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I think that Apple states that Windows may be installed on the Retina 5K, but will there be a problem with drivers?
More importantly, will Windows drivers be in conflict with Apple's proprietary Timing Controller they've announced for this computer?
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.
This is very interesting information. So Apple uses max. 3200x1800. This is odd, as they demo Final Cut Pro X with a 4K movie and additional timeline and toolbars. This would mean the 4K movie on the demo is not 1-to-1 pixel-to-pixel? What's the point then? Or am I missing something and do individual programs allow for 5120x2880 (which I doubt). Can you test this, y2kpc? See this picture
On the other hand, most users want a retina screen, ie they don't want to see the pixels. Then it doesn't "really" matter that it's not a full 5K resolution. I'm buying mainly because I love the retina screens on iPad, iPhone and MacBook Pro so much, and since I'm looking at my desktop screens so many hours a day, this seems a great choice. But still, they call it "Retina 5K Display" and write "5120‑by‑2880 resolution with support for millions of colors".
I am disappointed that not one reviewer cared to check/test the real pixel resolution on the display!
I was crucified when I mentioned y2kpc's predicament on Macrumors.com, declared the stupidest organism in the inner solar system, and laughed out of town. They did pause long enough to point out that this apparent lack of resolution is just HiDPI which Apple employs on every Retina device to prevent screen elements from becoming too small to see. Aficionados and the cognoscenti call it "pixel doubling," as well. They claim that when you drag an image or window from a monitor of lesser resolution onto the Retina display that HiDPI keeps it the same size (in inches or cm) but increases the resolution within the image or window to full Retina.
It does, admittedly, keep a window from becoming too small to read the text. That's its purpose, but it also keeps you from retaining a window's ful content when you make it small enough to fit another window, or windows, on the same display. For everyday use or photo work, then, I'll leave my 5K at "Best for display." If I ever need to get multiple ful windows open on it, I'll pay US$17 for SwitchResX, which has benefits other than easily switching into 5120 x 2880. However, I think that anyone who truly needs to keep four ful window open needs either a 32" 4K or simply extra monitors, because 27"may turn out to be a little small for full 5K
Read the post on macrumors. Wow, those guys!
Seems both you and I thought too highly of what retina really means. And yes, icons and pixels will be tiny on 5120x2880, but at least, with those utilities, you can set it at that resolution.
Still, I want to know about that 4K Final cut Pro demo. As to me, that's plain wrong: you're not really looking at 4K in that video window. Unless I am mistaken of course.
And of course, will there ever be 5120x2880 native drivers for Windows for Boot Camp?
Or is the current resolution good enough, y2kpc, to work on and not see any pixels in Windows? Or do you somehow see that windows have been scaled (in Windows)?
millerron,
I'm surprised the macrumors folks were so unhelpful. Setting the iMac to 5k resolution manually via the third party program works great, and while the text is small, at least I know I have all 15 million pixels available to the content that I open.
It seems 100% of media sites that are demonstrating "4K content on this 5K" monitor are doing it wrong.
In Retina mode, (yes I *DID* google it), the screen resolution is 2560x1440, or 3.68 million pixels. Apple is THEN using Retina techniques to use quadruple the number of pixels used to display those 3.68 million pixels. So the display uses 15.7 million pixels at all times, but only holds 3.68 million unique pieces of data... a far cry from 4K or 5K. Retina LOOKS darn good, but I can see differences between a 5K screensaver shown at Retina mode and a 5K screen saver shown after we tricked OSX to letting us unlock the true 5K resolution setting.
fredz85,
I am trying to reach out to ATI regarding 5120x2880 Bootcamp windows drivers since I think I read that Apple does not support Bootcamp aside from basic installation. I suspect when the Dell 5120x2880 panel ships, ATI will release a 5K driver. However, I already followed registry changes found online to add a 5K resolution setting to ATI Catalyst. ATI ignores any resolution set above the DETECTED monitor capability. That's the only issue currently... Apple identifies the Retaina 5K screen as only being 4K to Bootcamp.
With regards to running Bootcamp at 4K resolution in Windows (which is 75% of true-pixel scaling), Windows looks great at 4K and 100% icon size scaling. Compared to my Dell P2815Q:
-Text is much bolder
-Text is much sharper. No pixelation on the Apple. close-up pixelation on the Dell, particularly in the number 7.
-Text is legible from a further distance
-Colors and gradients are more pronounced
-Quality is consistent across 100% of the screen, top to bottom, left to right. With the Delll, dragging a window to a different corner yields a visibly different color/shade with a different amount of eyestrain reading text.
