Mac Pro Bc, Thunderbolt-2 (x6) and 4k/2k Monitors.

[rdav]

The upcoming Mac Pro Bc (Black Cylinder) has been announced at six Thunderbolt-2 ports with video capacity for three 4k monitors. Does this mean that one Tb2 port could run two 2k{DisplayPort @2560 x 1440} monitors, via a daisy-chain off the first? Or run one 2k display from each of the 6xTb2 ports? So the full MP-Bc capacity would run at six 2k displays (plus a separate HDMI output).

(Perhaps, even more; since the pixel count on a 4k monitor is way more than 2x that of a 2k monitor).

Or is this all just unworthy, premature and fallacious speculation. My understanding is that most of the Tb2 and MP-Bc VideoProcessor (AMD FirePro GPUx2) details are already known.

Currently setup to run eight monitors (DP/DVI-1 @1920x1200) off a current Mac Pro, with some extra installed video cards, and wondering what the upgrade might do for that type of (trading) setup.
Merci.

 

[Tesselator]

The upcoming Mac Pro Bc (Black Cylinder) has been announced at six Thunderbolt-2 ports with video capacity for three 4k monitors. Does this mean that one Tb2 port could run two 2k{DisplayPort @2560 x 1440} monitors, via a daisy-chain off the first? Or run one 2k display from each of the 6xTb2 ports? So the full MP-Bc capacity would run at six 2k displays (plus a separate HDMI output).

(Perhaps, even more; since the pixel count on a 4k monitor is way more than 2x that of a 2k monitor).

Or is this all just unworthy, premature and fallacious speculation. My understanding is that most of the Tb2 and MP-Bc VideoProcessor (AMD FirePro GPUx2) details are already known.

Currently setup to run eight monitors (DP/DVI-1 @1920x1200) off a current Mac Pro, with some extra installed video cards, and wondering what the upgrade might do for that type of (trading) setup.
Merci.

I don't actually know but just to bump your thread I will say the new MP supports up to only three (3) 4K monitors or up to twelve (12) 2k monitors. Plus one more monitor of some kind via the HDMI v1.4 port.

I do kind of wonder how this all works tho. I mean there are three TB2 controllers and six ports and each port can connect up to 6 "devices". If we can cheat with the monitor count or not is beyond me.

See "Graphics" and "Connectivity" at: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1594991/

 

[deconstruct60]

The upcoming Mac Pro Bc (Black Cylinder) has been announced at six Thunderbolt-2 ports with video capacity for three 4k monitors. Does this mean that one Tb2 port could run two 2k{DisplayPort @2560 x 1440} monitors, via a daisy-chain off the first?

Generally, no.

"... The latter is insufficient for 4K video (~15Gbps depending on refresh rate). ... "
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7049/intel-thunderbolt-2-everything-you-need-to-know

TB v2 is a speed bump so that can run one 4K stream at 60Hz refresh. If want to drop down to sub 30Hhz then yes, but that isn't the mainstream market.

However, if split the traffic onto two TB controllers; Port A on controller X and Port B on controller Y. Then it works fine. The Mac Pro likely has three controllers.

Frankly since 4K works better per controller and doesn't daisy chain well , it will pragmatically make alot more sense in most cases just to hook the monitor directly to the Mac Pro in DisplayPort v1.2 mode. That won't clobber the TB data bandwidth.

Don't really need TB v2 for that. The 2013 version of the TB controllers ( redwoood ridge) do this. Mac Pro has upside in that there are other TB ports if assign one (or two) to full time backward compatibility DisplayPort mode.

Or run one 2k display from each of the 6xTb2 ports? So the full MP-Bc capacity would run at six 2k displays (plus a separate HDMI output).

There are two GPUs (likely non entry level ) so running 7 monitors should be a big problem.

Currently setup to run eight monitors (DP/DVI-1 @1920x1200) off a current Mac Pro, with some extra installed video cards, and wondering what the upgrade might do for that type of (trading) setup.
Merci.

Shouldn't be a problem for new Mac Pro to do this. You'd need some daisy chaining docks that converted from DP to DVI-I. To get past the 6 physical ports. The two GPUs are certainly capable of driving eight 1920x1200 displays just with DisplayPort v1.2. If have DVI-I monitors then it is more of a conversion issue.