Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy with an external monitor

Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by varenc on Saturday May 22, 2021 @12:18AM (#27243412)

You can check your resolution and HiDPI status by running this:

   system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType  | grep -C1 Resolution

For example, with my 4k monitor running at 3008x1692 with HiDPI ("retina") enabled, I get this:

   DELL P2715Q:
      Resolution: 6016 x 3384
      UI Looks like: 3008 x 1692 @ 60 Hz

Even with those settings my 16" MBP's idle GPU power usage is only ~8-9W. It makes no sense that enabling HiDPI on a 1440p monitor results in better performance, so this definitely sounds like a bug.

I recommend displayplacer [0] for changing and automating macOS display settings. It lets you set all sorts of configs not available in the GUI. Should be easy to have displayplacer enable HiDPI on a 1440p monitor. And it doesn't make persistent system changes or require disabling SIP (i think?) like that script referenced in the article.

[0] https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by FireBeyond on Saturday May 22, 2021 @08:49PM (#27251560)

It doesn't make sense, but Big Sur is all kinds of broken with external displays.

Display Stream Compression, working perfectly in Catalina, is completely non functional in Big Sur. I don't mean that dramatically, it has not worked since public beta 1, and still doesn't.

Apple just doesn't care if you don't have a Pro Display XDR.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by seam_carver on Saturday May 22, 2021 @12:33AM (#27243508)

This might be relevant. I took fullscreen screenshots. The first one was 2560x1440. The second one was 5120x2880.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by varenc on Saturday May 22, 2021 @12:56AM (#27243627)

makes sense! Screenshots are in the "real" resolution and not the "Looks Like" resolution. So that helps confirm that doubling the resolution/enabling HiDPI fixed the performance issue. Such a weird bug. Thanks for the write up.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by jakehilborn on Saturday May 22, 2021 @12:37AM (#27243530)

Thanks for the shoutout on displayplacer!

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by varenc on Saturday May 22, 2021 @12:52AM (#27243607)

I love displayplacer. Thank you for making it! Reading through some of the source code and its use of those undocumented APIs was also really cool.

p.s. check out my pull request #62 for a bug fix! Funnily, it's for a scaling/HiDPI related issue. (though only matters when you don't use "mode: <>")

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by Hackintosh on Friday May 28, 2021 @12:13AM (#27311656)

Hey Jake, Does displayplacer have an option to control brightness? I'm running a Hackintosh and ran into displayplacer as the Mac OS equivalent for xrandr but I can't seem to find any command to control brightness.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by jidiculous on Saturday May 22, 2021 @06:36PM (#27250868)

Are you still maintaining the project? It looks like it's been a while since the last commit or release.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by varenc on Saturday May 22, 2021 @08:35PM (#27251487)

It still works great for me! And the only issue I’ve ran into can be entirely avoided just by using mode numbers directly instead of specifying each setting.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by jbkkd on Friday May 28, 2021 @09:10AM (#27314917)

Neither displayplacer nor one-key-hidpi worked for me. I ended up using RDM:

https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by piyiotisk on Saturday May 22, 2021 @03:52PM (#27249745)

How can I use displayplacer to enabke hidpi?

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by singhrac on Saturday May 22, 2021 @07:22PM (#27251132)

Bump this - I'd prefer to avoid using that script, especially since it seems like it's a bit unstable (e.g. "some systems have a wake-up issue").

I'd love a solution that doesn't require closing the lid, as well.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by varenc on Saturday May 22, 2021 @08:34PM (#27251479)

displayplacer can definitely do this! Just running `displayplacer` should output helpful information but I can give more detail.

Let’s say you have a 1440p monitor running at native resolution without HiDPI enable.

Run this to see the (huge) list of available modes:

   displayplacer list

Then from the list find the mode number for the resolution you already have that lists “scaling:on”. Also copy your monitor’s ID

Now run this with those values copied from above to change to the HiDPI mode:

   displayplacer "id:<id> mode:<mode number>"

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by jscheel on Monday May 24, 2021 @11:09AM (#27265245)

Odd, displayplacer doesn't list any options for 2560x1440 with scaling on for me. Am I understanding you incorrectly?

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by singhrac on Monday May 24, 2021 @11:23AM (#27265426)

Just for posterity, I ran into the same problem as joshgel. My 1440p's highest "scaling:on" mode is "res:1920:1200 hz:60 color_depth:8 scaling:on". I tried that, but iStats Menu still reports the discrete graphics card using 19W, which is as high as before.

Given that the linked script just seems to create some sort of XML file in the right directory, maybe this is doable directly? I made an issue in the displayplacer Github to this effect: https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer/issues/69

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by singhrac on Thursday June 03, 2021 @11:28AM (#27382800)

For those who come across this thread later, I found a reasonable solution that involves fewer hacks (at least to me). It still doesn't lower power usage below 18W with both displays open, but it's a cleaner version of the above solution. Here: https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer/issues/69#issue...

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by joshgel on Monday May 24, 2021 @10:40AM (#27264877)

what if `displayplacer list` doesn't show an option for my current resolution with "scaling:on"? does that mean my 16" MBP w 5500M doesn't support this resolution?

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by seam_carver on Monday May 24, 2021 @09:06PM (#27271587)

OP here: had no issues with sleep or wake. Using Apple HDMI adapter.

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Re:Solved by 1440p HiDPI: MacBook Pro 16“ is hot and noisy w... by seam_carver on Saturday May 22, 2021 @01:16AM (#27243721)

        S32D850:
          Resolution: 5120 x 2880 (5K/UHD+ - Ultra High Definition Plus)
          UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440 @ 60.00Hz

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