Supported USB-C Alternate Modes on MacBook Pro (15″ 2016 and later)

displayportthunderboltusb

I am curious as to exactly what USB Type-C alternate modes (and variations of those modes) are supported on the 15" 2016 MacBook Pro and later. I've done some searching on the Internet, but I've been unable to find any credible source of information on the subject. I would consider a credible source of information to be:

  • Official Apple technical documentation explicitly describing all supported USB Type-C alternate modes which are supported on the device. (All I've found so far is marketing info, which isn't specific enough.)

  • Analysis of USB PD traffic which might indicate supported alternate modes and capabilities.

  • Some sort of command-line utility or tool which is able to dump this information.

I already know that the USB Type-C ports on this machine support the following alternate mode configurations:

  • 4 lanes using Thunderbolt 3.0.

  • 4 lanes using DisplayPort 1.2.

  • 2 lanes using DisplayPort 1.2 and 2 lanes using USB 3.1.

But I'm pretty sure it supports additional variations.

Best Answer

According to EveryMac, the model numbers of your specific CPU are i7-6700HQ, i7-6820HQ, or i7-6920HQ, which all have Intel HD Graphics 530. The specs list the resolutions that you can expect to find with DisplayPort and HDMI.

However, in reality you can possibly do better. For example, there are active USB C to HDMI 2.0 cables which allow 4k@60Hz on 2016 MacBook Pros, when the alternate mode was only HDMI 1.4, or 4k@30Hz.

Note that depending on your model you may also have an AMD Radeon Pro 450, 455, or 460 GPU. To find out, in the terminal, the following commands may be helpful.

For model and CPU system_profiler SPHardwareDataType

For GPU system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

You could also save all of the system profiler information to a plain text file, and go through that with a text editor. Note that it can take a few minutes, and the file could be 5MB. system_profiler > output.txt

Finally, before choosing a monitor, cable or adapter it can be very useful to search through the reviews and customer questions for your model. That's the only way that I found out a 2016 MacBook Pro can output full resolution and refresh rates to HDMI 2.0 monitors.

Related Question