The reason for this question is I am curious as to how well linux supports ati or ati supports linux. I know that nvidia has great driver support but ati I cannot find drivers easily. However I noticed that I can play most games with drivers that linux provides. So over all I would liek input on users experiance with ati and nvidia cards etc thanx all

Well, I have found nVidia cards really really easy to setup under linux, and I get a decent frame rate, where as the ati cards (have tried to setup a radeon 7500) can be hell

I have a nvidia g4 4600 and it runs great. In support of anyone that supports linux I was going to be buying ati cards as they work with open source peeps to make drivers. I have changed my mind due to the fact that it seems to be very hard to find drivers for the cards that do not work properly. Thats just me though.

ATI has just now started binary drivers... XFree drivers for other cards just don't come close to the offerings of ATI and Nvidia, but right now everyone producing pseudo-open graphics toys for linux are doing it with Nvidia in mind and ATI's drivers are still a little beta. UT 2003 for instance won't run at all on any card except a Nvidia card...

Of course if you're not in it for gaming and you just want a lot of monitors, Matrox!!! (cheap plug)

Cheers,

Finegan

Just curious why do people use multiple monitors? Is it for more work space?

Oh... my... yes...

Got an extra monitor? Extra Video card? Throw it together, rebuild the XF86Config, never go back. Heck, I'm bringing another monitor into work just so I can have 2 there, and I would go for three if I could get a voodoo3 a rage128 and a trident cyber 9678 to all play nice at once...

Terminals on the left, browser in the right, friggin awesome for development.

Cheers,

Finegan

is there a tutorial explaind how to set xfree to work with multiple monitors and cards

http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Xinerama-HOWTO.html

there's more around...do a search.

i think it's mentioned somewher in the doc...if you have a crappy vid card, good luck - xinemera requires both (or more) to use the same color depth (but you can use different resolutions).

http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Xinerama-HOWTO.html

looks like a good one.

Really... plug in the second card, add on the second monitor, then run:

X -configure

And just use what it creates adding in an option line for Xinerama and adjusting for your info here and there using your original 1-head file as a guide.

Cheers,

Finegan

When using dual monitors do you get good game play? Not just in small games but in games like unreal and quake 3, and many of the other real videoocard intensive games. This seems pretty bad ass that I could play some eq on one screen, and bust the maps out on the other. How would you move the cursor from one monitor to the next?

Its more or less useless for gameplay... 2 reasons.

In XFree86, the mode that allows window spanning between the monitors is called xinerama, which does not currently handle DRI support. There are some hacks for 3.3.x, xinerama, and dri, but its a hastle to get all of that working together. With DRI disabled there is no hardware acceleration and so fps hits the tubes... useless.

Also, unless you've got 3 monitors, all the important action is right on the cleft between the two, 1st person shooters are all center shot. There are some windowing proggies for multi-head that optimize gameplay, matrox makes one I've read about... but really it doesn't sound worth it. You can also run 2 X servers at once, 2 cards, or even 1 card, which is nifty, a fullscreen shooter in one window and other stuff in the other... the mouse can cross the monitors, this is nifty for games, and is actually why I built a whole extra XF86Config file on one machine.

I don't know how windows handles it... but from what I've seen you've only got the option of mirrored or spanned, you can't have 2 effective windows displays so if you run EQ in one screen it'll be bordered, and of course the mouse can leave, but it gives you that locked in feel you know... I think it may also drive directX berserk if you don't fullscreen a game all the time, diablo II windowed down made my machine go a little nutty when I was still on the Doze.

Dude, also, gotta lay of the EverCrack, that's bad for you.

Cheers,

Finegan

So am I to understand that if a system uses 2 monitors, DRI cannot be enabled on either one? Or did I misunderstand and it can be enabled on one, but not the other?

This thread made me curious...my dad's company gives away old 15 inch monitors now and again, and I'd LOVE to do the dual monitor thing for development...

But I'd hate to have to give up UT and such.

DRI and Xinerama can't play together. Xinerama is the toy for screen spanning. Offhand, 2-headed Nvidia cards use their own spanning protocol extension that can do DRI, but that's a leftfield exception.

You can start 2 X-servers on 2 different screens (or as many as you have PCI slaots and monitors really), where DRI is enabled on a per card basis. The pointer can pass the boundary, but windows can't be dragged between them.

You can do both, I have a pair of XF86Config files, one for gaming, one for everything else...

Cheers,

Finegan

Had a GeForce TI500 during 10 months, compiled a few times the drivers for the regular updated kernels. Worked fine.

Bought a Hercules Radeon 9700PRO lately and downloaded the RPM from ATI website :
Quake3 Arena 1024x768 all options ON (read : High quality) --> 368 FPS ... we can say it works well better than it should
UT somehow shaggy but still playable.

Go for ATI solution then, RPM is so cool to install.
... just my 2 cents.