Card Recommendation for Triple Head

FredJones · 10-21-2010, 09:55 AM

I have a GeForce 8400 GS card and I run two monitors. I use Xinerama (don't recall now why but I think XrandR didn't work for me) and nvidia. I would like three monitors now and I see here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=831783 (and other posts) that Xinerama can do this. My onboard video is disabled by the mobo if I use a video card (as per http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=3659700 ) so it seems I need a new video card.

Should I get another GeForce 8400 GS for $40 from Amazon?

I suppose the only other idea would be to get a 3-head card but those seem a lot more expensive.

Omnicronos · 10-21-2010, 10:24 AM

It should work fine, as long as you aren't using graphically intensive software. At my workplace, we were using one Matrox card for a triple-head workstation, but switched to two Nvidia video-cards (PCI-E/PCI) to cut costs.

FredJones · 10-21-2010, 10:37 AM

Great. Thanks. No I don't do any graphics stuff at all--I am a PHP programmer.

That page says that my machine has:

Code:

Expansion Slots
One PCI Express x16
One PCI Express x1
Two PCI

I also see I made a mistake about my card. I think the old one burnt up so I bought a new one. Anyhow lspci says:

Code:

04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 9300 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
	Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
	Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
	I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
	[virtual] Expansion ROM at febe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
	Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb

I imagine it doesn't matter what the new card is really. So would this work: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-512-P2-N7.../dp/B0011FKI3M It's a bit cheaper than http://www.amazon.com/Axle3D-GeForce...7675266&sr=8-1 I am not an Amazon fan really--that's just what Google finds for these cards.

Thank you for your help!

Omnicronos · 10-21-2010, 11:51 AM

You just need to make sure the card is listed as supported. Both of those are:

32bit:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...12-driver.html

64bit:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...12-driver.html

FredJones · 10-21-2010, 01:32 PM

Fantastic. Thank you very much.