Hands On: Apple's iMac with Retina Display
by Ryan Smith on October 16, 2014 4:15 PM ESTWe just got done with our hands-on time with Apple’s new products, and we’ll start with what’s likely the sneakiest of them, the iMac with Retina Display.
Why “sneaky”? The answer is all in the HiDPI display, which Apple calls the “Retina 5K Display”. The retina display is definitely the star of the new iMac, as the rest of the hardware is largely a minor specification bump from last year’s model. In fact turned off you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the 2013 (non-retina) and new retina models, but the screen is immediately evident once on.
At 5120x2880 pixels, the new Retina 5K Display is precisely 4x the pixels of the 2560x1440 panel in last year’s model. What this means is that Apple can tap their standard bag of tricks to handle applications of differing retina capability and get all of it to look reasonably good. This also means that 2560x1440 content – including widgets – will scale up nicely to the new resolution. Apple does not discuss whom they have sourced the panel from, but given the timing it’s likely the same panel that is in Dell’s recently announced 27” 5K monitor.
Much more interesting is how Apple is driving it. Since no one has a 5K timing controller (TCON) yet, Apple went and built their own. This is the first time we’re aware of Apple doing such a thing for a Mac, but it’s likely they just haven’t talked about it before. In any case, Apple was kind enough to confirm that they are driving the new iMac’s display with a single TCON. This is not a multi-tile display, but instead is a single 5120x2880 mode.
This also means that since it isn’t multi-tile, Apple would need to drive it over a single DisplayPort connection, which is actually impossible with conventional DisplayPort HBR2. We’re still getting to the bottom of how Apple is doing this (and hence the sneaky nature of the iMac), but currently our best theory is that Apple is running an overclocked DisplayPort/eDP interface along with some very low overhead timings to get just enough bandwidth for the job. Since the iMac is an all-in-one device, Apple is more or less free to violate specifications and do what they want so long as it isn’t advertised as DisplayPort and doesn’t interact with 3rd party devices.
Update: And for anyone wondering whether you can drive the 5K display as an external display using Target Display Mode, Apple has confirmed that you cannot.
Meanwhile driving the new display are AMD’s Radeon R9 M290X and R9 M295X, which replace the former NVIDIA GTX 700M parts. We don’t have any performance data on the M295X, though our best guess is to expect R9 285-like performance (with a large over/under). If Apple is fudging the DisplayPort specification to get a single DisplayPort stream, then no doubt AMD has been helping on this matter as one of the most prominent DisplayPort supporters.
The rest of the package is very similar to the 2013 iMac. It comes with an Intel Haswell desktop class CPU paired with 8GB or more RAM, 802.11ac support, and Apple’s SSD + HDD Fusion drive setup. Apple now offers a higher speed CPU upgrade option that goes up to 4GHz (4.4GHz Boost) – likely the Core i7-4790K – that should make the high-end iMac decently more performant than last year’s model by about 10%.
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vFunct - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
M295X is actually their new Tonga architecture, and the Desktop version is the R9 275X, a mid-grade consumer desktop part.TiGr1982 - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
There is no desktop R9 275X (these were old invalid rumors); the only released desktop Tonga-based card is called R9 285 (no X).ppi - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
You know, they could have working FreeSync over the whatever interface the screen uses (they demoed eDP notebook a year ago).Spunjji - Tuesday, October 21, 2014 - link
I personally have some hopes for this, although Apple would probably have made up a name for it and marketed it as their own if this were true...lilkwarrior - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
No, it has more to do with OpenCL and pushing away from CUDA. Both need that to happen: Apple wants to do it to always have more options on what GPU they have available to consider for their new products, and ATI definitely needs to better penetrate the workstation/professional market--this is a market that NVidia destroyed them in (67%+ of the market).monstercameron - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
how funny would it be if the panel was freesync capable.tipoo - Sunday, October 19, 2014 - link
Funny? That would be awesome!Ulf Hednar - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
"At 5120x2880 pixels, the new Retina 5K Display is precisely 4x the pixels of the 2560x1440 panel in last year’s model."4x? Granted, I'm really bad at math, but when you double something, isn't it only 2x?
Also, even though Apple has stated that this display can't be used in Target Display Mode, that would change if the firmware for the DisplayPort could be updated later to 1.3.
lowlymarine - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
When you double a rectangle along both sides, you end up with four times the area. So when you double the number of pixels in both directions, you end up with four times as many in total.Ulf Hednar - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Thanks! :)