Damn, those cool cats over at OWC have managed to get three external displays running on the brand new 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina laptop, and they got two running across one Thunderbolt port, and one via the HDMI port. Add in the built-in Retina display in the laptop, and the computer can drive four displays in total.
The last generation Macbook Air could only drive one external display on the Thunderbolt connection, and the last edition MacBook Pro and iMac could only drive two external displays respectively. According to OWC’s findings, there was no lag or visible delays dragging video or images across all of the displays.
If this doesn’t illustrate the power of Thunderbolt, I’m not sure what else will at this point. Thunderbolt is capable of simultaneously pushing 10 GB of data both up and down across a cable. Apple’s not kidding when they say one Thunderbolt port could easily render all other ports (USB, FireWire, Display, and Ethernet) pointless.
Update: We erroneously stated that all the external monitors were running off of one Thunderbolt port. There’s clearly one running off of HDMI as well. That’s two Thunderbolt Cinema displays, one HDMI Monitor, and one Built in Retina Monitor.
Source: OWC
