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grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,553
309
Should I buy a mini dp to mini dp or a mini dp to dp cable? My screen has a dp and a mini dp hole
 
Either will be fine. Just think about if you every upgrade to a new monitor that your current cable will still be able to plug into that one too :p

But now that i think about you should get the mini DP to DP since most monitors use that. :D
 
Either will be fine. Just think about if you every upgrade to a new monitor that your current cable will still be able to plug into that one too :p

But now that i think about you should get the mini DP to DP since most monitors use that. :D
Is there a difference between dp and mini dp?
 
Either will be fine. Just think about if you every upgrade to a new monitor that your current cable will still be able to plug into that one too :p

But now that i think about you should get the mini DP to DP since most monitors use that. :D

I wouldn't worry too much about cable reuse. You can find them for $10 on monoprice.

Is there a difference between dp and mini dp?

Displayport isn't exactly one thing. There are different specifications. See the wiki. More to the point, anytime you have an identical connector on your machine and the display, you should get a cable that matches at both ends. What do you think you could possibly gain through a conversion on one end? Anytime we're talking about cables, they go by lowest common denominator. If you needed to support an older machine with a new monitor and had to use a displayport to dvi, you would lose any real advantage of displayport apart from connectivity. The one thing you should not use is a thunderbolt cable unless you're connecting to a thunderbolt display. I don't know of any other than the one sold by Apple. Also just for reference, thunderbolt 2 and some displayport 1.2 features haven't made it to the mini.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about cable reuse. You can find them for $10 on monoprice.



Displayport isn't exactly one thing. There are different specifications. See the wiki. More to the point, anytime you have an identical connector on your machine and the display, you should get a cable that matches at both ends. What do you think you could possibly gain through a conversion on one end? Anytime we're talking about cables, they go by lowest common denominator. If you needed to support an older machine with a new monitor and had to use a displayport to dvi, you would lose any real advantage of displayport apart from connectivity. The one thing you should not use is a thunderbolt cable unless you're connecting to a thunderbolt display. I don't know of any other than the one sold by Apple. Also just for reference, thunderbolt 2 and some displayport 1.2 features haven't made it to the mini.
I ask because the display came with a mini dP to dP cable. As the display has a disPlay 1.2 & a mini dP connector I asked myself if a mini dP to mini dP cable be better...
 
I ask because the display came with a mini dP to dP cable. As the display has a disPlay 1.2 & a mini dP connector I asked myself if a mini dP to mini dP cable be better...

Apple is the primary company that uses mini displayport on their computers. If it came with a cable that runs mini displayport to displayport, use the cable that came with it. It's supposed to carry the same signals. The limitations are more at the chip level. For example thunderbolt doesn't support displayport 1.2 and MST unless it's a thunderbolt 2 machine. Right now that's limited to the 2013 macbook pros and the new mac pro. I'm not aware of any weird bugs. If subtle ones exist they would probably be specific to the model. I can't imagine any company shipping a cable with a mini displayport end that wasn't tested for Apple stuff though.
 
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