Before Big Sur my 2013 MacPro could drive my NEC PA302W at 2560x1600. After Big Sur I can only drive it at 1600x900. How can it get back to 2560x1600?
TO ALL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO RESOLVING MY DISPLAY PROBLEM -- BIG, BIG THANK YOU
Today I visited the Houston Micro Center and found a 1 meter displayPort Mini (Thunderbolt) to DisplayPort cable. Plugged it in and it worked perfectly. BIG SUPPRISE for me was that I NEVER WAS DISPLAYING at 2560x1600 since 2014. My images on screen now are amazing. THANK YOU ALL AGAIN
TO ALL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO RESOLVING MY DISPLAY PROBLEM -- BIG, BIG THANK YOU
Today I visited the Houston Micro Center and found a 1 meter displayPort Mini (Thunderbolt) to DisplayPort cable. Plugged it in and it worked perfectly. BIG SUPPRISE for me was that I NEVER WAS DISPLAYING at 2560x1600 since 2014. My images on screen now are amazing. THANK YOU ALL AGAIN
Your MacPro supports HDMI 1.4 which theoretically supports the 2560 by 1600 resolution of your display, BUT...
Apple has been adding checks into its software to evaluate Cable Quality, and if the display detects error at the selected resolution, it may downgrade to a lower resolution.
¿Are you using a Displayport or Mini DisplayPort input? if not you may have run into HDMI cable limitations.
The cables you want for HDMI-only Monitors (higher resolutions than 720p TV sets) are marked as Certified with an anti-counterfeiting tag and are labeled:
"Premium High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "with Ethernet" --OR--
"Ultra High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "48G"
Cables with No Certification tags are good for your standard TV set, and not much more.
A normal DisplayPort to HDMI cable is for connecting a HDMI display to a computer's DisplayPort, and will not work in the opposite direction.
If you have a free Thunderbolt port on the Mac Pro, connect it to the display with a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable. If all the Thunderbolt ports are in use, and you have to use the HDMI port, use a premium HDMI to HDMI cable.
After the latest Big Sur update as of today, what fixed for me with a 2k monitor through HDMI:
After the last step I was able to see the optimal resolution available again.
Hope that helps anybody else.
what do you see when you use this:
menu > about This Mac > (systems report) > Graphics and Displays
lists two resolutions;
ACTUAL Resolution
"User-Interface looks like" Resolution -- may be different when "Scaled" is selected
>>Please post what that report shows
¿Are you using a Displayport or Mini DisplayPort input? if not you may have run into HDMI cable limitations.
The cables you want for HDMI-only Monitors (higher resolutions than 720p TV sets) are marked as Certified with an anti-counterfeiting tag and are labeled:
"Premium High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "with Ethernet" --OR--
"Ultra High Speed HDMI cable" or that + "48G"
Cables with No Certification tags are good for your standard TV set, and not much more.
Unless you really need an extremely long cable, you might be better served by a Mini DisplayPort (computer-end) to EITHER: Mini DisplayPort or {full size] DisplayPort (display-end) cable.
https://www.nec-display.com/dl/en/dp_manual/pa242w.html
to get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display. "No signal detected" is generated by the DISPLAY, not by the Mac.
This query is only sent at certain times:
• at startup
• at wake from sleep
• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go
• on invoking Option-(Detect Display) button in Displays preferences (from another display)
so try doing some of those things and see if the display comes alive.
Modern Displays with multiple ports are sometimes busy scanning the other ports, looking for an input, and miss the query from the Mac. They need to pay attention to the port you are actually using, or they will miss the query.
Some displays have On-Screen Display settings that can be used to tell the display a computer is attached on a certain port, or a certain port should be highest priority. Changing those may make your display more responsive.
Some displays include their own private "sleep" settings for the display alone. This can allow the display to enter its own sleep mode, on top of the Mac's not sending it data. A display that is sleeping on its own cannot respond to the Mac's query, and will stay dark.
The resolutions shown in system preferences can be very confusing.
When "Scaled" is selected, the effective resolution for TEXT ONLY may be reduced. Text may be pixel-doubled to be shown larger on very high resolution displays, so the numbers shown (which are for text) may be misleading.
menu > about This Mac > (systems report) > Graphics and Displays
lists two resolutions;
ACTUAL Resolution
"User-Interface looks like" Resolution -- may be different when "Scaled" is selected
That Mac Pro 2013 model has two display cards, only one of which drives displays.
Could your display be attached to the other D500 card?
I was trying to suggest to you to put up that screen again,
menu > about This Mac > (systems report) > Graphics and Displays
and SCROLL DOWN to see the other card
From the gitgo back in February 2014 when the computer and display were purchased until yesterday the display/MacPro has been connected with HDMI. There have never been any problems over all iterations of MAC OS in between then and now. From what Ive seen in the "DISPLAYS" section of SETTINGS leads me to think the "maximum" for that display in (1) some internal query from Big Sur to the display hardware (2) a lookup table of Big Sur has been mis-specified.
Here is info shown
"Default for Display" was originally selected but when it didn't give me what I expected, I changed over to"Scaled".
Thank you for trying to help, Grant. A new cable purchase should not be necessary inlue of the history of using HDMI successfully.
Here are the resolutions supported by the NEC PA302W in their documentation
The hardware from 2014 until I installed Big Sur has not changed. The graphics cards have not changed, the HDMI cable has not changed and the display has not been changed (take note of the fact that the NEC display does its BEST WORK AT ITS HIGHEST RESULUTION) . It used to work perfectly until Big Sur. Now my computer, purchased for photo processing is essentially SILICON SLAG. My Nikon D850 generates RAW images sized around 46-47 MB, which when processed by first Lightroom and now Capture One 20 and 21 yield uncompressed TIFFs (16 bit color) of about 210MB. Using such low resolution as currently Apple is able to deliver in Big Sur is indistinguishable from a pointed stick on wet mud.
Apple finds yet another way to disappoint...
How can I know? The HDMI uses a part one of the Thunderbolt channels of the 3 in the chassis. The HDMI was never unplugged from either the display or my MacPro at any time between the last clock-ticks under Catalina and the first clock-ticks of Big Sur as it woke up after the install. Nor at any point in time doing the Big Sur download or during the self running of the Big Sur install. Nor even any point in time since I noted the problem.
You have defaulted to selecting the card in slot -1, which does not have any rasterizerizers.
Next, click on the AMD FirePro D500 (noted as installed in Slot-2) to see the information about that card, and its attached displays.
So with HDMI cables being, at its most optimistic, flakey, I went out today and purchased a $40 DisplayPort cable of about 5 feet in length, with HDMI connector for the computer end and a DISPLAYPORT connector for the display end. I shut down, changed out the HDMI in favor of the new cable and started the MacPor again and this time got a compltely black screen. In trying to sort that out I discovered I could not find my display documentation, save for one manual, completely in Russian. So back to the HDMI cable and now suffering through the online searches for display's manuals in English without a lot of success. At least one documentation site has been found, but quickly depends into pure chaos when trying to download and print (Why don't companies test their schiess-software before placement in the public domain? Guess this is why it is free!) Went through the scrambled maze at NEC USA and hoping for a callback in what remains of my time on earth.
Can you recommend any sites that work from which I can download display manuals for printing?
Thanks
Before Big Sur my 2013 MacPro could drive my NEC PA302W at 2560x1600. After Big Sur I can only drive it at 1600x900. How can it get back to 2560x1600
