connecting two external monitors at the same time -- one is very blurry

English Hardware
1

Hi all,

I’m using openSUSE 12.3 on a ASUS ux32-vd laptop. This laptop has two external monitor sockets and I’m connecting two identical Dell monitors from this sockets. One of them is HDMI and I don’t know the other one – it’s a more smaller socket. I can post a photo of sockets if you want.

Anyway, my problem is for some the monitor connected to HDMI port looks very, very blurry and it’s impossible to work with this. For testing purposes, I switched monitors so the monitor which was connected to HDMI now connected to other small socket, but the one which is connected to HDMI was again blurry. So my conclusion is that for some reason HDMI output of my computer gives blurry output.

I googled for this and there are lots of results for similar problems but none of the hardware or software matched with my case.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks.

2

What video card/chip(s)

3

I deliberately didn’t install nvidia drivers so currently using onboard intel one. (normally this machine has nvidia gt 620m)

not sure if useful but here’s my lspci output:

linux-axly:/home/omer # lspci00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core Processor Thermal Subsystem (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM76 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family Thermal Management Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1140 (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (rev 24)
4

Oh you have a hybrid graphics machine. Ouch they can be a problem.

Bumblebee is the normal solution to this kind of problem. You should find sever threads about it here.

5

Last time I tried installing bumblebee drivers didn’t end up very well (I had to reinstall whole system – thankfully my home folder was in a different partition). If I don’t get any other advice I’ll try installing bumblebee.

6

Anyway, my problem is for some the monitor connected to HDMI port looks very, very blurry and it’s impossible to work with this. For testing purposes, I switched monitors so the monitor which was connected to HDMI now connected to other small socket, but the one which is connected to HDMI was again blurry. So my conclusion is that for some reason HDMI output of my computer gives blurry output.

It’s likely that the HDMI-connected monitor is being set to the wrong display resolution. What does xrandr report?

xrandr

For a more detailed diagnosis, you could check out /var/log/Xorg.0.log

If you want to share that with us, please upload it to SUSE Paste and post the link that it generates here. (Make sure you set the ‘Delete After’ time to something sensible too).

7

HDMI connected monitor is set to it’s native resolution, same as the other identical monitor that is connected to other socket.

I’m currently away from monitors – I’ll paste Xorg and xrandr logs tomorrow when I have access to the monitors.

8

okay people, here are my xorg and xrands outputs: SUSE Paste

(also an off-topic question – is there a way to save my current xrandr settings and then load it with one command so that I can connect this two monitors to my laptop more quickly?)

9

I am encountering a similar issue here. I have dual external monitors (one HDMI, one VGA) connected to an Intel 4000 chipset in my laptop.

The VGA monitor is blurry, and it’s the one thing left that has been bugging me about my openSUSE setup. I have not encountered this issue at all in Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora.

Will be following this thread to hopefully find a resolution.

Woody