My 2014 MacBook Pro is not able run external monitor at high refreshrate

I recently bought a Acer 2K 144Hz monitor to pair with my 2013 Retina MacBook pro. I am connecting the monitor to the MBP via Thunderbolt port to DisplayPort cable. As far as I know, my MBP should support Thunderbolt 2, which should be able to drive the monitor at 2K 144Hz.

Even though I do see the monitor running at 2560x1440 resolution, I see the refresh rate is only 60Hz. Going to the display settings, the refresh rate option is greyed out and is set at 60hz.

Any pointers on what could be the issue here? Could it be caused by a faulty Thunderbolt to DP cable?

Solution 1:

There is no issue, 60Hz is the highest refresh.

According to the official specifications, that model Mac has a refresh rate of (HDMI)

• Support for 1080p resolution at up to 60Hz
• Support for 3840-by-2160 resolution at 30Hz
• Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz

As for DisplayPort, the released standard for DisplayPort at the time this Mac was released, was 1.2a. The maximum resolution and refresh rate was 4K (3840x2160 @ 75Hz) or 5K (5180x2880@ 30Hz). That doesn’t mean Apple “enabled” those resolutions/refresh rates. They’ve been known to “cripple” features like daisy-chaining which was possible with DP 1.2 but not possible with the MacBook Pro.

The cable may be able to support the bandwidth but, more importantly, the graphics chip must be able to drive that frequency.