Mac mini 2018 bad UI-performance with LG 5K-Display

[head honcho 123]

Been reading a lot of posts around monitors for MM'18 edition. Major concern was the iGPU 630 with the LG 5k Ultrafine, but seems like people are saying it's okay. Trying to as much research as possible before picking one of these from Microcenter. Saw this post recently and didn't see this on the forums so posting here: https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1059882936063926272

Seems reassuring to me... I think.

 

[mdnz]

Every MacBook Pro starting 2016 has scaled resolution turned on by default. I never noticed any stuttering on my 2017 MacBook Pro. Kinda weird it's that bad on an external screen.

Try to resize a Safari screen when you are on the bookmarks screen on a scaled resolution. It will never, using any hardware, move at 60fps. If you have some magical Macbook, please record it because it will be the first time I've seen it in my life.

EVERY scaled resolution lags, some people just don't notice it I guess.

 

[Tigerman82]

EVERY scaled resolution lags, some people just don't notice it I guess.

So even in this 4K age with Apple offering those 4K and 5K LG Ultrafines let alone the iMac screens... Is it better get something like a 25" 1440p screen that will guarantee buttery-smooth UI as it's ran in native res than have the crispness of text of a scaled-down 4K screen that may or may not have noticeable UI lag (especially in computers with integrated graphics and possibly only 8-16 gigs of RAM)? It seems that many if not most people in these forums are going to 4K route and I rarely see anyone complaining. On the other hand, this is the Mac forums where folks seem to have the means or the will to spend thousands of dollars on computers and from this it can be assumed that many use their 4K screens with maxed out Macs meaning the sluggishness may be less apparent.

 

[macdos]

So even in this 4K age with Apple offering those 4K and 5K LG Ultrafines let alone the iMac screens... Is it better get something like a 25" 1440p screen that will guarantee buttery-smooth UI as it's ran in native res than have the crispness of text of a scaled-down 4K screen that may or may not have noticeable UI lag (especially in computers with integrated graphics and possibly only 8-16 gigs of RAM)? It seems that many if not most people in these forums are going to 4K route and I rarely see anyone complaining. On the other hand, this is the Mac forums where folks seem to have the means or the will to spend thousands of dollars on computers and from this it can be assumed that many use their 4K screens with maxed out Macs meaning the sluggishness may be less apparent.

Why would you scale a 4K screen, or any screen for that matter? Why wouldn't you want the screen estate offered by a 4K screen? I need all those pixels, and some more.

Retina? Makes no sense with 4K.

Just increase text size, and you are good to go. Of course, macOS itself doesn't offer much in UI customization, but apps do. The phone company needs to realize that people are going to want options for text size in menus and other UI elements.

 

[Spectrum]

Why would you scale a 4K screen, or any screen for that matter? Why wouldn't you want the screen estate offered by a 4K screen? I need all those pixels, and some more.

Retina? Makes no sense with 4K.

Just increase text size, and you are good to go. Of course, macOS itself doesn't offer much in UI customization, but apps do. The phone company needs to realize that people are going to want options for text size in menus and other UI elements.

But what you are saying (increase text size) is effectively exactly what the macOS scaling function does - at the expense of significant GPU overhead.

 

[macdos]

But what you are saying (increase text size) is effectively exactly what the macOS scaling function does - at the expense of significant GPU overhead.

No, it effectively takes away your pixels. You want those pixels when editing images and video.

 

[Spectrum]

No, it effectively takes away your pixels. You want those pixels when editing images and video.

I understand what you are saying...but I'm not sure it actually takes away your pixels, it is just that there is no longer a 1-to-1 relationship between a pixel in an image file and a pixel on the screen due to the scaling. But the screen still uses all the pixels to present a high DPI image to the viewer. But I agree that pixel level detail may be lost/blurred.

My question would be: can you see pixel level detail without zooming in on a high DPI 4K (or 5K) screen?

 

[T-Bob]

Why would you scale a 4K screen, or any screen for that matter? Why wouldn't you want the screen estate offered by a 4K screen? I need all those pixels, and some more.

