Does the new Macbook Pro 15" (late 2013) supports 4K via Thunderbolt/Displayport?

The following article claims that the samsung U28D590D works with the MBP Retina with the NVIDIA 750 graphics unit, but has some issues with other computers and configurations. In particular, the displays’s use of a single-stream DisplayPort connection, compared to the multi-stream connection hack required by first generation 4K displays to reach 60Hz, seems to produce glitches under 10.9.3.

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A Look at the 4K Display Improvements, and Remaining Flaws, in OS X 10.9.3

http://www.tekrevue.com/os-x-10-9-3-4k-displays/

As far as i know, the only way to get 4k@60Hz out of a MacBook Pro is via Thunderbolt's integrated Displayport 1.2 in Multistream mode.

Also this is currently only possible with Windows.

Intel Demo'd Iris and yes, it can do 4K @ 60Hz.

Anand Tech did an article about it, IIRC.

The performance is OK, it's not great...you can't game at that resolution, for example...no way.

Iris Pro on the other hand, that is a different story. Iris Pro actually can perform well, and you could probably game on it at 4K @ 60Hz.

The weird thing is, the 13" does not have the "Iris Pro" graphics, only the one 15" model has that...which makes no sense....Why would you want the 15" *without* a discreet GPU and only Intel on-die GPU?

The problem (that I see) you'll run into is powering the built in 13" display in scaling mode (ie. any mode other than "best for retina display") AND a 4K display @ 60Hz -- I'm not sure that will work too well.

If you set the built in display to "best for retina display" then I think it will perform well powering both...but if you use scaling with the built in display, forget about it.

Even just on it's own, the fully loaded 2013 13" retina, just it's own built-in screen -- if it's set to anything other than "best for retina display" lags. Don't believe me? Go to system preferences -> displays, change the resolution to "More Space" and scaled -- the largest one.

Then open a PDF in safari. Try pinch to zoom. Woah, where is that lag coming from?

If you have it, open Adobe Photoshop and try pinch to zoom. Yeah. Not working so well.

This is the same exact behavior on the 2012 13" retina, which has an even crappier built-in Intel GPU (HD 4000). Why they choose to call these machines "pro" is beyond me. A pro machine deserves a **dedicated** gpu. Not a fake GPU.

Iris Pro (HD 5200) could have fixed this problem without any major effect on heat or power, because on those chips, the built in GPU has 128MB of eDRAM. But none of the Intel chips that have Iris Pro on them are available for the 13" retina. Great decision making, Apple. There is ony model of 15" retina you can buy that has just the Iris Pro graphics, and no dedicated GPU. Why anyone would want to buy the 15" retina without the 750M is beyond me.

Apple needs to either put the Iris Pro GPU in the 13" or give 13" the option to have a dedicated GPU. This will fix the problems with laggy graphics. One last thing -- if you have either the 13" retina from 2012 or 2013, upgrade it to Mavericks. Mavericks gives OpenCL drivers to both 4000 and 5000 Intel GPUs.

And yes -- lastly, Multi Stream Display Port (required to drive a 4K display @ 60Hz) does not work in OS X at this moment.

If you connect a 4K monitor and try to run it at 60Hz, you'll see black on half the display.

It *does* however work in Windows though. So yeah, in order to run 4K on your mac @ 60Hz right now, you need to not run OS X and run Windows 8.

Pretty funny...

kogir - thanks for all the insight, it was really helpful.

When I got the ASUS PQ321Q display to connect to my Retina MBP 15 Late 2013, I couldn't for my life figure out why it wasn't outputting 4k resolution at 60hz. After trying numerous combinations of cables and adapters (DP 1.1, DP 1.2 to miniDP etc) I gave up..and I guess I was right since there is no way to run 4K resolution at 60hz natively on 10.9 Mavericks..and when I installed Windows 8.1 to try it out ..my Thunderbolt display which I use as the primary screen just woulnd't play well with Windows 8.1 running through Bootcamp, it was giving the "new" blue screen of death everytime I booted into Windows 8.1 with both Thunderbolt and Asus 4K monitor turned on..

Any updates on MST support for rMBP through software/firmware/driver update ? lol it just feels funny almost surreall to have a approx $4000 piece of equipment on the desk that is not much better than a $300 monitor

The worst part about this is Apple can be seen advertising that the new MBPr 15" model can power a 4K monitor THROUGH the Thunderbolt 2 Port here: http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt - This article quotes the following:

"Now with Thunderbolt 2 built into the new Mac Pro and MacBook Pro with Retina display, you can connect the latest 4K desktop displays and get double the bandwidth for your peripherals. And the two generations of Thunderbolt technology are compatible with each other."

Does this not let the consumer assume that the newest MBPr will be able to drive a 4K display through the Thunderbolt 2 Port? I would say yes it does, but the TB2 Ports can't power a 4K display because, as previously stated, MST is disabled in Mavericks for the 15" MBPr Late 2013.

I really hope that Apple fixes this soon. As a professional customer, every time Apple pulls something like this I become more and more jaded. What a bummer.

Listen up Apple! People are upset about this! Fix it!

Guys, I've finally pieced together something about the 30/60 Hz problem that many of you probably already knew: the reason for the MST hack is on the monitor's side! This also explains why a Macbook Pro can support two 2,560 monitors @ 60Hz but not one 4K monitor at 60Hz.

