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This blog post by Jeff Atwood about the amazingly cheap and sketchy, but awesome 27" 2560x1440 Dual-link DVI Korean monitors got me wanting one.

I have a 11" 2011 MacBook Air and a 13" 2012 MacBook Pro. These monitors are typically no-frills no-thrills Dual-link DVI only, so I would be purchasing an Apple-branded Dual-Link mini-DisplayPort to dual-link DVI adapter and connecting it via the Thunderbolt port on each laptop. The specs for both of these say that it should be able to drive a display with this many pixels without issue.

Is there anything else that I should be taking into consideration other than poor 3D performance at that high of a resolution, or should this setup be fine given the proper adapter?

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  • Just wondering - did you end up getting one? Did it work OK for you? Thanks!
    – Art
    Jul 28, 2012 at 5:42
  • Not yet, but even if I'd ordered one, shipping is typically 2 weeks anyway and this question is only a day old.
    – MDMarra
    Jul 28, 2012 at 10:19
  • you're right - I only noticed that after posting. Would love to know how you go if you end up ordering one!
    – Art
    Jul 29, 2012 at 12:28

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It should be fine. Apple themselves offer to sell you a 27" display along with the laptop so it clearly is capable of driving that many pixels.

I myself use a 15" 2012 MBP Retina with one of those mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapters (hooked up to a Hazro 27" monitor, so cheap no-frills much like you're considering) and its been pretty good. This is in addition to also driving a cinema display of the same size, so I have two external monitors.

I read a lot of reviews around the Internet before buying it, and there's a few horror stories (most of them say make sure you get one with firmware 1.03, but there's no way to tell what firmware you have, till you plug it in! - fortunately mine was 1.03 from the off).

The only issue I have with mine is occasionally (maybe once or twice a day) the Hazro monitor goes blank for a second, then comes back on. I have no idea whats causing this, the MBP doesn't even notice (doesn't try to rearrange windows or anything) and its infrequent enough that I just live with it. It may be a slight incompatibility between some of the equipment.

I do suffer from some occasional oddities if I unplug the external monitors while the MBP is asleep, then wake it up (the internal screen won't come on, I think its the graphics card drivers crashing at the unexpected situation) but I don't believe thats related to the Dual-Link DVI.

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I use a 11" 2011 MBA (i7) with an Apple Display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 with no problems, so you shouldn't have any problems with it (My previous monitor was an HP 27" with DVI and I used the MiniDisplayPort-To-DVI adapter.

The only reason why I changed to the Apple one is because this was brought by the company I work for :)

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I purchased the Apple Mini DisplayPort -> Dual-Link DVI adapter to run a 30-inch Cinema Display from a Retina Display MacBook Pro. It's a little sketchy. It works, but I'm experiencing a bit of flickering and some odd resolution issues when I open new browser windows, etc.

It's not the best solution, it seems... But I don't know if these are OS or hardware-related.

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