I have used a 22 inch 4k display since 2005-ish which is about the same PPI as the 27 inch 5k display. I know i can easily use that comfortably with native font sizes.
I doubt that the dell would have an impact on on the bootcamp situation. I really wonder how they are driving the display from the GPU -> tcon.
It would fit into DP 1.2/thunderbolt 2 spec if it was at only 6 bits per channel (18-bit color) as with cvt reduced timings it would be a 938 Mhz pixelclock. DP 1.2 can do 960 Mhz pixel clock at 6 bpc but only 720 Mhz at 8 bpc.
The dell is driven completely differently via 2x DP 1.2 cables so its a two monitor cable like my original 4k displays were. Current graphics drivers would have no issue with that.
The drivers are usually not dependent on the resolution at all its more a matter of the pixel clock and type of connection you are sending it over that causes driver issues.
The respondents weren't "unhelpful;" they were just brutal in expressing their disdain for the fact that I didn't know about HiDPI. They did explain what was going on in between taking turns at humiliating me. I did gain understanding of the situation. I could have phrased my post in a more diplomatic way, so I don't blame them too much.
I can hardly wait until my 5K arrives, so I can actually see what you're describing. At the Apple store, the best one can do is try to get a non-retina 27" iMac displaying the same thing that's on a nearby Retina 5K. It's impossible to drag windows or change resolution settings. The cossacks at Macrumors.com led me to believe that even though the size of a window or image won't change when dragging it from a secondary display to the Retina display, it will in fact be shown in full Retina -- i.e., with every pixel individually controlled. As long as it looks great, and better than my current 2560 x 1440 monitor I shouldn't obsess over the minutiae, but after all we've been through (especially the beating I took at Macrumors), the geek in me is dying of curiosity about what things will look like. (I don't think I can tell much about it on my MBPr because of not having a secondary monitor to attach to it.)
So there are smaller displays with a similar ppi right now available? Which ones and what resolution are we talking about? Would this work flawlessly using a Thunderbird connection on the 5K iMac as a second monitor? Also in Windows?
I only know of two displays (well if your talking distinct panels) that are even getting close to being a similar PPI.
27 inch imac is 217 PPI.
22.2 inch IBM T221/Viewsonic VP2290b: 204 PPI
dell UP2414Q: 184 PPI
The dell *might* work on on mac os X. I think from the research I did that the newer OS can actually support MST mode but I am not 100% sure if that really is the case. The old IBM/Viewsonic displays (panel originally came out in 2002) only do 48Hz max and that is via 2x dual-link DVI. No way to run these nicely on OS X at the full refresh rate. Both would work @ 30Hz but the specs on the IBM/Viewsonic are pretty lacking by today's standards because its such an old display.
And then there is the identical PPI/resolution/size dell display that is not out yet that is rumor'd to cost as much as the imac but I would not have any expectations for >30Hz out of that thing on a mac. On windows I am sure it will do 60Hz fine but MST support is one thing a tiled display with 2 physical cables is another. OS X has never supported that and never will (IMHO).
And by the way the mac book pro retina is 220.53 PPI.
There are two notebooks (and some more upcoming) that are supposed to have 3840x2160 in 15.6 inch screens which is ~280 PPI (similar DPI to Samsung Ativ Q which is 276 PPI).
For a laptop that is where it is approaching my limits of being able to use the dispay without any kind of scaling (the 280 PPI range). 200 PPI is absolutely no problem for me and I have been doing it for years.
Hello y2kpc,
I'm thinking about buying a iMac Retina because I finally want to get the same pixel free retina experience on my desktop as I'm have on my iPad and iPhone.
A 28'' 4K display simply won't do, since I can still see individual pixels from normal viewing distance. I currently working with Windows and would even switch to a Mac for this, because I guess it will still take 1-2 years until you have monitors / cards / drivers / DisplayPort specs / scaling on windows etc. ready to wotk with 5k on a Windows system.
But before I buy I'm still trying to figure out, if the iMac retina does 60Hz in 5k resolution.
In every article I read about 4k monitors and graphic-cards, its all about 30 Hz and 60Hz support, not so when it comes to the iMac retina. Apple does not say anything about it in the technical specifications.
> I am very surprised that Apple is shipping them in Retina HiDPI mode, requiring a 3rd party utility to enable the native hardware mode (5120x2880@60Hz).
This indeed is the first direct confirmation about the 5K display working with 60Hz I found. Can you confirm that ?