The current generation of 4K monitors weren't able to update every chip in their pipelines to support the bandwidth needed to support 60Hz 4K, so THEY created the MST hack solution. I noticed in Tom's Hardware review of the ASUS 4K monitor that, even with the MST hack supporting 60Hz, the actual screen response was only 40 Hz. Which gives Apple even less reason to support it - it's tied to a few hardware models.

I'm assuming this is the same reason Displayport 1.3 introduced that god-awful compression mode where your color comes through at 1,920x1,080 resolution -> it's not (as they advertise) so you don't have to buy a new $30 HDMI cable to go with your new $3,000 monitor - it's so the monitor manufacturers don't have to update all their components to support higher bandwidth.

I sincerely hope that branding and terminology will become much more explicit in the future, and people will use some term like "FULL-4K" to indicate that you are really actually getting that.

yes i have. The Samsung display was abysmal quality compared to the Dell. I sent mine back and got a second Dell.

It was functional at 60hz w/rMBP 15 (n750). It was just such a poor quality monitor that it was not worth it for me.

Yes. Further checking on other forum tell me that 13 rMbp wont support it due to iris model U limitation :/. Only 15 support it because it use different model (version H). So anyone who want to connect with 4K monitor. Please dont buy 13.

The cable link is below.

Does your monitor have a DisplayPort connection? If it only has HDMI that might be the issue limiting you to 30Hz.

My Samsung monitor has two HDMI ports and one DisplayPort (see photo) — the cable uses that and the Thunderbolt port on the Mac.

Cable Matters Gold Plated Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt Port Compatible) to DisplayPort Cable, Black, 6 Feet

amzn.com/B00C7RJQPY

Yes, in addition to two HDMI 1.4a inputs, it has a DisplayPort 1.2 input.

And yes, the Late 2013 Macbook ships with Mavericks. No updates are available yet. Previous Macbooks only supported DisplayPort 1.1a, a Thunderbolt 1 hardware limitation.

Iris can do 4K at 60HZ but only over Mini Display Port 1.2 (and for whatever reason, it looks like this is not implemented in OS X yet? whiskey tango foxtrot? So in order to get this you have to run windows 8 on your mac -- LMAO!) -- not HDMI.

Scroll down to "Display connectivity" section.

http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.php/reviews/hardware/cpu/26405-haswell-test-in tel-core-i7-4770k-and-i5-4670k.html?start=2

The same thing goes for the 750M version, since 4K @ 60Hz requires HDMI 2.0

Regardless of the GPU, HDMI 1.4 maxes out at 3840×2160p at 30 fps

I guess this is why no one is pushing 4K tvs on black friday sales -- all of the TVs have HDMI 1.4!

So they're limited to 30Hz at 4K resolution....awful.

Maybe it's best to wait until HDMI 2.0 starts shipping in a Mac to upgrade your displays to 4K..

I have same results as Kogir with a Dell UP3214Q -- Tested this today in the lab.

Windows 8.1's scaling / HiDPI mode is not very good, but whatever...at least it works at 60Hz; OS X can not even claim that title yet 😀

Yeah...they *have* to fix this...hopefully sometime this month...the new trashcantube / mac pro is supposed to be able to power 3 4K displays at 60Hz. The MP uses AMD graphics but the problem I believe is in Mavericks itself.

> The "Adapter" is not an adapter as you think.

> there is no display port to HDMI adapter that goes higher than 1080p.

It's not nearly as bad as that. There are < $40 adapters right now that do Thunderbolt to HDMI and gt 4K@30fps - with plenty of posts confirming this to be the case. The adapters DO have to be active, but they don't have to be an entire GPU. (Provided your GPU+drivers suport 4K@30) So I can't imagine things would look different at 60 Hz. But again it won't matter if most displays adapt DisplayPort.

There is great hope/anticipation in the community that Mavericks will get an update to enable multi-stream support, motivated in part by the Mac Pro release.

I guess there is a workaround to this problem, that is to say, even if we cannot output 4k @ 60HZ via TB while running Mavericks, we can do this via HDMI. As a previous forumite suggested, all we need is an active DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 adapter. The important question is whether the DisplayPort side of the adapter needs to be DP 1.1 or 1.2. At the first glance I'd think it must be DP 1.2. But after some thought it is not necessary. Because the already existing DisplayPort 1.1 to HDMI 1.4 active adapter that another forumite pointed out carries the HBR2 feature of DP 1.2. It does not carry the MST feature of DP 1.2, but to my understanding it is not necessary, because the feature that allows for 4K @ 60Hz is HBR2, and not MST, which is necessary only if you want to realize multiple independent video streams.

If my understanding is correct, than NiqueXyZ's concern that an active DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter can be quite expensive is partly, perhaps mostly mitigated. Because all we need would be an active DP 1.1 with HBR2 feature to HDMI 2.0 adapter.

Can you guys (especially NiqueXyZ) comment on this?

PS. Below is the link for the DP 1.1 w/ HBR2 to HDMI 1.4 active adapter.

http://www.accellcables.com/product189.html

Correct. So that confirms it -- *all* of these current "4k" monitors get to 4K by using MST.

They're not using HBR at all. And that's why none of them support HDMI 2.0

None of these displays will be future-proof at all man -- not a single one of them.

If you're really wanting to spend that much on a display, I'd wait for a proper one.

The only reason we (my company) bought them is for testing purposes.

Guy from reduser says apple will update the drivers to support HBR in the future when HBR displays start coming out...it's not that far fetched I guess. I just don't understand why they won't enable MST on OS X right *now*