After seeing the benchmarks for the new Mac Pro I've come to the conclusion that my souped up Mac Pro 5,1 is more than enough for my current needs, at least for another year or so. The Apple XDR however would provide me with great value for the money since it is so accurate. Is there any way to run the Apple XDR display with the 5,1? I have a Radeon VII and if I could use it with that display I would be set. So before I drop $5000 on the monitor I figured I would ask the Mac Rumors community. Any help is appreciated.
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MP All Models Mac Pro 5,1 & Apple XDR Display?
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If I’m not wrong, you can route the DP1.4 signal from the VII to a TitanRidge card, then connect the Apple XDR there and have 6K, but you will need to boot Windows before to initialize the TB3 card, it’s like people do today for the LG5K display. Every cold boot you have to boot Windows, then restart with macOS.
@joevt can confirm if it’s just this or anything more is needed.
Thank you for your prompt reply Tsialex,
That's fantastic news. I'll research the details but if all I need to do is boot to windows (and get a titan ridge card) first it would still be a great solution since I often use the system all day. Booting windows once a day is a small price to pay.
You will have to do what people with LG5K is already doing. Since you only have to boot Windows when powering off your Mac Pro, it’s an acceptable trade-off for using the XDR.
No. You will need 10.15.2 to use the display properly. MP5,1 does not support 10.15 officially. More tests need to be performed including TB3 adapter and drivers.
Software Features
The following features require macOS Catalina 10.15.2 or later:
Software Features
The following features require macOS Catalina 10.15.2 or later:
- Reference mode selection
- Reference status indicator
- Brightness control
- Portrait/landscape detection
- Night Shift
- True Tone
- Dolby Vision, HDR10, and Hybrid-Log Gamma (HLG) playback support
- User-defined reference modes (coming soon)
- User calibration (coming soon)
Thanks for the heads up Mrtang42,
I figured its not going to be plug and play. I already have Catalina running on a spare drive using Tsialex VM method and I am hopeful that it may eventually work. Interestingly enough I just saw a MacRumors Youtube video showing the XDR works with the iPad Pro, which I never expected to work and as far as I am aware Apple did not officially announce support for.
The iPad Pro is in the "happens to work" category which Apple is probably never going to tag as "officially supported". Buying a $6K display to only run it at 5K resolution ( at "1K" down from full resolution) isn't a good rationale for buying one.
XDR probably has a 'fall back" mode in case there is some kind of quirk in the set up. But exhaustively listing corner cases where it partially works isn't really going to help sell it convincingly in the primary target market.
Indeed, I am sure Apple won't advertise edge case scenarios like that. That said, I am hopeful my particular case scenario will work. If worse comes to worse I will return the monitor. Too bad the XDR is not shipping until February 20, clearly people love this thing.
I just wanted to share my recent experience hooking up the new Apple XDR display with a mid-2010 Mac Pro 5,1. It does work, and quite a bit more easily than I expected from what I had read. I'm only getting 4K resolution and no easy way to control it, but I am enjoying the incredible contrast ratio, color palette and size.
My intention is to upgrade my Mac Pro (after a personal record of 10 years) to the new one some time soon. My machine has the 6 core Xeon processor running at 3.33GHz with 32MB of RAM. I have OSX 10.14.3 (Mojave). When I upgraded to Mojave, I was forced to upgrade the GPU to the Sapphire Radeon RX 580 with 8MB of RAM to support Metal. I've been using a very nice NEC Multisync PA271W monitor for years now, mostly to do photo editing (not professionally, but high end medium format with large files).
I saw the XDR display at my local store in Seattle and was amazed by the image quality. Because I had heard it was on backorder, I ordered one before I purchased the new Mac Pro. To my surprise, it was delivered in about 2-3 weeks. I haven't ordered the new Mac Pro yet, because some of the options (specifically for graphics) are listed as "coming soon" with no specified release date. The base GPU looks okay, but I think that the Radeon W5700x may give me more options later at a somewhat reasonable price point. So I decided to wait on ordering and try to use the monitor with my old machine.
After looking at a lot of videos and forum posts, it looked like the best route to hook up a Thunderbolt 3 monitor was to get a T3 PCIe card. I purchased the recommended Gigabyte Titan Ridge card (Rev 1) for about $100. As a note, it comes with the required Displayport to miniDisplayport cables that you need, so don't order them separately like I did. I installed the card directly above the graphics card, although it's not a perfect fit. The Titan Ridge is fairly thick and the fan blades of the Sapphire GPU rub a bit on the bottom. I placed a tiny plastic spacer (one of the Displayport caps) between the two to make the clearance. Because it's working, I haven't moved the card to another PCI slot, which would probably be the right solution.
