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nilcoalescingoperator

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 15, 2016
16
46
I have a PC that I use for Blender in my iOS dev workflow, and I find myself wanting to switch to and from it regularly while using Xcode on my MBP 16”. I am able to drive a Pro Display XDR from the PC outputting from a RTX 3090 using a Moshi DP 1.4 <-> USBC cable, but currently need to manually switch out the TB cable that came with the XDR connected to the MBP. It’s unclear (to me) from reading KVM specs that I could drive the monitor at the full 6K resolution while using my MBP and whatever the lower supported res is while switched to the PC.

Do any of you know what setup would work best? A video only solution would also be interesting to hear about if there are more options.
 

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,943
4,247
The XDR uses HBR2 link rate (4 lanes link width) with DSC to do 6K 60Hz 10bpc RGB. HBR2 is the max link rate of DisplayPort 1.2. So any KVM that can do DisplayPort 1.2 should work. You'll want a method that can convert USB + DisplayPort 1.2 to USB-C in order to use the USB features of the XDR (brightness control, presets, USB ports). This will involve a Belkin Charge and Sync cable or something similar. I'm not sure about the Wacom Link Plus or Sunix UPD2018 - they might block the DSC feature which is specific to DisplayPort 1.4.

The RTX 3090 supports DSC so it should be able to get the full capabilities of the XDR. Use Brigadier to install Boot Camp drivers to get brightness control and presets.

The MacBook Pro 16 inch has 5300M or 5500M? 5500M should be able to do DSC. I'm not sure if the 5300M supports DSC (it is also RDNA / Navi so it should be able to?). I'm not sure if DSC works in Big Sur or Montery. It works in Catalina.

You should be able to find other MacRumors posts on all the above topics.
https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...sb-c-to-displayport-cable/paged/4/#post-79127
 

nilcoalescingoperator

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 15, 2016
16
46
Thank you for joining all of that info together, joevt! I'll report back with whatever components I find that would fit the bill.
 
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