Apple Studio Display 5K Edid Dummy plug

[ferrisjo]

Hello Everyone , Happy New Year!

I am currently running a 2018 Mac mini (i7) with and AMD 5500 egpu via thunderbolt on MacOS Sequoia.

I am trying to use my MacMini headless with Parsec or Remote Desktop, the issue with parsec is I get low resolution and when I Try to increase it the machine slows down quite a bit hence the use of the egpu, to overcome this I thought of using a dummy plug with Egpu so that parsec can capture it HW accelerated.

now the real problem is all the dummy plugs I have are HDMI, DisplayPort and a Lindy DP 1.4 Edid emulator. factory they don't provide me with the 5k resolution similar to the ASD (apple studio display) and some are 4k 30hz as you know MacOS is bad with scaling they do 5k which is 1440p HiDPi (perfect scaling 1:1) other than that the machine will have to do something called fractional scaling and it hits the performance hard.

long story short, I am trying to clone a ASD EDiD on a dummy plug to fool the system to think it is connected to the egpu so I can get HW accelerated 1440p hiDPi resolution.

I have a 2018 Mac mini i7 with AMD egpu via TB3 and have a PC 14th gen intel with RTX4000 ADA GPU and another PC with 2060 super in addition the above plugs and corresponding Edids and ASD Edid also (after many many attempts to get one)

thank you for the support

Cheers

[ToastyX]

Are any of the dummy plugs programmable, not just capturing the display's EDID, but for programming your own EDID?

The Lindy DisplayPort 1.4 emulator should be able to do it, but the Apple Studio Display has too many extension blocks, so you need to be able to program your own EDID. Really all you need is one DisplayID extension block and a detailed resolutions data block with 5120x2880 @ 60 Hz.

HDMI dummy plugs are often HDMI 2.0, so you'd only be able to do 5120x2880 @ 30 Hz, but you need two extension blocks to do this with HDMI, and most dummy plugs only have room for one as far as I know.

Other DisplayPort dummy plugs are usually just single-link DVI, so that won't work unless you're fine with 10 Hz.

[ferrisjo]

Hi Toasty

Thanks for the prompt response,

I really don't know if they are programable or not and which tool to use to flash / write the Edid I have your Edid utility and have the (better display) on MacOS.

I have the following Dummies:
- Woieyeks HDMI 2.1 4k 120HZ 48GBP
- Lindy Edid DP 1.4 emulator
-Siawclub DP 4k 60HZ
- a bunch of HDMI

Aren't the dummy plugs all the same and behave on what you write on them regardless of the chip inside ?

I would really appreciate your support with setting up the proper Edid for the ASD , I did obtain it and will share it with you along with the other plugs I have

attached Edids

  LINDY32118_V0_EDID.bin (Size: 256 bytes / Downloads: 1)

  WOIEYEK 4K120_EDID.bin (Size: 256 bytes / Downloads: 1)

  ASD.bin (Size: 256 bytes / Downloads: 1)

  DP1080P60_EDID.bin (Size: 256 bytes / Downloads: 1)

  monitor.inf (Size: 2.29 KB / Downloads: 1)

[ToastyX]

No, they're not all the same. The GPU sees the dummy plug as a display, so it is still bound by the limitations of the connection. DVI and HDMI up to 2.0 can be emulated passively with just the EDID. DisplayPort EDID emulators are more complicated because they need to actively simulate a DisplayPort connection. The cheaper DisplayPort dummy plugs are usually just single-link DVI or HDMI since dual-mode DisplayPort can also be used as single-link DVI or HDMI with a passive adapter.

Woieyeks - This is a typical HDMI 2.0 dummy plug. The advertised 4K @ 120 Hz is only possible with YCbCr 4:2:0. The 48 Gbps is a lie. This one can be programmed from what I've read.
Lindy - This seems to be a true DisplayPort emulator. It can clone an existing display, but I don't know if it can be programmed directly. You'll have to test EDWriter yourself.

What are you using to dump the EDIDs? The ASD one is incomplete. You don't really need the EDID anyway. You just need a simple EDID with 5120x2880 @ 60 Hz. MacOS can do EDID overrides, so you might not need to program the dummy plug if an EDID override works. BetterDisplay seems to have an option to make and install an EDID override. Using the Lindy would be the best option because it has the bandwidth needed.

Here is a simple EDID with 5120x2880 @ 60 Hz:
  edid.bin (Size: 256 bytes / Downloads: 0)

[ferrisjo]

what I tried to achieve is have the dummy display show up in MacOS as and apple studio display.

I used my surface pro 9 connected directly to the ASD via TB4/USB C and used this application on windows to retrieve the Edid is Monitor Asset Manager https://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/moninfo.shtm

that is the only one I had at the time, if you know of something better or else that can retrieve the full Edid from the ASD please let me know and I will try again, currently only have a windows 11 machine which is the MS surface Pro 9 with intel iGPU (12gen cpu)

from the test I Have done with my DP plug and ASD Edid , it did show as ASD in MacOS but the 5120x2880 @ 60 was not showing !

I don't know why but I became obsessed with collecting different monitors Edids

I did reach out to Lindys support and did request if they have a special tool or software to write to the adapter , and asked about the adapter use case before and this is what they answered:
( This emulator has a cloning feature that should theoretically allow for up to 8k30HZ resolutions to be used. However, due to chipset limitations, the emulator does not support the timing for many non-standard PC resolutions which 5k falls into. This in combinations with the likelihood of chipset compatibility issues with the USB C to DisplayPort adapter, We have 32118 which seems to meet the required bandwidth for a standard output, however, Mac and USB use different timing than standard DisplayPort and as such I do not believe that this item would work for your setup.)

for writing the Edid you attached to the Lindy, which software and OS you recommend to do this and should I connect directly to gpu or eGPU ?

Thanks again for the support