Retina? Makes no sense with 4K.

Just increase text size, and you are good to go. Of course, macOS itself doesn't offer much in UI customization, but apps do. The phone company needs to realize that people are going to want options for text size in menus and other UI elements.

Do you use native resolution on your phone? No. This is what HiDPI is all about. Not about increasing usable resolution, but increasing image quality at the pixel level. Of course you have the option to do that if you want to, but for most people that is unusable.

 

[Stephen.R]

Why would you scale a 4K screen

Why wouldn't you want the screen estate offered by a 4K screen? I need all those pixels, and some more.

Why would anyone want that much screen real estate? Why wouldn't you want every single app, every single line of text scaled smoothly so you can read nice text?

It's as if a small % of the people frequenting this forum believe everyone uses computers to do exactly what they themselves do, in exactly the same way they themselves do.

 

[macdos]

Do you use native resolution on your phone? No. This is what HiDPI is all about. Not about increasing usable resolution, but increasing image quality at the pixel level. Of course you have the option to do that if you want to, but for most people that is unusable.

That's on a phone. It doesn't carry over to a 4K setting.
[doublepost=1542281462][/doublepost]

Why would anyone want that much screen real estate? Why wouldn't you want every single app, every single line of text scaled smoothly so you can read nice text?

It's as if a small % of the people frequenting this forum believe everyone uses computers to do exactly what they themselves do, in exactly the same way they themselves do.

Everything is smooth on a 4K screen, given reasonable dimensions. I have two 27.5 inch monitors. The eyes don't have a better resolution.

 

[Stephen.R]

Everything is smooth on a 4K screen, given reasonable dimensions

Well sure, but people appear smooth from a plane too, because you can't see them properly. I've put this 24" at full-4k. It's been less than a minute, and it's hard to focus already. I don't want to have to futz with every single damn app to try and bump up the font size, only to find some parts are just fixed UI elements that cant be scaled.

If you can work this way, good luck to you. I, and I suspect most other people, can't.

 

[T-Bob]

That's on a phone. It doesn't carry over to a 4K setting.
[doublepost=1542281462][/doublepost]

Everything is smooth on a 4K screen, given reasonable dimensions. I have two 27.5 inch monitors. The eyes don't have a better resolution.

The theory carries over though, that is why you need 5k at 27" for it to be HiDPI, 4k is too low at that size for the same effect at average viewing distance.

 

[Tigerman82]

Why would you scale a 4K screen, or any screen for that matter? Why wouldn't you want the screen estate offered by a 4K screen? I need all those pixels, and some more.

I guess the reason I'm going for a 4K screen is that I need a little more workspace for multitasking then my current 1080p screen offers and I want the crispness of 4K. I mainly do websites and word processing. Admittedly I was under the impression that scaling down is the preferred process to do when you fire up your 4K screen on your Mac and notice everything is wayyyy too small. So you're saying that scaling down is one thing and making the text bigger is another? Wouldn't the latter apply to only some of the UI elements and apps, though? That would mean that I'd have to individually set every app to the correct font size and hope that all of the apps support 'zooming in'.

I thought that with scaling down a 4K display (which OS X should do better than Windows) you get everything the size you prefer (universally) and because of the 4K pixels, you get crisper text than you would get with a monitor that's native res is the same as the 4K scaled down res (although not as crisp a text as you would get running the 4K monitor in native res).

Or am I wrong? Say I buy a Dell 25" 1440p monitor running it in native res? I then buy a LG 27" 4K monitor and scale down to 1440p so that everything isn't too small. I put these two monitor side by side. Which one has the crisper text in something like MS Word or a simple website using Google Chrome?

 

[Chancha]

I guess the reason I'm going for a 4K screen is that I need a little more workspace for multitasking then my current 1080p screen offers and I want the crispness of 4K. I mainly do websites and word processing. Admittedly I was under the impression that scaling down is the preferred process to do when you fire up your 4K screen on your Mac and notice everything is wayyyy too small. So you're saying that scaling down is one thing and making the text bigger is another? Wouldn't the latter apply to only some of the UI elements and apps, though? That would mean that I'd have to individually set every app to the correct font size and hope that all of the apps support 'zooming in'.

