I have an early 2011 15" i7 2 GHz with a AMD Radeon HD 6490M and Intel HD Graphics 3000. I want to replace my 2nd monitor Apple Cinema HD with an EIZO monitor that displays 10-bit output if the graphics board supports it. I am not able to verify this feature. So does the card support it and where is that stated? I have Photoshop 5.5. Also anybody have any experience with EIZO? Thank you.
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 15" Hi-Res Anti-Glare 23" Cinema HD
Hello,
10-bit doen't work on OSX by now due to lack of drivers settings.
It DOES work on PC. This is the link for reference and testing info, including the 10-bit test file :
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/152/10+Bit+Output+Support
Here is my setup:
Nec PA271W (10-bit monitor) DP connected
Ati FirePro V3800 (10-bit card) DP connected
Adobe PS CS5 (with open gl setting to "advanced")
Inside my Mac there are NO "real" drivers for the V3800, so though it works fine it is impossible to activate 10-bit support through the driver. It is generic, allows for QE/CI acceleration but nothing more. The ramp test file shows banding.
On my Win 7 machine, same config, but we got the catalyst suite. So activate 10-bit in catalyst window, reboot, the ramp test file shows NO banding, everything is smooth.
The problem in OSX is that you cannot activate 10-bit support in the drivers (there is no such thing as a catalyst settings window as in the PC world), so it doesn't work.
Maybe by digging inside the kext that are loaded for ati, but not easy
As far as I am able to verify, there is STILL no 10-bit Display support from Apple in 10.8, even for the high end NVidida cards (for Mac) that support it, as well as the monitors and cables. Apple is the last link in the 10-bit display chain and they still refuse to do anything about it. However when it does arrive it most likely will only be supported on GPUs that work in the Mac Pro, not mobile GPUs.
Monitors: HP, Eizo, NEC all make true 10-bit displays with 14-16 bit LUTs (10 bits per R, G, B channels - also called "30 bit" or "40 bit" if you include the alpha capability)
GPUs: Nvidia workstation GPUs made since about 2009 support 10-bit and Radeon 6900 series and later support 10-bit
Cable: HDMI, DisplayPort, MiniDisplayPort all support 10-bit bandwidth
Apps: Photoshop and others support it
OS: Only Microsoft for now.
That is really sad.
10-bit graphics card
