Double External Displays

Question

cosmogony Author

Level 1

0 points

Double External Displays

MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015) is now the light developer machine

- 8 GiB RAM

- DisplayPort 1.2

- 5 Gb/s usb for storage and wired Ethernet
- and fanless, PCIe ssd

One would want 280 ppi, but 221 is ok at 5". And 16 GiB RAM wouldn't hurt...
MacBook Air is no longer useful because it's stuck at 4 GiB RAM slow-land.

However, Apple does not provide a DisplayPort adapter for that USB type-c port, and third party displayPort adapters provide no charging and no usb 3.1.

So, how does one attain:

- 2 external 2560x1600 at 60 Hz via single DisplayPort 1.2 MST receptacle
- continuous charging

- 5 Gb/s usb 3.1 receptacle for gigabit Ethernet and external storage

Does Apple or anybody else have a plan, sicne it's been 6 months already?

//wantitall

MacBook, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Oct 26, 2015 4:39 PM

Reply

Answer 1

cosmogony Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2015 6:29 PM in response to cosmogony

After further research, I have decided that I want to join the 4K crowd. So the MacBook Retina, which in my opinion is the greatest Mac at the moment, does have some shortcomings for the future:

The early usb-c it has does not have Thunderbolt
Because it has an Intel Broadwell cpu, it can't drive 3x4k displays. We need Skylake for that.

So at the moment, one would use:

A single hdmi connected 3840x2160x24 @ 60 Hz monitor, to get Retina experience a size no larger than 28 - 30", like a Samsung.
If a DisplayPort adapter becomes available, an option to use 2 external 2560x1600x24 @ 60 Hz displays via DisplayPort multi-stream transport

So Macbook has unspecified hdmi version, and the 3840 is available in hdmi 1.3. However many monitors and cables claiming 1.3 will not support 4k or any resolution worth using, like Dell. They were designed for hdtv, no mas.

And once a Thunderbolt 3 usb-c MacBook Retina shows up, upgrade to get that 2 external 4K displays experience. We are also looking for 10 Gb/s usb 3.1.

Reply

Answer 2

Lanny

Level 6

13,225 points

Dec 27, 2015 10:11 PM in response to cosmogony

The 12" Retina MacBook does not support an external 4k monitor @ 60 Hz, only 30 Hz, and it does not support the use of 2 external monitors.

And, it doesn't support a 10 Gb/s USB 3, as the USB-C port is limited to 5 Gb/s. So, even if some kind of USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter were developed, it wouldn't be able to support anything higher than 5 Gb/s.

Reply