All good info. I should have clarified and said I’m trying to figure out what hub(s) (and software?) to use to drive 4 external monitors. The monitors I already own and have them situated for another computer; I have the Macbook driving two of them, but I’m not sure how the best option to add the other two to the Macbook…
I wouldn’t use a hub or install any software - that tends to be unreliable (Dell does have drivers for Macs, and they do enable some extra features, but I wouldn’t install those drivers - it’s mostly just software control of things you can easily do withe the hardware buttons - the risk/reward isn’t worth it as those drivers might not work with a future version of MacOS).
The monitors I recommended all have USB-C input, so you can just use just an ordinary* USB cable will do it. They will also charge your Mac’s battery while connected, and you’ll be able to plug other things (wired headphones, ethernet, usb drives, etc) into the monitor. The 27" ones can also be daisy chained - connect the second into the other, rather than directly to your Mac.
(* an ordinary USB cable that can handle the bandwidth that is. DisplayPort needs about 32Gbps. If you want a long cable it’ll be expensive, but short high bandwidth cables are affordable)
If you want four monitors, with your specific GPU the fourth one has to be HDMI. When you have multiple options - generally HDMI is less reliable than DisplayPort, and DisplayPort is less reliable than USB-C.
Ultimately you just need to plug it in and find out. Not all monitors are compatible with all GPUs - there’s a lengthy list of optional features in the specification and almost no hardware supports all of those features. Sometimes those optional features are required to have a good experience for example you might need “Display Stream Compression” in order to be able to connect an ethernet cable to the display or worse it might be needed to run at 60hz. Sometimes playing DRM’d content can be an issue too, services like Netflix require an encrypted connection to the monitor.
Thanks again for all the info. Two of my monitors are years old, two of them I bought in the past few months (all are Dell). The nice thing is that a years-old 1070 will work with all 4 - even if refresh rate and resolution is not necessarily up to snuff for something like games, for the everyday stuff they are just fine.
I have to look at the specs, but I’m not sure any of mine support daisy chaining.
All good info. I should have clarified and said I’m trying to figure out what hub(s) (and software?) to use to drive 4 external monitors. The monitors I already own and have them situated for another computer; I have the Macbook driving two of them, but I’m not sure how the best option to add the other two to the Macbook…
I wouldn’t use a hub or install any software - that tends to be unreliable (Dell does have drivers for Macs, and they do enable some extra features, but I wouldn’t install those drivers - it’s mostly just software control of things you can easily do withe the hardware buttons - the risk/reward isn’t worth it as those drivers might not work with a future version of MacOS).
The monitors I recommended all have USB-C input, so you can just use just an ordinary* USB cable will do it. They will also charge your Mac’s battery while connected, and you’ll be able to plug other things (wired headphones, ethernet, usb drives, etc) into the monitor. The 27" ones can also be daisy chained - connect the second into the other, rather than directly to your Mac.
(* an ordinary USB cable that can handle the bandwidth that is. DisplayPort needs about 32Gbps. If you want a long cable it’ll be expensive, but short high bandwidth cables are affordable)
If you want four monitors, with your specific GPU the fourth one has to be HDMI. When you have multiple options - generally HDMI is less reliable than DisplayPort, and DisplayPort is less reliable than USB-C.
Ultimately you just need to plug it in and find out. Not all monitors are compatible with all GPUs - there’s a lengthy list of optional features in the specification and almost no hardware supports all of those features. Sometimes those optional features are required to have a good experience for example you might need “Display Stream Compression” in order to be able to connect an ethernet cable to the display or worse it might be needed to run at 60hz. Sometimes playing DRM’d content can be an issue too, services like Netflix require an encrypted connection to the monitor.
Thanks again for all the info. Two of my monitors are years old, two of them I bought in the past few months (all are Dell). The nice thing is that a years-old 1070 will work with all 4 - even if refresh rate and resolution is not necessarily up to snuff for something like games, for the everyday stuff they are just fine.
I have to look at the specs, but I’m not sure any of mine support daisy chaining.