dual monitor support with nvidia card?

Thu Mar 16 02:53:10 UTC 2006

I have attached my xorg.conf file. It is a bit of a mess because I have 
a lot of hacks and time put into it. The important part for the average 
person is the device section for card0 with the special settings for 
enabling the second monitor. I have dual SUN workstation monitors that 
only support a single resolution/frequency so your monitor values will 
be different. I also have all forms of acceleration disabled, glx, 
hwcursor, renderaccel. The nvagp option is also uneeded for just about 
everyone (I have a dual athlon board with known agp bugs). So let me 
distill this out for you:

Section "Module"
    #Load    "GLcore"      # must be disabled
    #Load    "dri"              # must be disabled
    Load    "glx"
    ...
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "nvidia"                                                
               # must be "nvidia" NOT "nv"
    VendorName  "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName   "geForce 5200 Ultra"                                  # 
your info here
    BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"                                             
            # Fill in your device id here, use lspci
    Option     "TwinView"
    Option     "MetaModes"  "1280x1024,1280x1024"          # fill in 
your resolutions here
    Option     "TwinViewOrientation"      "LeftOf"
    Option     "SecondMonitorHorizSync"   "61.8-81.1"         # fill in 
your monitor capabilities
    Option     "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "66-76"              # fill in 
your monitor capabilities
    #Option     "SecondMonitorHorizSync"   "UseEdidFreqs"         # turn 
this on and it might just detect the second monitors abilities
    #Option     "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "UseEdidFreqs"        # turn 
this on and it might just detect the second monitors abilities

    # All these options arent that important, you might hack with them 
later though:
    #Option     "RenderAccel"
    #Option     "HWcursor"
    #Option     "CursorShadow"
    #Option     "CursorShadowAlpha" "32"
    #Option     "CursorShadowXOffset" "3"
    #Option     "CursorShadowYOffset" "3"
    # if you want Composite and GLX (they don't cooperate):
    #Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier    "Default Layout"
    Screen         0 "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"                     # an old 19" monitor, good 
starting point though
    Identifier    "GemStar"
    HorizSync    30-100
    VertRefresh    50-85
    Option        "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
#    Option    "Xinerama"    "true"      # nvidia driver provides the 
xinerama feature
EndSection

Section "DRI"
#    Mode    0666                                 # you do not use dri 
with nvidia binary driver
EndSection

Obviously there is more to the file, but these are the important pieces. 
You must of course have the nvidia drivers installed, the ubuntu guide 
has instructions on how to get that done.

Good luck,
Matt

Matt Patterson wrote:

> Forget the matrox card, they are old and out of date. I run dual 
> monitors off of my nvidia card. You basically need to look for 
> "dualhead" or "twinview" cards. You  can discern the difference 
> generally because they are larger cards with the second monitor port 
> mounted to pcb and not connected with a wire.
>  
> Your concern about the multiple output formats is well founded, there 
> are 4 types: Analog VGA, DVI-I, DVI-A (analog signals available), 
> DVI-Duallink. If you are running analog monitors then you want a card 
> with 2 analog, 1 analog + 1 DVI-A, or 2 DVI-A connectors. The DVI-A 
> connectors can be converted to a standard vga connector with a simple 
> adapter. My card came with an adapter for its DVI-A port. If you are 
> running LCD's with DVI-D connections I would get a card with dual 
> DVI-A or DVI-I connections. Alwasy use the digital DVI connection when 
> available, the image will be better.
>  
> As for your xorg configuration, I am not at home, but I would be glad 
> to email you a working xorg.conf if you need it. You must use the 
> nvidia binary drivers (closed source) to use dual head nvidia support. 
> You do get opengl spanning monitors though.
>  
> Hope that helps,
> Matt
>  
>
>  
> On 3/15/06, *Dave M G* <martin at autotelic.com 
> <mailto:martin at autotelic.com>> wrote:
>
>     Ubuntu Users,
>
>     I am looking at getting a computer with two monitors, and a graphics
>     card that can support them. The only cards I have found on the net
>     that
>     both support two monitors and have linux drivers provided by the
>     manufacturer is Matrox.
>
>     But the specs of the Matrox card are not as good as the nVidia cards
>     (?). The nVidia cards seem to have multiple outputs, but not of
>     the same
>     type. I'm not clear on the names of the different types of output
>     connector for video, but there seem to be two on the nVidia cards.
>
>     Searching on the web has led to unclear results. Some places seem to
>     indicate dual monitor support is possible with the nVidia cards,
>     but I'm
>     not entirely sure if that's true, and if so, which models.
>
>     Is it better to go with two cards? Is Matrox reliable with Linux? Has
>     anyone here achieved dual monitor support with nVidia?
>
>     Any advice would be much appreciated.
>
>     Thank you.
>
>     --
>     Dave M G
>
>     --
>     ubuntu-users mailing list
>     ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>     https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060315/b8e2dfcc/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: xorg.conf
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060315/b8e2dfcc/attachment.ksh>