Multi-Monitor suggestions

tomatopi · Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject: Multi-Monitor suggestions

Now that's I've played with Gentoo on servers and on my TabletPC laptop, I want to also setup a dual-boot on my main workstation. However, I'm a big multi-monitor user and want to make sure I have two good working monitors. Right now, my systme uses a 3DLabs Wildcat VP dual-head card, but I can't seem to find much support under X for that.

Am I forced to swap out my 3DLabs card to get proper Linux support? If so, what direction should I head? I would much prefer open-source drivers over binary drivers, but I don't know what my options are. It's a dual P4 system 7505 chipset and still runs AGP (IBM Z-Pro), so that may be another issue.

Thanks

Slurp53 · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 255 Location: Iowa

Do you need video acceleration?

I use 2 Nvidia cards, one PCI, one AGP. They work well. If you don't need the acceleration the open source driver works very well too.

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tomatopi · Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:32 pm Post subject:

I suppose I don't really need 3D acceleration, though it's nice to have occasionally. I still have a few 3D applications I may need in Windows once in a while so I don't want to give it up completely, though I don't think I'd use the accelleration under Linux.

I'd prefer to stay away from AGP/PCI combo since that completely hoses any sort of 3D one may have.

I guess I'd like to know if the Open Source drivers for multi-monitors are better (i.e. more reliable) with ATI chips or nVidia chips.

hvengel · Guru Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 515

Nvidia cards for the most part support multi-monitor setups with just one card as do many other vendors cards these days. I am currently running an Nvidia 6600 LE in my machine with two monitors. You should be able to use the standard mutli-monitor support in Xorg with almost any card that supports two monitors with either propritory or open source drivers I used to have a Matrox G450 with two monitors using the open source drivers using the correct settings in xorg.conf. I am currently using the propritory drivers for the Nvidia card with twinview to support two monitors. Multi-monitor support in Linux (actually XOrg) is as good as if not better than in Windows.

I should add that the downside is that this is harder to setup than it is on Windows because you will have to hand configure this in the xorg.conf file and there are no GUIs to make this easier (that I know of). But once it si setup you don't have to mess with it again.