Comment by troupo

13 hours ago

There are other 120Hz displays than Apple's.

There are even 240Hz displays.

IIRC Apple couldn't get above 60Hz even on third-party displays they explicitly advertised.

I have an Alienware AW2721D and my M series Macs have no problem driving it at 240hz. macOS picks up that it’s a GSync display and supports VRR on it too.

  • I could never get my two ASUS displays work at anything but 60Hz

    • My other setup has an ASUS PA278CGV as a secondary monitor and the MBP hooked up to it drives it at 144hz no problem.

      Make sure your dock, dongle, and/or cables aren’t bottlenecks.

      1 reply →

My MacBook M3 Air & Pro laptops can run two QHD displays with one at 240 Hz and the other at 120 Hz. What it can't do is run either above 60 Hz with HDR enabled. But for my use cases, I've never need more than 60 Hz anyway.

How many 27” 5k 120hz+ high PPI are shipping right now? Reddit is particularly clowning on this for the refresh rate and completely ignoring the resolution.

  • This is a workstation-class monitor for people using these machines to make money. It's not a gamer toy monitor. People on Reddit don't get this. Apple's monitors are fantastic for those of us who use our computers to make money and need high quality. I am not playing video games on the same machine I use to make money.

(I think) what you are thinking of was something introduced around the Catalina>Big Sur transition, when the Pro Display XDR was introduced.

At the time, people were "marveling" at the magic of Apple, and wondering how they did the math to make that display work within bandwidth constraints.

The simple answer was "by completely fucking with DP 1.4 DSC".

I had at the time a 2019 (cheesegrater) Mac Pro. I had two Asus 27" 4K HDR 144Hz monitors, that the Mac had no problems driving under Catalina.

Install Big Sur. Nope. With the monitors advertising DP 1.4, my options were SDR@95Hz, HDR@60Hz. I wasn't the only one, hundreds of people complaining, different monitors, cards, cables.

I could downgrade to Catalina: HDR@144Hz sprung back to life.

Hell, I could on the monitors tell them to advertise DP 1.2 support, which actually improved performance, and I think I got SDR@120Hz, HDR@95Hz (IIRC).

So you don't deserve downvotes on this. Apple absolutely ignored standards and broke functionality for third party screens just to get the Pro Display XDR (which, ironically, I own, although now it's being driven by an M2 Studio, versus the space heater that was the Xeon cheesegrater).