Using two graphics cards and two monitors?

victorhelsing · 02-Aug-2009, 17:11

Is it possible to use two graphics cards each with its own monitor? I have spent considerable effort trying to make this work with a Intel 865 / Vizio 37 monitor as well as a ATI Rage XL / 19" VESA 1280 x 1024 without success.

I can use each monitor/card combination individually, by setting my machine to boot from that card, but cannot get Suse 11.1 to recognize both simultaneously (even though the "Hardware Information" from Yast recognizes both graphics cards). Incidentally, Windows XP recognizes and uses both cards and monitors simultaneously.

sax2 -r only recognizes the currently "booting" card, and not the other. I only see one graphics card on the Sax display.

Thanks for your help. Perhaps this is not possible with Suse. I even tried moving this hardware to a different machine (both pentiums) without success.

**BenderBendingRodriguez** · 02-Aug-2009, 18:14

It is possible but it would require tinkering with xorg.conf file i guess. Try to recognize with sax the first card and save the resulting xorg.conf then add the second card and save that xorg.conf file once again, after that look at them and adjust like Monitor[0] Monitor[1], you know what i mean.

victorhelsing · 02-Aug-2009, 18:41

I did try creating a working xorg.conf with each card/monitor combination, saving off the working versions and then copying the piece from the other into Monitor[1], Screen[1], etc. Unfortunately that did not work and left me with no X windows at all. Obviously I did something wrong.

(Incidentally, this may be a relatively common problem. I tried to do the same thing with Ubuntu and Linux Mint, also without success. Strangely, PCLinux 2009 worked perfectly although I did not want to switch to that flavor since it is not very popular and does not seem to be maintained as aggressively as Suse.)