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5K Resolution (5120x2880) via NVIDIA Drivers on Dell UltraSharp 27" Monitor

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You could create a retina setting of 2560x1440 on a 4K display. It looks ok. Just use SwitchRes X to create a scaled resolution of twice the horizontal and vertical resolution: 5120x2880. This works on an Nvidia card. I'm not sure about Intel graphics though. That may be limited to a width of 4096...
Does this differ from the out-of-the-box retina setting of 2560x1440 on 4K?
I tried my 5K Dell in 4K mode and while the 1920x1080 retina works perfectly fine and gives a sharp image, the 2560x1440 retina setting doesn't look much better than any regular 27" screen. It might be possible that the results look better on an actual 4K monitor though.
 
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Does this differ from the out-of-the-box retina setting of 2560x1440 on 4K?
If it looks like this when you double click it in SwitchRes X, then no, it's not different.
2560x1440 HiDPI on 4K.png
I tried my 5K Dell in 4K mode and while the 1920x1080 retina works perfectly fine and gives a sharp image, the 2560x1440 retina setting doesn't look much better than any regular 27" screen. It might be possible that the results look better on an actual 4K monitor though.
Probably.
 
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Exactly, it's 1920x1080 HiDPI instead of 2560X1440 HiDPI.
5K was nice but cursor problems are too annoying for everyday work. I also had the feeling that the problem is worse when using Parallels.
FYI if you change resolutions the cursor problem has a chance of fixing itself. It's still very annoying but can be mitigated with long display timeouts, etc.

I'm going to try a FirePro W7000 which won't be nearly as fast but for productivity will probably be fine and not have the cursor issue.
 
FYI if you change resolutions the cursor problem has a chance of fixing itself. It's still very annoying but can be mitigated with long display timeouts, etc.

I'm going to try a FirePro W7000 which won't be nearly as fast but for productivity will probably be fine and not have the cursor issue.
Is there a thread that describes the cursor issue? I haven't seen it with my Nvidia Titan X and 5K output.
 
Hey guys, is there any hope to drive one 5K and 3 1080p displays at all?

I'm having a hard time making it work.
 
Hey guys, is there any hope to drive one 5K and 3 1080p displays at all?
You haven't described what you're connecting them to, or what you've tried so far.

Start with four 1080p displays. Can you make that work? When you change one of those to 5K, that's like adding two displays, making 5 total. That's probably one too many for an Nvidia card. I tried it in Windows 10, and it seemed to work though (I may have had to unplug the power to the monitor). macOS 10.12.3 Sierra has a kernel panic if I try to boot with 5K + 3 other monitors. It seems to do 5K + 2 monitors just fine. 5K seems to work better now than it did in 10.11.6.
 
You haven't described what you're connecting them to, or what you've tried so far.

Start with four 1080p displays. Can you make that work? When you change one of those to 5K, that's like adding two displays, making 5 total. That's probably one too many for an Nvidia card. I tried it in Windows 10, and it seemed to work though (I may have had to unplug the power to the monitor). macOS 10.12.3 Sierra has a kernel panic if I try to boot with 5K + 3 other monitors. It seems to do 5K + 2 monitors just fine. 5K seems to work better now than it did in 10.11.6.

I'm connecting the 5K to 2 displayports, one 1080p monitor to one displayport, one to DVI and one to HDMI. I've tried it in windows 10 as well and it works fine. I don't have four 1080 displays but it works nicely with the 5k monitor connected as 4k and 3 1080p monitors.
 
I'm connecting the 5K to 2 displayports, one 1080p monitor to one displayport, one to DVI and one to HDMI. I've tried it in windows 10 as well and it works fine. I don't have four 1080 displays but it works nicely with the 5k monitor connected as 4k and 3 1080p monitors.
I did the same tests. Since we were both unable to get 4 displays with one as 5K, then we can conclude that it is a limitation of the macOS Nvidia driver. So either we have to patch the driver or ask Apple/Nvidia to do it. I would search the log for an error when you attempt to connect the 4th display. Maybe there's a debug boot argument that can be used to get better logging. I would look for that in the disassembly of the NVDA drivers that are listed by kextstat. Maybe the patch is as simple as changing a 4 to a 5. It gets more difficult if there is a fixed size array somewhere...
 
I did the same tests. Since we were both unable to get 4 displays with one as 5K, then we can conclude that it is a limitation of the macOS Nvidia driver. So either we have to patch the driver or ask Apple/Nvidia to do it. I would search the log for an error when you attempt to connect the 4th display. Maybe there's a debug boot argument that can be used to get better logging. I would look for that in the disassembly of the NVDA drivers that are listed by kextstat. Maybe the patch is as simple as changing a 4 to a 5. It gets more difficult if there is a fixed size array somewhere...
I would look for that but I've no idea how to do it.
 
Crosspost from https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/gpu-for-a-5k-monitor-dell-up2715k.204510/page-4#post-1452137:

I believe I've finally discovered the magical incantation for getting stable 5K support on the Hackintosh.
You MUST use the MacMini6,2 system definition. For some reason, this is the only sysdef that appears to allow hackintosh's to correctly support Multi-Stream Transport displays. I tried many combinations of editing framebuffers, AGDC settings, overrides, etc. None of it appears to matter. Just this sysdef. Wish I knew what it was doing as perhaps with the right edits we could use only a specific setting with any sysdef.

You need to use an ATI card. The FirePro W7000 works out of the box and has 4 displayports. I picked it because it is essentially the D300 on the Mac Pro 2013. I believe the W9000 will also work out of the box, tho I haven't tested it. But it is far more expensive.

Because of the weird ATI sleep/wake issues on Sierra, you will need to "sacrifice" an nVidia card to the Apple gods in your first PCI-E slot and set it to your primary boot display in the BIOS. The ATI card can work out of your secondary PCI-E and will stay active after boot completes. Sleep/wake should also work fine (obviously only as long as it was working fine before). In theory, doing this with the IGPU as primary should work too, but the computer and display attached to it will never truly go to sleep and you may have a phantom monitor as well if you do this. Maybe I can work around this with more tweaking.

I've only tested so far with the Dell UP2715K on my card ... i may test with the HP Z27q later as I do have one but the cables don't quite reach. We know monitors matter

The good news here ... no half screen cursor issues, no having to unplug the monitor and plug it back in when you boot, and hopefully no unstable sleep/wake issues with the nVidia drivers, but it will take time to verify the long term stability.
 
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