ATI on-borad graphics & Nvidia PCI graphics together?
 

I have a Packard Bell Imedia desktop with on-board ATI graphics. I also have a spare Nvidia PCI card. Is there a way I could use the Nvidia to run a second screen, if so how as the Nvidia and fglrx drivers seem to collide in a show stopping way!!

I am running Kubuntu Intrepid, but have resorted to Gnome as KDE4 went spectacularly wrong on me!!

Please bear in mind I am a complete novice!!

Thanks.

Not what I would try...

Depending on what chip is in that Nvidia card, and which of the Nvidia drivers, if any support it, I would try to see if it could run two screens with Ubuntu. Otherwise, I would try with two screens on the ATI chip.

It is not that hard to install the driver directly from Nvidia for the best results, and try. There is a good README.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Remember to enter your BIOS Setup and disable the onboard chip first. These Nvidia chips are supported.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_18897.html

You might post back with more information after you have googled your linux distribution, your Nvidia card and the Nvidia driver to see if your card will indeed drive two screens.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question

I have done digging in the past to sort ati drivers so I could get compiz up and running, my chip should support two screens. Now, this next question does make me sound stupid and will likely make you laugh, but, well, where do I plug screen no. 2 in on my box?? the on board graphics only has one socket as does the spare nvidia card hence I wanted to try them in tandem.

Once you finish calling me whatever you're calling me and drawing comparisons with Carl Pilkington, can you steer me in the right direction.

How do they collide?

I have used on-board ATI with PCI Nvidia or the reverse on several different old computers. Sometimes it is tricky to get things to work, but IIRC, it was possible in each case.

The BIOS settings for which interface is primary may be tricky. You may need to experiment a little to see what those really do.

When doing such strange things with video interfaces, I never tried too hard to get any automatic creation of the final xorg.conf file to work. Maybe it could work, but even if so, finding out how to do that would be harder than making the final xorg.conf file manually.

As a first step, I usually used whatever automated process was appropriate to the situation (such as the Mepis liveCD and Mepis X windows assistant) to create an xorg.conf file for each of the video interfaces alone.

With a little knowledge of the rules of xorg.conf files, plus example content from the two individual xorg.conf files, it is pretty easy to create one xorg.conf file to handle both interfaces.

What kind of socket?

Many video interfaces have a single socket that can drive one display directly (or with a simple adapter) or drive two displays with the appropriate splitter.

If that splitter didn't come in the package when you bought the interface, it may take some investigation to find out which part you need and shipping on that part if you mail order may be more than it is worth.

Also, the chipset on the video interface might well support two displays, but the interface itself might not. It may be hard to figure out whether you really have support for two displays with one interface.

So if you don't have the part handy to connect two displays to one connector on the interface, I wouldn't bother trying to buy it. You have a spare interface and I think you can use it.

Collision:-

Power on machine, packard bell splash appears as usual on screen 1 (on board ATI) but screen two does not even wake, boot splash starts then display stops and the screens error message appears on screen 1.

Socket is a standard 'D' plug (21 pin I think?)