with extended monitor use. My Mac Mini with its glorious T2 chip sometimes decides to not give output to one or both of the cables. Apple fix this please.... HOW hard can it be smh

Mark from 2Much wrote:

<snip>

Apple is on the case!

Dubious! I was on a call with Apple yesterday. The support person was not aware of this issue, and clearly no one from apple actually reads these forums. I doubt very seriously that Apple is actually on the case. The solution is to use 2 cables or buy an eGPU. That seems more like Apple

Mark from 2Much wrote:

(A part of this was posted in another forum but it is more relevant here).

I just purchased a Mac Mini 2018 and Dell U4919DW Ultrawide Monitor. I should be able to get 5120x1440 Resolution out of this setup, but at best I can get 3840x1080.

I am connected via the Dell-included USB-C cable. I tried with the included HDMI cable but it too did not work.

Connecting the monitor to my PC via Display Port Cables DID work - I was able to get full 5120x1440 resolution at full 60hz. Just not on my new Mac Mini.

I called Dell, and their technical support was a complete joke. The lady on the phone basically said "If it works on a PC, it works", without much else to offer.

I called Apple and the tech, David, tried alot harder, easily spending about 20 minutes with me trying to find the problem. (Apple tech support is why they always win my business). He was not able to solve the problem but has created a case # and escalated this to Apple Engineers. By Apple and Dell's own documentation, I should be able to get 1440 lines of resolution in my setup.

Has anyone here experienced anything similar? Any suggestions are appreciated.

The [Dell] "lady" was correct. It works on a PC. It works on a Mac running Windows via boot camp. *Try it*. Apple support can try as much as they want. David, try as he might, wasted 20 minutes of your time. He can escalate all he wants. What good is support if the problem does not get fixed?

The problem is MacOS. Apple needs to provide a driver / display overlay, which will likely never happen. But to be certain this is not a Dell or LG issue.

Apple is at fault here.

I emailed Craig Federighi (senior VP of software engineering at Apple, and the guy who oversees MacOS development), and an executive relations liaison did got in touch with me about this issue, requesting all sorts of diagnostics info. Not sure if this will lead anywhere, but it's something. Perhaps if more people contact them, they will see it's an actual relevant issue to fix ASAP.

I'll let everyone know if anything comes out of my contact with them.

Good afternoon - I see Catalina and all of it's 8GB crawling across comcast to my Mac-mini. Is anyone ahead of me with Catalina and claimed victory with the 5120x1440 being built into the OS? Happy Monday.

I had to leave the office while the mini was still installing. Will report back on Wednesday PM. Mine is running through a blackmagic egpu pro so hopefully that will help it look good if the option is there in the OS.

I am using a mini-Displayport (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 1.4 cable. I tried with several other cables as well. It is just a MacOS limitation, I can run Windows on it with the full resolution and HDR enabled.

Apple doesn't support 5120 x 1440 resolution (and to my knowledge, never did), since it's a relatively new one... This is essentially 5K2K which should be supported by macOS but according to their support team, who I spent 50 min on the phone with today, is not supported. They went through a ton of steps to see if they could make the display I have work correctly (a Samsung 49 Inch CRG90...) but they could not and when their senior support engineer got on the line his simple answer was "it's a 3rd party monitor and is not supported."

They would not outright say 5120 x 1440 was not supported and instead blamed it on the fact that this was not an Apple device.

The agent I worked with suggested I go to apple.com/feedback which is apparently where their eng. team reviews customer feedback so I'd suggest you blow that up with requests for 5120 x 1440 support.

I did find a 'software hack/option' that will let you bypass Apple defaults and set your resolution to whatever you want: SwitchResX https://www.madrau.com/index.html It's $16.00 and comes with a 10 day free trial. I am hesitant to turn off SIP however so I'm only running at (3840 x 1080 @ 60hz)... According to their HC article, 'That means that if you want to use SwitchResX to add, modify, or create a new custom resolution, or a scaled Retina resolution, then you must temporarily disable System Integrity Protection before doing this. Once the resolution has been created and activated, you can turn SIP on again.' If you don't care and are okay turning off SIP for a few minutes while you edit your mac's guts, this may be your solution.

While I am using a different monitor, perhaps the experience will be relevant here too.

Tried out a custom resolution in SwitchResX (after disabling SIP), grabbing the monitor info for my LG 49WL95C-W from my AMD driver on my Windows 10 machine. I did my best to translate that over to my 2018 Mac Mini. "Back porch" was computed from the totals for both horizontal and vertical. I chose "positive sync." for both because the (working) profile for 3840 x 1080 had them checked. The horizontal scan rate set itself when I saved at 88.860 after I entered in everything else (and changes back to that if I try to change it, so it must be dictated by the other parameters). Also tried unchecking "Positive sync." for the vertical, presuming that this is "Timing Polarity" from the AMD specs. Alas, they both failed to activate, as did my attempts to use the four simplified modes.

Maybe someone can spot how I entered the info incorrectly or has other parameter ideas. Thanks.

I have screenshots of both the AMD display specs and the SwitchResX custom profile here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/9eDLU8BBMtgp2ZQE7

Hi, did the Blackmagic eGPU work for you on your Dell 49? Was the solution the eGPU PLUS Catalina, or just the eGPU? FYI, for those interested, the 2018 MBPro 15" works fine with the Dell 49, full-resolution. The 13" scales it down like the mini (both Intel graphics I believe). Further, I can confirm the USBC cable that ships with the Dell monitor should be thrown in the trash immediately--it flat didn't work.

I am running the 49 inch Phillips display. After Catalina it did seem to work properly initially, but on a display sleep or reboot of the mac mini there must be some issue with the display signal staying active from the mini, through the thunderbolt connection to the eGPU, then through the displayport to the Phillips... so I could not use the mini to Phillips hookup reliably, so I am back to the Windows running on the Phillips 49 and the Mac Mini/eGPU connected HDMI to the Vizio 75 inch TV.

Ok, I bought the Blackmagic eGPU (not pro), along with the 2018 Mac mini (latest), though only the 6core i5 with 8GB (I will upgrade memory later). Here the scoop with the Dell U4919DW: works fine! One major caveat: do NOT try to keep the Mac mini plugged into the monitor. Utilize the Thunderbolt (USBC) cable provided with Blackmagic to the Mac mini, then use EITHER the HDMI or the Thunderbolt (another cable) from the eGPU to the Monitor. Keeping the monitor connected to the Mac mini while the eGPU is also connected to the Mac mini does not give you the full res. If anyone's interested the HEAVEN gpu score was around 20fps with that setup, running at full native res 5120x1440. I'm sure it will scream at lower ones. One last warning about the USBC cable that comes with the Dell monitor: throw it out immediately.

2nd update: I also purchased the Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Puck Radeon RX 570S (Thunderbolt 3) and it works great too for the Mac mini on the Dell 49" monitor. It's $499 and my FPS on Heaven test were nearly identical to the Blackmagic running the 580, which sells for $699. I will be taking the large Blackmagic back, saving desk space and $200.

Tried that just to check it out. The issue is: with Mac extended desktop, you can't really drag to have a window sit in the "middle" (straddling two screens). Mac doesn't allow for this. So you really might as well have two separate monitors, or just plan to sit on the left or right-hand side of the screen to keep sanity. Not my thing. I actually settled on the $500 puck with the Radeon 570 and it's working great! It think the 6-core i5 is plenty on the Mac mini after seeing how much core CPU the graphics were taking from that unit before the eGPU.