A challenge for linus

[Feloffle]

So as you know, the new 2019 Mac Pro XDR retina monitor is industry leading. If you've watched videos on the Mac pro, some things you can easily conclude are:

• It's overpriced in some areas (Ram?)
• The existing feud with nvidia (Which could have resulted in better performance and lower cost)

As Linus said in his recent video, you shouldnt buy the mac pro. Now speaking from other sources (I don't personally own a Mac Pro), the monitor is truly amazing. If you do a bit of digging, you don't really see any high end market monitors for designers and artists etc. In most cases, the more expensive the monitor, the higher resolution, refresh rate and response time and maybe even size. But that's where it stops. On the other hand the XDR display comes out with some industrially reveloutinary Technology.

 

So heres my big idea: Linus builds a build that meet these criteria:

• Benchmark higher singlecore and multicore performance compared to the most expensive Mac Pro Build
• Benchmark better than the most expsnsice mac pro build really
• Use all the functionality of the Pro XDR retina display
• challenge for Lols: Run Windows.

Note: I'm not aware of anything that would stop the display from bring used in a normal pc

If you have any thoughts on this or if this is just plain dumb, feel free to roast me in the comments.

[Enderman]

There's literally like 50 other posts about "linus make a PC that beats the mac pro"

Stop.

[Feloffle]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

There's literally like 50 other posts about "linus make a PC that beats the mac pro"

Stop.

Well didn't he already make one to beat the Mac pro? I'm asking to see him try and use the display as in my opinion its the best technology apples released in a while.

 

Edit: I also haven't seen it done anywhere else 

[Enderman]

Just now, Feloffle said:

Well didn't he already make one to beat the Mac pro? I'm asking to see him try and use the display as in my opinion its the best technology apples released in a while.

Why do you think that changing the display will change the performance..?

[Feloffle]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Why do you think that changing the display will change the performance..?

In every video that claims it beat the Mac pro and that its build is better, they just use some normal monitor. I think the xdr display will be a lot more power consuming compared to your normal 27 inch monitor. I personally think they haven't truly beaten the Mac pro till they can use the monitor 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There's literally like 50 other posts about "linus make a PC that beats the mac pro"

Stop.

He already did iirc.  At least once.  
 

If there are all these separate threads on the same already done subject Maybe they should be merged.  I myself heard recently that hackintosh is actually easier on AMD now than it is on intel.  That could be an interesting wrinkle.

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, Feloffle said:

In every video that claims it beat the Mac pro and that its build is better, they just use some normal monitor. I think the xdr display will be a lot more power consuming compared to your normal 27 inch monitor. I personally think they haven't truly beaten the Mac pro till they can use the monitor 

It's just an HDR 6k display.

Benchmarks measure CPU and GPU performance, which has literally nothing to do with what display you use.

 

The only difference is that fps will be lower with a 6k display compared to a 4k display.

Since the computers are compared with the same monitor then the difference in performance remains constant, because it's relative.

[Feloffle]

Just now, Enderman said:

It's just an HDR 6k display.

Benchmarks measure CPU and GPU performance, which has literally nothing to do with what display you use.

 

The only difference is that fps will be lower with a 6k display compared to a 4k display.

Since the computers are compared with the same monitor then the difference in performance remains constant, because it's relative.

Well I guess you have me beat there, just thought it would make for an interesting vid to see if apple put limitations on this (using apple display with Windows or hacintosh) and if so how they would overcome it

[Enderman]

5 minutes ago, Feloffle said:

Well I guess you have me beat there, just thought it would make for an interesting vid to see if apple put limitations on this (using apple display with Windows or hacintosh) and if so how they would overcome it

It's just a display dude.

There is no apple magic sauce in it.

 

If you want crazy display stuff linus has plenty of videos on 8k and 16k PC builds.

[Arika]

8 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There is no apple magic sauce in it.

magic sauce, no, some apple fuckery, yes.

 

There is a number of things that the display will refuse to do in windows/non-macOS, if you can even get it to work at all

[Feloffle]

3 minutes ago, Arika S said:

magic sauce, no, some apple fuckery, yes.

 

There is a number of things that the display will refuse to do in windows/non-macOS, if you can even get it to work at all

I haven't seen anyone do it and I think it would make a cool video finding the challenges and overcoming them

[Enderman]

16 minutes ago, Arika S said:

magic sauce, no, some apple fuckery, yes.

 

There is a number of things that the display will refuse to do in windows/non-macOS, if you can even get it to work at all

The display works fine in other operating systems.

If you want the full 60Hz 6k resolution you just need to use DP1.4 because 1.2 is limited to 4k 60.

 

The display is already calibrated so there should be no need to adjust any settings on it.

You can always adjust colours using your GPU control panel too.

[lewdicrous]

52 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I myself heard recently that hackintosh is actually easier on AMD now than it is on intel.

Haven't kept up with the news, but from what I know, AMD is only better in the GPU side not the CPU side. That might change later on (or maybe it already changed, idk)

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, Feloffle said:

I'm asking to see him try and use the display as in my opinion its the best technology apples released in a while.

LTT have already done a standalone review video on the Pro Display...

 

 

They also address the problems with running the monitor on a PC instead of mac, namely you won't have support for full resolution due to Apple's secret sauce thunderbolt DisplayPort magic and there's no way to control the display settings (brightness, contrast, preset colour modes, etc) in Windows.

[joevt]

Linus neglected to mention XDR's support for Display Stream Compression (DSC). The XDR supports many connections. Thunderbolt (dual HBR3, no DSC) is only one of them.

• HBR2 (1440p60 12bpc, 4K60 10bpc, 5K 6bpc)
• HBR3 (this might not be allowed - I haven't seen evidence that single cable HBR3 works - there is a small amount of evidence that single cable is limited to HBR2)
• Dual HBR2 (5K60 10bpc) Thunderbolt only - Alpine Ridge, or Blackmagic eGPU before the firmware update.
• Dual HBR3 (6K60 10bpc - maybe 12bpc with EDID override using CRU?) Thunderbolt only. PC Thunderbolt 3 Titan Ridge driver doesn't support this because dual HBR3 exceeds 40Gbps, but 6K doesn't use full dual HBR3 and Thunderbolt doesn't transmit DisplayPort stuffing symbols so Apple tells the controller to ignore this artificial limit.
• HBR2 DSC (6K60 12bpc)

There is no support for YCbCr and therefore no support for chroma sub sampling so DisplayPort 1.4 GPUs that don't support DSC cannot get 6K (no 6K on Nvidia Pascal or AMD Polaris for example).

 

So the best GPUs to use for XDR in Windows are Nvidia RTX or AMD Navi. The RTX and W5700 have USB-C ports that can transmit HBR2 with DSC and USB 2.0. Since only HBR2 is required with DSC to get 6K you can probably combine USB 2.0 with DisplayPort using a Wacom Link Plus, Huawei VR 2 Computer Connection Cable, or Sunix UPD2018 (though I haven't seen anyone try that yet).

 

As for the Boot Camp drivers - there's probably a way to get them installed on a PC with some minor work.

 

If you don't care about having USB 2.0 (or the presets), then a bidirectional USB-C to DisplayPort cable (such as the one made by Moshi) is sufficient for non-Thunderbolt connections.

[LogicalDrm]

If you want to do actual suggestion and get less of people flaming on you, post it to official and monitored thread: