LED Cinema 27" with Windows 7

From the macrumors.com forums:

<PinkZeppelin>My 27" works perfectly fine on my PC. Intergrated mic, speakers, webcam all work fine. As for adjusting brightness, I installed bootcamp 3.1 and the 27 ACD update for 64 bit and can change brightness from 0 to 100 percent. Running windows 7 64-bit with no mac partition.

So yes, it looks like the new Apple LED Cinema Display 27" is PC friendly!

really? how did you get it connected to your PC?

it only has a mini dvi cable, and a usb.

what converter did you use?

thanks

Bootcamp does not run on a Windows PC. Bootcamp installs on Macs to allow you to run Windows as a separately booting PC partition.

This monitor uses a mini-display port connector. You would need to get the physical connection going before working out any kind of driver issues.

Short answer: no.

Rudy, that is absolutely false. If you run D:\Drivers\Apple\BootCamp64.msi on your Snow Leopard DVD, Boot Camp 3.0 will install on a PC.

Next, you can update from Boot Camp 3.0 to 3.1 using the official Apple update. Finally, you can then install the Apple Magic Trackpad and 27-inch LED Cinema Display Update. This should enable brightness control on the PC.

As far as connecting the ACD27" to a PC, you can buy new PC graphics cards with DisplayPort or miniDisplayPort connectors, i.e. ATi Radeon 5970, Palit GTX 470, etc. You can also connect older DVI cards with the ACD27" using an active DVI to mDP adapter such as the Atlona AT-DP400.

My LED Cinema Display 27" is still in the mail so I haven't tested it yet with my non-Mac Bootcamp PC, but other users at Macforums.com are saying that yes, the ACD27" is PC compatible.

Short answer: yes.

Harlock,

You might want to read the complete Macrumors post:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1023270&highlight=bootcamp

Then decide if this applies to you.



Here's a knowledge base article with more info:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4273

Hi,
I am using the display on my MacBook Pro: excellent. But I also need ocassionaly to connect it to my PC. I tried converting from my NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX via VGI VGI-to-MiniMini female-to-female. Mechanically, everything connects well, but the display does not appear to function.
Can't see why ...
Maybe option is to purchase new video card w/mini output?

Thanks so much for your help. I guess it is more involved than a straight video conversion. The Atlona involves power through USB and other functions. I'll try it.

A heads up for people with Radeon 5870's. I bought the atlona at-dp400 but it didn't work with the standard 5870. You have to buy the Eyefinity 6 version with the native mini-displayport ports.

You cannot use the at-dp400 with the ACD at this time at 2560x1440

They did not have the EDID info at the time of production and it will only do 720p. It passes the edid to the pc that it is the 24'' acd. The imac 27'' does work.

They are working on a firmware update.

I'm using the 27" ACD with a PC with a Radeon 4890 card that has a full-size DisplayPort connector, with a cheap adapter that converts it to a Mini DisplayPort - I'd only recommend it if you have a card with DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort, the Atlona adapter that goes from DVI to Mini DisplayPort is big, very expensive and potentially unreliable as DVI and DisplayPort are so different (whereas Mini DisplayPort is just a smaller version of DisplayPort). Beware though that some Radeon 5xxx cards are reported to have a dodgy implementation of DisplayPort by ATI and don't work with the ACD so check others' experiences before buying.

It's true that running AppleControlPanel.exe from the 27 " ACD/Magic Trackpad update for Boot Camp allows you to adjust the brightness on a PC - don't install any of the Boot Camp packages as they will just install a lot of stuff that is irrelevant to your PC, just extract that one file and run it by itself.

ACD is great apart from the small (about two pixels in size) bit of trapped dust and a strange pixel on mine, trying to get it replaced/repaired at the moment having got it last week, otherwise is a great PC display...