Because I'm not powering anything through the card or running any USB devices, I didn't hook anything into the power connector ports or the USB connector. Based on a tiny photo I saw of someone with a similar setup, I did plug in the THB_C header cable and placed a jumper wire from pins 3 to 5. This apparently keep the card "awake" during boot up and allows it to be recognized. I haven't pulled the jumper out to test if it works without it. You don't need to do it through the cable, but it was easier to handle after installation and would allow for easier changes if needed. You could put the jumper wire directly into the port if you wanted. The two Displayport outputs from the Sapphire card then go directly into the Titan Ridge miniDisplayport inputs. In the following images, you can see the jumper on the header cable. You can also see the Displayport cables going from the doubleslot graphics card (just below the white connector going to the NEC monitor) to the Titan Ridge above. The Thunderbolt braided cable to the XDR is just to the left of the miniDisplayport inputs.
Once it was in place, I started up Windows 10 in a virtual machine using VMware Fusion. To my surprise, it did not require using Bootcamp. This was fortunate, because I never set up a Bootcamp partition and it might not be possible at this point for my setup (Bootcamp assistant won't run). I first downloaded the drivers from Gigabyte's website. I then realized that there was a disc that came with the card. I ran the setup program and everything happened automatically.
Here was the most shocking moment. Not expecting anything to happen yet (Windows and OSX still running without reboot), I plugged the XDR monitor into the card and it immediately came on and my computer switch to dual display mode. OMG! Even more amazing, it continues to work even with Windows completely closed and doing a cold reboot of OSX alone. I've never had to boot Windows again to get it to work. I had read that this was a necessary kluge to make it work and that there may be instability. So far, this has not been the case. The XDR display is acknowledged in the "About this Mac" summary with the proper name and icon, indicating that it recognized in Mojave (not just Catalina). As I mentioned, I'm getting 4K resolution (3840x2160), but it looks great compared to my NEC. I also can't adjust things like brightness (as far as I can tell) but it looks like I can select a color profile. There have been the occasional quirks of changes in which monitor is the primary and which side is right and left. But those are minor issues.
In summary, for about $100 I found a way to use the new XDR monitor with my old Mac Pro that is perfectly satisfactory until I decide to upgrade the machine. There may be things that could be done differently (like which PCI slot is used, the jumper wire), but I'm not messing with what worked. As a disclaimer, I'm not a tech guy, but a reasonably tech savvy consumer that was looking for a solution for a problem that had not been explicitly outlined on the net so far. I hope that my experience helps other people.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience HandyJam. I am surprised it was so easy. I haven't gotten my XDR yet but I am happy to hear it worked so painlessly for you. You mentioned that the brightness is not adjustable, does it look bright to you or is it dim?. In any case, thank you for the information.
I've only had the monitor working for about 5-6 days so far. Here is the curious thing. When I first got it working, the brightness level was a bit too high (easy to assess because I have my other monitor for comparison). About three days in, the brightness dropped down to a very comfortable level, where my primary NEC display was slightly brighter. Last night, I rebooted everything to test out an old hard drive, and now the monitor is back to being too bright again. I have no idea what changed its settings.
I believe the XDR automatically adjusts for ambient light (possibly with two sensors). On the back of the monitor, the little Apple logo next to the XDR nameplate looks like a sensor (not just a painted label). As an experiment, I put the little sticker that it shipped with back over the Apple to trick the display into thinking it was dark in the room, but there was no effect. I can't see any other sensors. I'm guessing it might be built into the bezel.
I'll post again if I figure out how to control the brightness. Right now, it's a bit of a mystery.
I believe the XDR automatically adjusts for ambient light (possibly with two sensors). On the back of the monitor, the little Apple logo next to the XDR nameplate looks like a sensor (not just a painted label). As an experiment, I put the little sticker that it shipped with back over the Apple to trick the display into thinking it was dark in the room, but there was no effect. I can't see any other sensors. I'm guessing it might be built into the bezel.
I'll post again if I figure out how to control the brightness. Right now, it's a bit of a mystery.
I did make one interesting discovery today. I hooked up my wife's 2019 MacBook Air (Thunderbolt 3 device running Catalina) to the XDR and was able to control the brightness. After disconnecting the monitor from the MB Air and plugging it back into the Titan Ridge card (hot swap), the settings still held. I tried it with a 2018 iPad Pro and the same was true. The settings held after doing both a restart and full shutdown. Occasionally, the XDR will not come on right away (does not seem completely predictable). To get it to fire up, I have to unplug the TB3 cable and plug is back in.
I didn't adjust the settings with an external device earlier this earlier in the week, so it's still a mystery as to how the brightness changed a few days ago. I'll keep observing and report back if I figure out what's happening. I'm also open to suggestions.
I didn't adjust the settings with an external device earlier this earlier in the week, so it's still a mystery as to how the brightness changed a few days ago. I'll keep observing and report back if I figure out what's happening. I'm also open to suggestions.
That is good to know, worse case scenario I could borrow my wife's MacBook Pro and make the necessary adjustments. I would guess the reason why you cannot control brightness directly is because the usb2 header is not connected to the TB card. But based on your experience it is not a deal breaker. As long as we can set it to max brightness with a laptop I would be fine.
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Thank you for sharing, but it would appear that the app lowers the brightness of the display by using some kind of overlay. It does not actually lower the monitor's brightness by dimming the backlight so it is not an ideal solution.