I thought that with scaling down a 4K display (which OS X should do better than Windows) you get everything the size you prefer (universally) and because of the 4K pixels, you get crisper text than you would get with a monitor that's native res is the same as the 4K scaled down res (although not as crisp a text as you would get running the 4K monitor in native res).

Or am I wrong? Say I buy a Dell 25" 1440p monitor running it in native res? I then buy a LG 27" 4K monitor and scale down to 1440p so that everything isn't too small. I put these two monitor side by side. Which one has the crisper text in something like MS Word or a simple website using Google Chrome?

In theory and in practice most of the time, of course the 27" 4K scaled to 1440p is going to be crisper. The 2 catches of this setup are:
1) if the GPU of the computer can handle it (which is questioned for the mini's UHD 630), so that while crisp you get other drawbacks like frame rate drops or UI lag
2) if the anti-aliasing of the OS/apps are doing it optimally, this is a new issue in Mojave but mostly affecting more on Low-DPI screens.

 

[Spectrum]

I guess the reason I'm going for a 4K screen is that I need a little more workspace for multitasking then my current 1080p screen offers and I want the crispness of 4K. I mainly do websites and word processing. Admittedly I was under the impression that scaling down is the preferred process to do when you fire up your 4K screen on your Mac and notice everything is wayyyy too small. So you're saying that scaling down is one thing and making the text bigger is another? Wouldn't the latter apply to only some of the UI elements and apps, though? That would mean that I'd have to individually set every app to the correct font size and hope that all of the apps support 'zooming in'.

I thought that with scaling down a 4K display (which OS X should do better than Windows) you get everything the size you prefer (universally) and because of the 4K pixels, you get crisper text than you would get with a monitor that's native res is the same as the 4K scaled down res (although not as crisp a text as you would get running the 4K monitor in native res).

Or am I wrong? Say I buy a Dell 25" 1440p monitor running it in native res? I then buy a LG 27" 4K monitor and scale down to 1440p so that everything isn't too small. I put these two monitor side by side. Which one has the crisper text in something like MS Word or a simple website using Google Chrome?

The 27 inch 4K.

 

[netdudeuk]

I think that this is pretty confusing for a lot of people.

I have a 2017 13" TB MBP and would like a load of screen space with sharp text / graphics on a 27" 4K monitor.

How hard can it be to get this and without any lag ?

 

[mdnz]

So even in this 4K age with Apple offering those 4K and 5K LG Ultrafines let alone the iMac screens... Is it better get something like a 25" 1440p screen that will guarantee buttery-smooth UI as it's ran in native res than have the crispness of text of a scaled-down 4K screen that may or may not have noticeable UI lag (especially in computers with integrated graphics and possibly only 8-16 gigs of RAM)? It seems that many if not most people in these forums are going to 4K route and I rarely see anyone complaining. On the other hand, this is the Mac forums where folks seem to have the means or the will to spend thousands of dollars on computers and from this it can be assumed that many use their 4K screens with maxed out Macs meaning the sluggishness may be less apparent.

Let's just say Apple's implementation of scaled resolutions on the Mac isn't that good technically. That's why it lags on no matter which hardware you pick. If you look at an iPhone, which also has a scaled resolution, it runs buttery smooth. Goes to show where the priorities are.

If you value crisper text over performance, go a scaled resolution, otherwise just stick to regular resolutions (non-retina).

 

[Chancha]

No, it effectively takes away your pixels. You want those pixels when editing images and video.

From this line of yours, I am unsure if you know how HiDPI works in macOS. Say for a 5k iMac, set at default 2:1 "looks like 2560x1440", then open a 16MP DSLR RAW in Photoshop, tell Photoshop to scale it 100%, the image will not totally fill the screen as the pixel dimension of ~5000x3333px is less wide than the 5120px actual horizontal dimension of the display panel. The OS and the app both knows the raster image is to be treated with different scaling than the UI (i.e., do not scale images and videos). If doing the same thing on an actually 2560x1440 low-DPI screen, the same image when zoomed in 100% you can only see a quarter of it.

