Thunderbolt for today's monitors & 4K images

[bkkstudios]

<p>The Apple 27" thunderbolt display is 2560x1440=3.7M pixels. The ASUS P8Z77-V Premium motherboard supports a Thunderbolt interface of 2560x1600=4.1M pixels. The NEC PA301W is also 2560x1600=4.1M pixels. So Thunderbolt supports today's modern monitors to 30", just, not a lot more.</p>

<p>4K Digital Cinema is 4096x2160=8.8M pixels (or so). 4K broadcasts, projectors, and TVs are starting to be announced.</p>

<p>So is it correct that the thunderbolt display i/f which was just announced last year, already does not support 4K and thus we need to use HDMI forever? I had been thinking Thunderbolt was the nirvana of interfaces, but I'm a bit less clear now with 4K. Or is it that in this 10Gbps the video part is implementation dependent (and thus could go to 4K)?</p>

<p> </p>

[waltflanagan]

<p>My MacBook Air thunderbolt port can drive my 30" 2560x1600 display w/ no problems using a $7 Mini-DisplayPort to full sized DisplayPort cable.</p>

<p>Thunderbolt combines DisplayPort and 4 PCI Express Gen 2 lanes onto one cable.<br>

<br />The DisplayPort page has 3840 × 2160 listed as a support resolution. They also list the color depths as that requires more bandwidth as well.<br>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Technical_specifications</p>

<p>I think you've learned already that 4K is not exactly 4096xsomething but is around 4K in one dimension. 3840x2160 is QFHD (Quad Full High Def) and is close enough to qualify as 4K by most people. HDMI 1.4 also supports the QFHD standard.<br>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution</p>

<p>Here is a 31" 4K monitor from Viewsonic. They say it costs as much as a car but don't say which car. It requires 2 dual-link DVI connectors which my 3 year old Nvidia card has no problem doing to my dual 30" LCDs. They say in the future it will be compatible with 2X DisplayPort which I'm assuming is a future extension to the standard. By the time these things are in the $2000 range you'll probably have Thunderbolt 2 or 3 ports that can handle it. DisplayPort is a packetized interface. It may be possible with firmware and software updates to enable 4K support.<br>

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/05/viewsonic-vp3280-led-4k-monitor-hands-on/</p>

[ljwest]

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_%28interface%29">Thunderbolt is not simply a different display interface</a>. It can be used for a wide variety of things. Its biggest advantage is its capacity for data. Apple's 27" Thunderbolt Display combines in the display a Gigabit Ethernet port, FireWire 800 port, and three USB2 ports, all using one Thunderbolt cable.</p>

<p>Any resolution limitation, I should think, is the ability of the graphics processor to generate the needed pixels, not a limitation of Thunderbolt to get the signal from one device to the other.</p>