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by dlevine 4253 days ago
The biggest problem I've seen is that most laptops can't adequately drive a 4K display.

First of all, a lot of them can only drive a 4K display at 30hz (for example, my late-2013 Retina MBP). The currently available HDMI only goes up to 30hz, and DisplayPort 1.2 only supports 60hz with MST enabled. It seems like high-end desktop graphics cards can do this.

Second, native 4K on a 28" screen is too small. I can't read it, and my eyes aren't all that bad. I'm guessing a 32" screen would be a bit better, but probably still too small. Any larger than 32" probably wouldn't be feasible as a computer monitor.

It seems like 4K would be perfect at HiDPI mode on a 24" screen. Unfortunately, my Macbook Pro can't do HiDPI on a 4K display. 1.5X HiDPI mode (effective 1440p) on a 28" would probably also look good, but my Macbook Pro can't do that either.

My guess is that the resolution we really want is 5K @ 27". I was playing around with the Retina iMac at the Apple store, and it was still completely readable at 3200x1800. Unfortunately, Apple apparently had to hack the Displayport spec to get this working, and Displayport 1.3 (which has enough bandwidth for 8K) won't be out for a while.

My guess is that we will have reasonable 4K/5K displays as well as computers that can support them in a year or two.

1 comments

I was under the impression that a late-2013 MBP does support HiDPI with 4K displays. Is it a hardware issue or a software one?
Late-2013 15" MBPs support HiDPI with 4K Displays.

So it looks like you can hack 13-inch Displays to work with 1080p HiDPI at 52hz (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1741440). Since it maxes out at 52hz, I'm guessing the problem is hardware-related (either rendering ability or bandwidth).

However, this means that you are just running at 1080p effective resolution. It seems like 1440p HiDPI mode is what we really want, and I don't believe this is possible (I couldn't get it to work, and the information I found on the web said the same). Hopefully the next-gen 13" MBP (Broadwell) will have DP 1.3 and more GPU rendering power, which will enable 5K displays.