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joshwest

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 27, 2005
1,153
6
im sure this has been answered but, can a iMac 24" with 256 NVIDIA Graphics Card support the 30" Display?
 

KatmanDu

macrumors member
May 16, 2007
39
0
NE Georgia
Ok. I keep hearing this- iMac won't support any screen larger than what's built in- but does that mean that you can't use anything physically bigger than 23", as in, it won't work at all.... or does it mean that you could plug in a 30" screen but could only display a maximum resolution of 1900x1200 (assuming you had a 24" iMac)?
 

Big-TDI-Guy

macrumors 68030
Jan 11, 2007
2,606
13
If I understand correctly, it's not the "unable to do more than internal screen bit" As I've run a 24" LCD off my 20" Imac.

Rather - To use any display that has a resolution greater than 1920 x 1200 DPI, you need TWO DVI ports for the bandwidth required. If you can dig up a 30" with 1920 x 1200 pixels or less, you're golden.... But that is unlikely, at best.

So being that most 30" LCDs have 2560 x 1600 native resolution - the single DVI port will not cut it.

I do not know if you could run a 30 LCD at a lower resolution - that may be possible, but would likely look terrible, because when an LCD is not at "native" resolution, they tend to look really fuzzy / blurry. Again, I'm not sure if the 30" REQUIRES both DVIs to operate or not at a lower res. It does reqiure both for native resolution.
 

toru173

macrumors 6502
Apr 5, 2007
332
154
Not two DVI ports physically, just one "Dual Link" port. It supports twice the bandwidth (hence twice the resolution) in the same physical form factor - it just has more pins.
 

scottlinux

macrumors 6502a
Sep 21, 2005
691
1
The sad thing is that I'm sure the video chip is more than capable of handling that display. But there is not a connector on that computer to do it.
 
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