I recently inherited a third monitor at work, and am trying to set it up. I have a GeForce 8400 GS graphics card which I have my other two monitors plugged into, and working at 1920x1200 each. The third has a max of 1680 x 1050, my intention is to plug it into the VGA port on my motherboard (a Foxconn G41MX-F 2.0) and use that so I don’t have to requisition new hardware. I am using OpenSuse 11.4 32-bit, and the Nvidia drivers at version 275.21. My monitor is not being auto-detected at all - the BIOS is set at PEG/IGP, and there is memory allocated to the Intel device. However, the monitor is not being auto-detected, and I am not seeing the IGP under Displays in Hardware Information. Is OpenSUSE simply not seeing the IGP, or is the motherboard shutting it off? Is there anything I can safely enter into xorg.conf to test? I am not dual-booting, so there is no other OS to test the hardware with.
My monitor is not being auto-detected at all - the BIOS is set at PEG/IGP, and there is memory allocated to the Intel device. However, the monitor is not being auto-detected, and I am not seeing the IGP under Displays in Hardware Information. Is OpenSUSE simply not seeing the IGP, or is the motherboard shutting it off?
The BIOS/mainboard is configured to switch off the integrated graphics when a discrete graphics card is detected. Usualy, you cannot normally have both active simultaneously.You can check this with what is reported by
/sbin/lspci -nnk
Look for the graphics card entries.
However, it may be possible to install two discrete graphics cards, and use them simultaneously
Thanks, it only reported one VGA compatible controller. Guess I’ll need to get a PCI graphics card that will work . . .
Just be aware that the third display (connected to the second graphics card) will need to be configured manually, using a second X-session. You can’t have three display devices configured within the same desktop environment, (for Gnome and KDE at least). However, I’ve read of reported success with triple monitor configurations using LXDE. Research this online first.
For example, here’s a user who managed to get a triple monitor setup working with LXDE using the proprietary nvidia driver
Gentoo Forums :: View topic - [SOLVED] Make Xorg span 3 monitors on 2 VGA cards
Another:
There is an old post here of a user who managed to get 4 monitors working with openSUSE-11.2.
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/applications/437085-randr-xinerama-how-make-work-ose-11-2-a.html#post2289781
… this sort of configuring is beyond my experience.