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about this mac

I have a Macbook Pro 15" mid 2012, and I want to add an external display running at 2560 x 1600. Given that I want a future proof display, I purchased a 4K monitor. (LG27UD88)

Of course I know it will not run 4K resolution, but I was hoping to would at least allow me to run 2560 x 1600 as supported by the NVIDIA GT650M. Turns out I only achieve 1920 x 1080 :(

I connected with a purchased mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable. Could it be a limitation of the cable? Will connecting via a mini-DP to HDMI cable change anything?

The 1920 x 1080 resolution is really superb and crispy, but it's a bit an expensive HD monitor...

Anyone any tips ?

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  • I'm looking at 2 pages on Everymac to try decide, but it's not clear. The mid 2012 page just says up to 2560x1600 but gives no details. The retina 2012 page says it can only achieve that resolution over thunderbolt, not HDMI. Neither mentions DP at all.
    – Tetsujin
    Aug 25, 2016 at 15:19

2 Answers 2

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Well looks like I found the answer to my problem. All I had to do was press the Option button when selecting "Scaled" from the Displays setting; this allowed me to select 3840 x 2160 (30Hz) and 2560 x 1440 (60Hz)

display settings

Well, to be more precise, the 2560x1440 resolution is not 60Hz but for a weird reason it shows 59Hz in System Information. Does anyone know how come?

system information

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  • I'm unable to pick any resolution higher than 1280 x 720, "low resolution" or not, on my BenQ 4K EL2870U. I connect to it through an mDP-DP cable that supports 4K resolution, so I'm stumped as to why no other resolution will work.
    – Asbjørn Ulsberg
    Dec 12, 2018 at 8:30
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Here's a helpful link:

How To Connect a 4K Monitor to a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro

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    An answer should still be useful when the link disappears e.g. put the information in the answer, if taken from somewhere else give credit and use links for extra information - also how does this differ from the accepted answer?
    – mmmmmm
    Jan 16, 2019 at 23:48
  • Welcome to Ask Different and thank you for your answer. :) Unfortunately, short answers such as this don't really provide enough detail or context to help many users. And, just providing a link isn't very helpful as it may no longer work in future. Instead, could you please edit your answer (there's an edit link below it) to include a summary of the content you're linking to? This will make your answer more self-contained and help preserve it for other users in future.
    – Monomeeth ♦
    Jan 16, 2019 at 23:57

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