I found an other article on extremtech, stating, that with 5k the panel switches to 30 Hz:
That might be only true for gaming (which is not of any interest for me), but I really want to know, if the normal desktop works with 60Hz, before I spend this much money.
Since I would need to install BootCamp, could you give some more details about your experience about working with windows on this machine ? How does Windows 8 scale under this high resolution ? Is text kind of blurry ?
Marc
houkouonchi: do you see the difference between the 184ppi of the Dell UP2414Q and the 217ppi of the iMac 5K? What cable would be required to connect the Dell UP2414Q with the iMac 5K? (I only see Thunderbolt ports)
y2kpc: can you confirm the full resolution mode works at 60 Hz?
I have ordered a Dell UP2414Q as well, to see if connecting it to the iMac 5K will work under OS X and Windows. Mine will have the upgraded graphics card, so maybe results will be better. It's coming on Monday, but unfortunately I won't be able to use it until the following Monday (****!).
Whipman,
I saw that ExtremeTech article updated yesterday. I'm sure that the display adapter cannot tell if it's running a game. The 5k simply can't do 60 Hz refresh in 5k mode. However, if you're not interested in gaming, under what other uses do you notice a difference between 30 Hz and 60? The article mentions "video editing at >30 Hz in 5k," but you're not planning that are you?
@milleron In reviews about 4K monitors and graphic adapter combinations it's always about 30Hz and 60Hz support. I've not seen it by myself, but moving the mouse cursor, scrolling and moving windows should be very annoying to the eye with only 30Hz.
I'm not going to pay that much money to get annoying experience with everyday work.
As for the refresh rate, in heavy 3D gaming the frame rate might drop to 30Hz and lower. Games might overwrite or modify the normal display mode. I just want to know, which refresh rate the normal desktop has.
As fredz85 mentioned, the Extremtech article seem to be wrong, when reading the mentioned thread at macrumors forum.
I especially found an answer in that Tweet, which seem to be from an Apple Senior Product Manager who should know what he talks about:
https://twitter.com/DumbYellowDog/status/522860946029416448
So I guess we can expect the panel to operate with 60Hz.
> By the way, as the original post was about Boot Camp
Right, that is why I found this thread and I'm still curious about experiences with Boot Camp running on this machine.
Regards
Marc
Whipman,
Thanks for the explanation, I see your point.
You probably know of Chris Pirillo, the Locker Gnome, who's been writing in magazines and online about all things computer for decades, now. He has an interesting "daily report" on YouTube about why he ordered a Retina 5K. One of his main concerns was about refresh rates because he's aware of some users being limited to 30 Hz on 4K displays with older Mac Pros. He quotes Marco Arment, an Apple blogger whom Chris considers to be in an elite class of computer hardware experts. Marco just stated flatly that the 5K runs at 60 Hz, and based simply on that assurance from a hardware expert whom he trusts thoroughly, Chris ordered his 5K.
In case you'd want to watch that video, it's very long, but this discussion about the Retina 5K's refresh rate stars roughly around 15:00.
In addition, the number of folks reporting on their experience with the display is mounting rapidly. Apparently, it's pretty easy to tell without any actual testing if a display is running at 30 Hz, and everyone seems to be in agreement that the 5K remains at 60 Hz when set to "best for display."
fredz85: Its just a mini displayport cable (although some won't support the full resolution so I would say make sure its a decent cable).
Thunderbolt is the same connector as DisplayPort and they are essentially the exact same thing (when it comes to running displays) the difference is Thunderbolt is capable of doing PCI-E passthrough so you can use it with non-monitors (Nics, raid, disk enclosures, etc...) at high rates of speed.
So on Saturday I went to the apple store and checked out the retina imac. The display is awesome. I am also happy that SetResX (the free one) worked fine without sudo/super user privileges so I was able to run the native 5120x2880.
Another example of crappy HiDPI mode is in Safari when as a test I viewed a high resolution image it was pixel doubling it making the quality crap instead of dispaying it natively pixel for pixel (fixed when I disabled HiDPI and ran 5120x2880 native). Seems really stupid to me for a browser to do pixel doubling on an image when you are linking straight to the image (not a href on a web-page).
HiDPI is far from perfect and very often will be wasting a bunch of pixels which is why I still think native 5120x2880 is by far the best way to run it.
Removed bootcamp partition and restarted from scratch.
Now running the free Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9841. Still 3840x2160 max, with the bootcamp drivers and the latest ATI catalyst package.
Boot Camp on iMac Retina 5K?
