Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:15:03 +0100 From: dgmm <freebsd01@dgmm.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dual head video cards Message-ID: <200707182315.04389.freebsd01@dgmm.net> In-Reply-To: <200707170739.31952.josh@tcbug.org> References: <200707171222.51982.freebsd01@dgmm.net> <200707170739.31952.josh@tcbug.org>
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On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Josh Paetzel wrote: > On Tuesday 17 July 2007, dgmm wrote: > > Are there any "gotchas" I should look out for when purchasing a > > dual head video card? > > > > I'm currently looking for a cheap NVidia card with both analogue > > and digital output to use my old 21" CRT and the new 19" LCD but, > > as usual, there's very little info other than for Windows in the > > write ups/reviews. > > > > I've never used dual head before so I'm concerned that some cards > > might share resources to the extent that they are windows only . > > Maybe I'm seeing potential problems that aren't there? > > > > Budget is tight so I don't want to screw up the purchase. "Cheap" > > is word I'm looking for :-) > > You'll need to use the binary nvidia drivers, the open source nv > driver doesn't support dual-head at all. So you run in to a couple > of gotchas there. The first being that the nvidia drivers are i386 > only, they aren't available for AMD64, and the second is that > twinview has a sort of odd behavior when you use different > resolutions on each monitor. It's hard to describe but the driver > basically pretends that the resolutions are the same and then only > draws what can be displayed of the smaller one, so there's desktop > outside of the monitor that you can drag windows in to but obviously > can't see. > > With regards to cards I've used the recent nvidia drivers and > dual-head with everything from an fx5500 PCI card to 6200LE to 6600GT > to 7200 cards. I've used the legacy drivers with various 4x00ti > cards. > > Here are links to cards I've personally used with dual head in the sub > $50 range USD. > > pci-e > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121080 > > agp > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127290 Thanks both to you and to Yuri for the quick and useful replies. Not having looked at dual head before I was unaware that the open source driver didn't do it. I'm sure I'd have found out eventually but you guys have saved me some head scratching time ;-) Screen res will be 1280x1024 on both and I'm using an i386 system. I'll probably end up with either a 6200 or maybe a 7600 if the budget will stretch. Thanks again. -- Dave
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