Apple updates desktop iMac line with “5k” Retina displays | Hacker News Reader

Apple updates desktop iMac line with “5k” Retina displays

arstechnica.com

52 pointsScotterC14 comments

And still no update to the Thunderbolt display... :(

There's just not enough bandwidth over a single bus / single cable with DisplayPort 1.2. The iMac allows them to bypass that bottleneck and be one of the first(?) companies to ship a 5K display to consumers.

My predication is that once we see Apple deploy Thunderbolt 3 / DisplayPort 1.3, we'll see the Apple Cinema Display Retina.

...which would mean L2013 Mac Pro users would be left out in the cold.

Yes, L2013 even uses the old Ivy Bridge-E Xeons and it's due for an update to the Haswell v3 Xeons (note that v3 Xeons use different socket, too, LGA-2011-3 vs LGA-2011 for the v2).

If I were in the market for the Mac Pro and could afford to postpone, I'd wait until the next update which should get the latest Xeon processors with the new socket and Thunderbolt 3 (which will be used for Broadwell Xeons).

They couldn't use the same panels for a thunderbolt display. Thunderbolt 2 has a max data rate of 20Gb/s, but the 5k monitor they announced has a data rate of

5120 x 2880 x (24 bits per pixel) x (60fps) = 21Gb/s

Just over the limit for Thunderbolt 2 unless they want to do 4:2:2 or some other compression technique.

Couldn't they just use both thunderbolt ports?

Dell could do something like that, but Apple wouldn't. It goes against their philosophy.

Sure they would. The old 30" Cinema Displays required Dual DVI.

Thunderbolt actually has up to 4x DisplayPort channels that are separate to the 20Gbps of Thunderbolt itself.

Wow, I was excited to be upgrading to a 4k monitor soon, and before I even get one I'm obsolete. I can't wait to try out the new display. Hopefully DP1.3 will be out soon with good video card support as well.

The 980M is twice as fast as the graphics offered. Disappointing.

67% more pixels than 4K. That's certainly more than expected!

Bear in mind, though, that the working resolution will probably be 2560 x 1440. The quality and definition will be probably outstanding too.

Why are there three links for the same exact news item? It's not like the different sites are providing any extra commentary. Could the mods consolidate them?

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