Using a Mac Mini on Dell U4919DW Ultrawide Monitor.

(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.

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Jan 11, 2019 10:56 AM

Top-ranking reply

Waldorfer

Level 1

4 points

Posted on May 24, 2019 4:28 AM

Got it working with the USBC-C cable that came with the monitor and the Moshi USB-C to DisplayPort cable I purchased today. I use the sound from the Mac mini (as it stands beneath my Philips monitor). I had to use SwitchResX to enforce these resolutions. Without it I can't pick the 1560x1440 for both 'screens'. Anyway, happy for now but I hope Apple would release a fix soon.

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112 replies

MrWolfX

Level 1

4 points

Oct 9, 2019 5:49 PM in response to Thomas1101

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.

Oct 11, 2019 1:58 PM in response to Mark from 2Much

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.

maxim745

Level 1

4 points

Oct 16, 2019 7:38 AM in response to Underlord23

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

Oct 29, 2019 4:33 PM in response to darenjacobs

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.

Nov 1, 2019 10:39 AM in response to etcook

Yes. And to clarify, this is on the Dell 49" U4919DW Monitor, and the Mac mini 2018. And according to my "about this Mac", the graphics card is the Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB.

Here's exactly what I did.

First, connect it with only 1 connector to the monitor, the USC-C cable.

In the monitor menu, navigate to PBP and turn it off. Then make sure your monitor input is USB-C and not HDMI. Boot up your computer. After it boots check your resolution. If you are still in the wrong one, change your resolution to the highest and it should work.

FYI after doing this, I decided to switch back to "Dual Monitor" mode. The Single Monitor mode works perfectly but I need to share parts of my screen via Skype pretty often doing it in 2 monitor mode works a lot better. The only other adjustment I needed to do is to make sure the color profile is the same for "both" monitors.

Jan 22, 2019 10:34 PM in response to yvon_k

No help with Mojave 10.14.3. MBP 2018 13" here.

Oct 10, 2019 6:53 AM in response to MrWolfX

Thx. Looks like its all about the cable. Do you have the exactly specification of the cable, maybe even the product id?

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Using a Mac Mini on Dell U4919DW Ultrawide Monitor.