4k Monitor attached to 2012 Mac Pro

[MikeLD]

Well, my Sharp 4K monitor showed up a few days ago ... and my nMP still says "processing" ... Jan shipment.

So I thought I'd plug the monitor into my mid-2012 Mac Pro Hex just for kicks ... low and behold it works at 3840x2160 ... but at 30 Hertz.

After messing with it for a couple of days everything seems to work ... the only weird behavior is that Chrome seems to take forever to do anything. Firefox and Safari behave normal ... very odd.

FYI ... monitor is great. Setting icons at 128x128 and finder text at 16pts helps. Menus are small, but workable ... and most apps I use let me scale content.

 

[Mac Gus]

What's your Graphics card?

 

[ActionableMango]

Macvidcards went through a lot of 4K monitor testing and discovered that even if the card, cable, and monitor all support 4K at 60Hz, OS X didn't.

Now that nMP has shipped, we are seeing that nMP includes a special build of OS X that includes 4K support at 60Hz.

Eventually I suppose there will be a Mavericks update that merges this capability back into the mainline branch that all Macs use. At that time you should be able to use 4K 60Hz, assuming your card, cable, and monitor all support it.

 

[MikeLD]

What's your Graphics card?

It's just the stock ATI Radeon HD 5770 that came with it in 2012.

 

[Mac Gus]

It's just the stock ATI Radeon HD 5770 that came with it in 2012.

There are some decent GPU upgrade options that might help with your 4K viewing.

 

[MikeLD]

There are some decent GPU upgrade options that might help with your 4K viewing.

Don't need an upgrade ... this is just me messing around with the new monitor with the old computer until my new Mac Pro arrives in January. I was just surprised that my 2012 Mac pro worked in 4k resolution.

 

[Mac Gus]

Don't need an upgrade ... this is just me messing around with the new monitor with the old computer until my new Mac Pro arrives in January. I was just surprised that my 2012 Mac pro worked in 4k resolution.

Right on, have fun with that new computer!

That being said, your old MP can still be a highly relevant machine with some upgrades.