I recently bought a Dell monitor which has only DisplayPort and HDMI. and I was very excited to learn about the DisplayPort 1.2 daisy-chain. I was wondering if I could create a chain as follows
MacBookPro -> DP 1.2 -> Dell Monitor with Native DP 1.2 -> DP out from monitor -> DP to HDMI conversion -> Monitor with HDMI support.
Has this chain any drawbacks over a chain with native DP monitors? (Other than the end of the chain can't be extended anymore?)
Best Answer
If your monitor has both in and out ports for DisplayPort, then I think it is supposed to be possible.
The guy over at http://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/ says that the final monitor in the chain can be a normal DisplayPort 1.1 monitor, and says that "next year" we should see hubs that would make it possible for all monitors to be simply DisplayPort 1.1. (However, frankly, I'm not sure if he's trustworthy, because it appears that such hubs have been on the market for a few years now, and the only date on the article is 2015 at the bottom of the page as the copyright year, so, it must have been written this year, right?)
If you look at the specs over at http://www.startech.com/AV/Displayport-Converters/Mini-DisplayPort-Triple-Head-DisplayPort-Multi-Monitor-MST-Hub~MSTMDP123DP, you'll notice that they advertise that their hubs can themselves accept DisplayPort [1.1] adapters.
Basically, any adapter is supposed to be DisplayPort 1.1 compliant, and, it seems to follow, that you could thus use the DisplayPort 1.2 monitor (the one that has both in and out) just the same way as you would use a hub above.
Of course, these things are still novel enough that not many people have tried them, so, educated guess as above might not be correct.