iMac graphics concern

[nyrog]

Currently use an iMac 21.5", mid 2011 model w/amd radeon hd 6750m 512mb graphics card. Wanting to purchase a second monitor to use for photo processing and thinking about the Dell u2711 which has a max resolution of
2560x1440. My concern is will the above graphics card be sufficient to obtain max resolution from the monitor? If not can u advise as to what max resolution this card can support?

Thanks for any help u can provide.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Let's see, AMD says:

Dual-link DVI with HDCP
Max resolution: 2560x1600
DisplayPort 1.2
Max resolution: 2560x1600
Multi-Stream Transport
21.6 Gbps bandwidth
High bit-rate audio
HDMI® 1.4a with Stereoscopic 3D Frame Packing Format, Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
Max resolution: 1920x1200
VGA
Max resolution: 2048x1536


What output does your iMac have? (Displayport, right?)

 

[jmarsiglio]

Yes, if you have the necessary cable.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I know an iMac really isn't for games but Apple sure likes to be skim on the VRAM side of things, unless OS X is really good about allocating system RAM to be used as video memory or Apple versions of media programs are really good about RAM balancing (assuming they even use the dedicated video memory in the first place). I bet even the Turks based 6750M could really benefit from a full 1 GB for productivity applications.

 

[nyrog]

DominionSeraph,
Thanks for the feedback. The iMac has a Thunderbolt (mini-display) port. Will this work?

 

[Stuka87]

512MB is fine for regular desktop usage with those two displays. The card itself will be a bit on the slow side for anything that needs to use it, and the GUI does make a lot of use of the video card. But overall I think you should be fine.

 

[DominionSeraph]

DominionSeraph,
Thanks for the feedback. The iMac has a Thunderbolt (mini-display) port. Will this work?

I do believe that Thunderbolt converts to Displayport. But I'm not an Apple guy and I wasn't really into "study mode" when I read Anandtech's Thunderbolt article so I'm not 100% certain. You should contact Apple or head on over to our Apple forums.
http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=45

 

[alfa147x]

I do believe that Thunderbolt converts to Displayport. But I'm not an Apple guy and I wasn't really into "study mode" when I read Anandtech's Thunderbolt article so I'm not 100% certain. You should contact Apple or head on over to our Apple forums.
http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=45

Thuderbolt doesn't convert anything to DisplayPort. It is display port compatible. You just need a mini DisplayPort cable (link)