dual monitor and S3 trio

Sloebervos · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2003 10:03 pm Post subject: dual monitor and S3 trio

I was trying to set up a dual monitor setup using a S3 trio pci card next to my Geforce 4 mx440. However I always get the error no valid modes are found for the S3. When checking the logs, aparently there's not enough memory to run even 640x480 in 16 bit mode.

Is it really impossible to use this card or is there a way around this?

arkhan_jg · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 3:03 am Post subject:

It really does depend how much memory you've got on the card. I've seen S3 trio's with only 512K of memory before now.

I've found 4M to be a practical minimum for secondary pci cards, as with less, they just can't display the higher res and colours.

If you check the XFree86 log, it should tell you the memory. You could also use lspci -v

This should tell you how much memory you need for your purposes.

For example, 640x480, 16bit colour, is 600K of memory.
1024x768 at 24bit, is 2304K, or 2.25M.

Now, that's just to hold the image in the framebuffer. I'm not exactly an video expert, but I can see the cards using additional memory for all sorts of things, so it would make sense you'd need more memory than that needed just to hold one copy of the display.

If the card is below 4M, even 8M, I'd cough up a little for a new pci card. Alternatively, you can pick up a twinview/dualhead AGP nvidia or ATI based card for virtually nothing these days, that would have more grunt than your 440MX.
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Sloebervos · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 10:24 am Post subject:

01:0a.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86c764/765 [Trio32/64/64V+] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
Memory at eb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=8M]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K]

Okay it's 8 megabyte

Well I'm not really a gamer and if I could use the machinery I have lying here anyway I would do that. Maybe I'll go off to the store and buy a dual head pci MX440 one of these days. The second screen is an old 15" anyway

Corw|n of Amber · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 2:15 pm Post subject:

You do what you want, but... try to avoid nVidia's MX line. Those cards are castrated versions. If you want cheap dual head and no gaming and a real good picture quality, get a Matrox G450 or G550; they are under $100 and have the most beautiful picture quality you can find for under $1000.

The Good Thing (c)(p)(r)TM with the S3s is that most up-to-date mobos have 5 to 6 PCI slots and you can use that: 6 graph cards with six 14 or 15" monitors for real cheap

(I had four S3 Virges with four 15" at some point, that was nice

)
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arkhan_jg · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 1:09 am Post subject:

Interesting that you recommend the matrox multihead cards; I've heard the drivers are not too good under linux, and that there's a lot of bugs and problems with them.

Personally speaking, I'm a fan of nvidia chipsets, tho if you go for the very bottom end (~£50) you'll get similar performance to the 440mx (the 5200 based cards, for example).

Going back to the S3, since the card has 8M, it should run fine at the higher res; interestingly

Sloebervos · Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2003 3:52 pm Post subject:

You're right. I just went through my Xfree log files again and I found there was 512K of vesa memory, but nothing about the 8 megabytes. So I guess the card really is useless for something graphical.