Wanted: 4 displays running happily on Gentoo.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Hi,

Looking for recommendations: I need a video card or combination of cards that can handle four 1920x1080 monitors simultaneously on the box for one user, that works well for Gentoo.

This does not have to be super fast, but I would like to be able to watch streaming video full-screen on one monitor. It's not for gaming, it's for coding.

I would like for this to not require a brain surgeon to make it work, or for that matter continuous fiddling to keep it working.

Please avoid speculation. If you have something that works, or you've SEEN PROOF that something works, then I'd be happy to hear what works from you.

Thanks.

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

If all you need is 2D, an older Radeon will work out of the box (HD7000 or newer still have alpha-quality drivers). You'll need to use DisplayPort for 4 monitors though. I've used a few different dual-screen setups at home/work and the graphics card side of things never gave me any hassle.

Video won't be a problem at that resolution; kernel 3.9 + Mesa 9.3 will support the decoder hardware on the cards so it'll work even better then.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I've been happily using dual monitors on my nVidia setup for awhile, but don't really see any happy people with more monitors than that.

Not sure if alpha quality is good enough.

Looking around, the price difference between a new 2x card and a new 4x card is such that I'd be more inclined to try and bind two 2x cards together.

Or as an alternative, the price difference would support buying a pair of 30" 2560x1600 monitors. Or more. I think my current card can handle that.

dch24 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Posts: 99

One data point: I've been happily using:

One Sapphire Radeon 7970 (can only drive up to 3 monitors)
One DVI monitor
One HDMI monitor
One DP-to-mini-DP adapter, then mini-DP to VGA adapter (which I occasionally borrow for my macbook pro when doing presentations), connected to a third monitor
The motherboard also has DVI, VGA, and HDMI, so I can talk about more monitors but using the on-board ports is probably not what you want

The fglrx driver handles all of the ways xorg.conf can configure it, just fine. I've tested xinerama, multi-screen, multi-monitor in several orientations, different resolutions and refresh rates, etc.

The one thing fglrx fails to do is dynamically alter the position/resolution of a monitor without exiting X11. Maybe I'm just too lazy to figure it out.

What video card are you planning to use? Most cards can't even drive 4 monitors.

Mad Merlin · Veteran Joined: 09 May 2005 Posts: 1155

I'm driving 3 monitors at 1600x1200 each with a GTX 670. It works perfectly. The card can support a 4th monitor, but I prefer 3.

If you go the single card route, make sure you get a Kepler based Geforce. The low end Geforces (ie, 610 GT, etc) are pretty much a mystery meat category and definitely are not Kepler based (and will not drive 4 displays).
_________________
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!