How to enable 30 bit color on UHD 4K monitor attached to Mac Pro?

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mkrjf Author

Level 1

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How to enable 30 bit color on UHD 4K monitor attached to Mac Pro?

This was posted as an answer to previous response, but I don't read German 😉

http://www.heise.de/mac-and-i/meldung/iMacs-lernen-10-Bit-Farbwiedergabe-2854496 .html

I have an HP dreamcolor 27" color calibrated grading monitor and also Samsung SUHD TV / monitor.

I would like to enable 30 bit color on Dreamcolor attached as either primary or secondary monitor. It supports both HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity.

In addition it would be nice to output to the Samsung SUHD - whicle not specifically calibrated, it also supports 4:2:2 10 bit and 4:4:4 8 bit. I would like to have it connected using 4:2:2 10 bit to MAc Pro.

Can anyone help? Just upgrade to El Capitan and it will work? or only with certain configuration / hardware?

Posted on Nov 30, 2015 11:59 AM

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Answer 1

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

Nov 30, 2015 12:35 PM in response to mkrjf

Use Google translate to translate from German

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2015 1:50 AM in response to mkrjf

That article specifically talks about it now being supported in El Capitan 10.11.1 on the new iMacs.

While in theory other Mac models already have the hardware to do 30bit colour and in some cases can already do this in Windows in Boot Camp Apple sadly do not appear to have enabled this on those other Mac models. I tried this on my classic Mac Pro which does do 30bit colour in Windows 10 via Boot Camp but still does not do it in El Capitan. 😢

While sadly Apple have a habit of artificially crippling older Macs by denying them access to certain features there is a small amount of hope here because Apple did eventually add support for connecting a 5K monitor to the new Mac Pro. (As it happens it is also possible to connect a 5K display to the old classic Mac Pro with a GTX 980 card as well.)

It maybe that an enterprising person could 'hack' the relevant video drivers to turn this 30bit mode on for other Macs. My impression would be that is all that is required. However with SIP etc. this is not as straight forward as it used to be.

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