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New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

smcleod.net

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Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#151

Post by kalleboo »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #134
kalleboo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is the advantage of using a 7680x4320 buffer? Everything is drawn at twice the width and height - and then gets scaled down to half the width and height. Is there actually a good reason to do this? Text rendering looks noticeably better rendered at 2x and scaled down. Apple's 1x font antialiasing is not ideal. Especially in Catalyst/SwiftUI apps that often don't bother to align drawing to round points, Apple's…

Apple’s 1x font antialiasing is not ideal because it no longer exists.

They still use antialiasing, just not sub-pixel antialiasing.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#152

Post by kalleboo »

metabagel wrote: post #80
kalleboo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is the advantage of using a 7680x4320 buffer? Everything is drawn at twice the width and height - and then gets scaled down to half the width and height. Is there actually a good reason to do this? Text rendering looks noticeably better rendered at 2x and scaled down. Apple's 1x font antialiasing is not ideal. Especially in Catalyst/SwiftUI apps that often don't bother to align drawing to round points, Apple's…

So, how do I actually set this for my Mac, or is this something which each application may or may not do?

There are third party tools like BetterDisplay that unlock it as an option https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#153

Post by MarcelOlsz »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #144
jakehilborn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be able to get this working using PBP and 2 cables without virtual displays. This is my write up for using HiDPI@120hz for two 57” G9s on my M2 MacBook. https://www.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/s/VrBLFDxYzg

Ah but you see, the challenge is to get a 3-split PBP on an M2 pro on a monitor with a native res of 7680x2160, each one scaled down 33%, working at 120hz with HDR, all hidpi like so: ┌─┐┌────┐┌─┐ │ ││ ││ │ └─┘└────┘└─┘ It creates some wonky math and requires plenty of dock and cable shenanigans and unlocking resolutions above 8k via BD. It's the third "monitor" where it gets tricky with the M2 pro especially at thes…

...And then there is the near-infinite trickle down of apps that rely on apps that rely on arcane configs and so on. This is truly the OS from hell. At least with Windows you know it's going to be garbage so when anything works on any level you are maximally impressed. But I have to spend my weekends isolating window shadow disabling functionality from yabai into it's own binary because I switched to aerospace which requires 'displays have separate spaces' to off, which just so happens to be exactly what yabai requires to be on, to remove window shadows, which is the only use I have left for it.

Just like the excel world championship I would find a macos ricing/window tiling competition equally enthralling. You read articles like the OP and at some point all you can do is laugh because lord (Cook) knows you've cried.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#155

Post by rdtsc »

This is why I hesitate updating my laptop. It's a 7 years old intel but my 2 external 4K displays work nicely and I like my setup. Upgrading looks like could mess them up. Doesn't matter how much faster compiling and testing will be, if I have to buy new monitors it's not worth it.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#156

Post by pholbrook »

tern wrote: post #77
compounding_it wrote: post #35

The ideal work/coding resolutions and sizes for macOS that I would suggest if you are going down this rabbit hole. 24 inch 1080p 24 inch 4k (2x scaling) 27 inch 1440p 27 inch 5k (2x scaling) 32 inch 6k (2x scaling) Other sizes are going to either look bizarre or you’ll have to deal with fractional scaling. Given that 4k is common in 27/32 inches and those are cheap displays these kinds of problems are expected. I hav…

Yup, 27" 4k with a Mac is truly awful. Don't do it. Get a 5k display.

If you're running the 4k display at 1440p, I'd agreed. But I run two 4k 60hz displays on a 16" MacBook Pro work laptop at 2880x1440 effective resolution and it looks fine to me. Yes, it doesn't look as good as the Studio Display I have on my personal Mac. But even though I have the MacBook Pro screen right next to the 27" monitors, I just don't notice the difference as I switch between them all day long.

I'm not saying there is no difference. But I suspect how one reacts to it is highly dependent on the person. I wear glasses that aren't perfectly focused for either screen, but they're good enough to get the job done - and mostly importantly, I get to use my two 4k 27" monitors to give me the same effective resolution as a Studio Display at far less money than two Studio Displays.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#157

Post by pier25 »

smcleod wrote: post #103
pier25 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still on Sequoia and haven't noticed these issues on my M4 Pro.

Out of interest - whats the output of `system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType`?

You can see the result here:

https://gist.github.com/PierBover/99f44e5cba1657eb7e4ce8e2aa...

I'm on macOS 15.7.4.

It's so weird that it says 5120 x 2880 when the ASUS PA329CV is 3840 x 2160.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#158

Post by mmcnl »

TheTon wrote: post #68
wpm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 1x mode has no subpixel antialiasing and thus looks absolutely terrible. I have a 32:9 Ultrawide I would love to use on macOS but the text looks awful on it.

Then complain about that. That would make a much more sensible blog post and discussion. Asking for a crazy workaround to a sane problem isn't a great way to get good results, especially with Apple. Beyond the obvious performance pitfall, this scale up to scale down approach will also destroy the appearance of some controls. There is some UI that aims for 1px lines on hidpi modes that will get lost if you do this. It…

Scaling up before scaling down is a sensible approach, especially when you want to run at a slightly lower scaled resolution. It worked fine up to M3 Pro. So whatever you think of it, it's something that worked fine for many years and suddenly doesn't anymore on the newer MacBooks.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#159

Post by mmcnl »

sda2 wrote: post #154

Could one emulate an 8K display with software and mirror the result to the external display? I feel like some remote desktop software is already doing that sort of thing.

Yes, BetterDisplay offers this functionality and it kind of works, with some drawbacks.

Re: New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays

#160

Post by mmcnl »

Someone wrote: post #140
smcleod wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried quite a few things in the "Advanced" section of BetterDisplay - is there something specifically you're suggesting?

I’m not talking of BetterDisplay. I’m talking about Apple’s UI. Scroll down the content of the “Displays” pane, and you find a row of buttons “Advanced…”, “Night Shift…” and “?”

Ofcourse this has been tried, the highest possible resolution with HiDPI is limited to what the article says.
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