Q: Boot Camp on iMac Retina 5K?

From https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Display+Teardown/30 260

It uses a AMD Radeon R9 M290X GPU. If AMD will release a Windows driver/or Bootcamp will contain one you should not be overly concerned.

milleron wrote:

 

So, the Boot Camp partition contains video drivers other than those that the Windows installation contains??

Yes. Available here - Apple - Support - Downloads.

 

As you say, if AMD would release a specific "IMac Retina 5K" driver, I'd not be worried, but, with neither an announcement nor an assurance of such a driver, I posted my still-answered question.   And I'd still like to know if display drivers have to interact with the Timing Controller.  I'm guessing they don't, at least on Windows.PCs, as the drivers released by the manufacturers, both nVidia  and AMD, are hardware-independent other than in their "bitness." I'm therefore not very concerned about the TCon, but the other question is important as I don't think there are any video cards currently claiming to be capable of driving a 5120 x 2880 display, and before I spend $3,100, I'd love to know the answers to ALL these questions.

This http://www.anandtech.com/show/8623/hands-on-apples-imac-with-retina-display does not answer your question about a Windows driver

Much more interesting is how Apple is driving it. Since no one has a 5K timing controller (TCON) yet, Apple went and built their own.

This http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx driver will support up to

Feature Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 14.6 RC Driver for Windows

• Plants vs. Zombies (Direct3D performance improvements):
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X - 1920x1080 Ultra – improves up to 11%
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X - 2560x1600 Ultra – improves up to  15%
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration (3840x2160 Ultra)  - 92% scaling

So does Windows 7/8 work without any driver issues on the iMac 5k using bootcamp?

I just successfully installed Windows 8.1 Update 1 on BootCamp on Mac OS X Yosemite. Here is a step by step I just wrote, hope it helps y'all:

How to successfully install Windows 8, or above, on Mac OS X Mavericks or above:

Requirements:

1- Windows OS ISO Image file

2- An 8GBs USB Flash Drive

3- A good Internet connection as you will need to download the Windows compatible drivers for your Mac

Steps:

1- Open up Disk Utility and create an additional partition for Windows formatted as ExFat. 100GBs, or above, is recommended as update to the operating system, as well as Apps requiere space on your HD or SSD [This step can be done during Mac OS X's installation process]

2- Open up BootCamp Assistant

3- Make sure only the 'Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk' is checked and your USB Flash Drive plugged in and click 'Continue'

4- Click 'Choose' and select your Windows ISO Image file

5- Select the USB Flash Drive you will be using during the installation process and click continue to confirm

6- Once done, restart your Mac and hold down the 'alt/option' key on your keyboard to bring up the Boot Menu

7- Select the USB Flash Drive named Windows, not the UEFI Boot

8- Install Windows as you normally would

* Remember to press and hold the 'alt/option' key, and select the Windows Partition, whenever the installation process requires your Mac to restart

* http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj945423.aspx

* http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/install-windows-on-mac

Thanks for the information iPodtouch245.

Are you able to use the 5K resolution on Windows 8.1?

I have not tried with a Retina 5K Display, I'm currently in a MacBook Pro with Retina Display (Late 2013). Sorry 

I do not have a tested 5K/Bootcamp configuration (even though I wish I did ). There have been reports of issues with the cylinder MacPro with AMD GPUs, so I expect some driver issues. The current drivers do not support the full 5K for Windows, but OSX can get 5K (with the Apple TCON) out of the GPU.

I received a 5k retina iMac today and immediately setup Windows 8.1 using the built in Bootcamp process.    NO snags installing, NO driver/exclamation marks, NO lockups.  Audio, Bluetooth (kb/mouse) and Network (wired/wireless) works in Win 8.1.  

BOTH operating systems have the same HUGE (for me!) issue.   **No 5k resolution option, so I cannot maximize the real estate**  

OSX: 

Windows:  Allows for a native resolution setting of 4k 3840x2160.  

Updating the ATI catalyst software pack from the version shipped to the latest October beta had no effect.  

y2kpc wrote:

 

I received a 5k retina iMac today and immediately setup Windows 8.1 using the built in Bootcamp process.    NO snags installing, NO driver/exclamation marks, NO lockups.  Audio, Bluetooth (kb/mouse) and Network (wired/wireless) works in Win 8.1.  

 

Can I ask you to look at More boot camp problems new 5k imac 3 tera fusion drive?

y2kpc wrote:

 

BOTH operating systems have the same HUGE (for me!) issue.   **No 5k resolution option, so I cannot maximize the real estate**  

 

OSX:

 

Windows:  Allows for a native resolution setting of 4k 3840x2160. 

This contradicts what AnandTech link says

"At 5120x2880 pixels, the new Retina 5K Display is precisely 4x the pixels of the 2560x1440 panel in last year’s model."

This is confusing...

BOTH operating systems have the same HUGE (for me!) issue.   **No 5k resolution option, so I cannot maximize the real estate** 

OS X should support 5K, even if Windows goes up to 4K.

Loner T wrote:

Can I ask you to look at More boot camp problems new 5k imac 3 tera fusion drive?

I did not have to use any partition utilities.   I just opened Boot Camp assistant in finder/launcher (upper right corner of OSX), and that did everything for me.  It defauled to a 10GB parition size for Bootcamp/Windows which was obviously not enough.  I then clicked the "Split Partition in half" option which on my 1TB fusion drive gave me about 500gb for Windows and 500gb for OSX.     It launched Windows setup from my ISO, and when setup was nearly complete, Windows invoked bootcamp setup.

I have never touched a mac system before today, so I was happy the bootcamp setup was so seamless.   It took less than an hour start to finish.

Loner T wrote:

This contradicts what AnandTech link says

"At 5120x2880 pixels, the new Retina 5K Display is precisely 4x the pixels of the 2560x1440 panel in last year’s model."

While I agree that the monitor itself physically contains 5120x2880 (14.7 Million) pixels, neither OS gives let me use true 1:1 pixel map scaling.

The maximum resolution slider shows 3840x2160 in Windows .            75% of what I feel each horizontal/vertical setting "should be" (5120x2880)

The maximum resolution scaling is even less!!  3200x1800 in OSX ....   62.5% of what I feel it "should be" (5120x2880)

This is the first time I've bought into a display that I could not use the full resolution.  

With VGA monitors you could always set the resolution to 640x480

With 720P HDTVs you could always set the resolution to 1280x720 (or 1280x768)

With 1080P HDTV/Monitors I could always set the resolution to 1920x1080

With the 4K TVs/Monitors I used (Seiki, Dell P2815), I could always set the resolution to 3840x2160

With the Retina 5K apple product I am missing the 5120x2880 resolution that I had wanted.

On the plus side, one other test I did was power consumption.  Using my Kill-a-watt meter, the all-in-one 27" Retina 5K iMac with Fusion drive uses:

34 watts in Windows 8.1 at minimum brightness,

48 watts at maximum brightness at idle/web browsing.