 

[netnothing]

So to get a 27" display, running at 2560x1440, you really need a 5K display correct? At least with this crappy GPU in the Mac mini, since that is half the native res? A 27" 4K could do 2560x1440 but only with a machine with a decent GPU correct?

Drives me nuts Apple basically designed this new mini for places like Mac mini colo. No need for the average consumer to not have gotten a slightly larger mini to accommodate some kind of better GPU.

 

[Stephen.R]

you really need a 5K display correct? At least with this crappy GPU in the Mac mini, since that is half the native res? A 27" 4K could do 2560x1440 but only with a machine with a decent GPU correct?

I'm not sure that is really the conclusion to draw, given this:

Ultimately, I'm happy with the performance at 2560x1440, everything is smooth other than space switching and full screening YouTube. Anything above that gets quite choppy.

Personally I think 4k@27" is too low (i.e. you need to go too far beyond straight 2x and thus lower PPI. Even 4k@24" I have to push it up to 2560x1440 for it to not be huge) to get useable space/appropriate sized UI. But that doesn't mean the Mini won't run it.

 

[netnothing]

I'm not sure that is really the conclusion to draw, given this:



Personally I think 4k@27" is too low (i.e. you need to go too far beyond straight 2x and thus lower PPI. Even 4k@24" I have to push it up to 2560x1440 for it to not be huge) to get useable space/appropriate sized UI. But that doesn't mean the Mini won't run it.

Thanks.....must have missed his post. So looks like that might be an option.

So I'm guessing that the new mini can run all the below decently. As for looks, it will be worst (top) to best (bottom) as far as crispness and clarity.

27" non-retina display running 2560x1440 native
27" 4K display running 2560x1440 scaled
27" 5K display running 2560x1440 scaled

Really wish there was some kind of competition with the 5K displays. That's what I really want, but don't want to spend $1300 for it

 

[arbitrage]

No, it effectively takes away your pixels. You want those pixels when editing images and video.

Not sure what programs you are using but PS and LR for my photos use the 1:1 native pixels in the actual display of images while allowing the surrounding UI to be scaled to whatever you are using in the OS settings. I'm fairly certain video editing apps do the same thing.

 

[Stephen.R]

Really wish there was some kind of competition with the 5K displays.

It definitely depends on your use-case, but I'm planning to use 2x 24"@4k. I'd possibly have even coughed up the $ for 2x the LG 21"4K if they were available here. Thats where I wish there was more competition - the low-mid 20 inches, 4K res.

Obviously if your task requires a single large 'canvas' then this approach won't help.

 

[johnscully]

Little update: Went to an Apple Store and tested a new Mac mini with Core i5, which was connected to the LG UltraFine 5K. I experienced nearly the same choppy UI-animations which I had with my Core i3 (tested Mission Control with many opened apps, switching between desktops, fullscreen etc.). The Mac mini in the Store also had just 8 GB RAM, maybe with 16 GB it would be better, don't know. By the way: There was another LG UltraFine 5K in the Store, connected to the Mac Pro. With that machine the UI-Animations where waaay smoother (I know the Pro has better Graphics).

I already returned the Mac mini. Maybe I wait for new iMacs.

 

[head honcho 123]

Little update: Went to an Apple Store and tested a new Mac mini with Core i5, which was connected to the LG UltraFine 5K. I experienced nearly the same choppy UI-animations which I had with my Core i3 (tested Mission Control with many opened apps, switching between desktops, fullscreen etc.). The Mac mini in the Store also had just 8 GB RAM, maybe with 16 GB it would be better, don't know. By the way: There was another LG UltraFine 5K in the Store, connected to the Mac Pro. With that machine the UI-Animations where waaay smoother (I know the Pro has better Graphics).

I already returned the Mac mini. Maybe I wait for new iMacs.

I should be getting my MM next Tuesday. Will pick up the LG UF 5k to test and report back here.