[ubuntu-uk] Graphics Card/Dual Monitor

[Roger Lancefield]

James Hooker wrote:
> Hi Everyone -
>
> I was wondering if anyone had any successful experiences with dual
> monitors on Ubuntu, and maybe recommend a good graphics card that is
> well supported and up to the task?

For dual setups running with resolutions of up to 1680x1050, at least,
I can heartily recommend the now venerable GeForce 7600 (mine's a
"GS"). It's been rock solid from Feisty through Hardy for me. I'm
afraid though, I've no idea whether or not it will support resolutions
higher than that.

You probably know this, but upsides to the Nvidia cards include the
fact that the decently featured "nvidia settings" tool is in Synaptic
and is a breeze to install and use, and my 7600 runs fanless, relying
on a large(-ish) heat sink, and so contributes nothing to the system's
decibel output and fractionally less to its power draw, things that
are always nice.

Back when I was using Dapper, I had an 1680x1050 TFT and an old 22"
Mitsubishi CRT (at 1280x960) hanging off an ATI X1800. It was a pig to
set up and quite honestly took me the better part of two days to get
xorg.conf configured properly (although I was new to Linux then, and
no doubt my clueless ignorance played a role ;-)).

The X1800 and 7600 were contemporaneous products aimed at the same
market segment. Of the two, the ATI has a noticeably brighter and
sharper image on all the monitors I've connected it to, but in terms
of ease of setup and general support on Linux, the nvidia trounces the
former. That said, I see that ATI has been beefing-up its Linux driver
offering recently and so their cards might be a better proposition on
Ubuntu these days?