display

Bye VGA, bye DVI. Got Dell UltraSharp U2515H displays that only have HDMI and DisplayPort inputs. But there’s this “weird” DisplayPort that wasn’t working for me…until I learned that it’s an ouput for DisplayPort, not an input. But why would a monitor need an output port? So you can daisy chain them.

Yup, I learned that monitors that support DisplayPort 1.2 can actually be daisy chained to each other and still work as independent displays. Of course, your graphics card has to be able to keep up, pushing out all them pixels. But wow, this is convenient and with less cable clutter on your computer, especially a laptop. But… for these UltraSharp U2515, you need to enable DisplayPort 1.2. By default, it’s disabled to the more commonly used version 1.1, indicating that daisy chaining isn’t a common consumer feature.

On the Mac front however, my older MacBook Air doesn’t support daisy chaining aka Multi-Stream Transport (MST). I kinda expected that from a mid-2012 computer, but my Air does flawlessly power the U2515’s 2560 x 1440 resolution via the ThunderBolt port that shares the same form factor as a miniDisplayPort (mDP). So yay!

Next, make a return to the MacBook Pro line…