I am using 11.3 on a Dell Latitude D830 (notebook screen + external screen):
ucl02564:~ # lspci -vv|grep -i nvidia
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G84M [Quadro NVS 140M] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
The nvidia driver I installed using yast (I know… girly) from the NVIDIA repo.
I didn’t add the nomodeset to the kernel parameters and it is working fine, although the nouveau driver is installed:
ucl02564:~ # rpm -qa|grep nouveau
xorg-x11-driver-video-nouveau-0.0.15_20100401_bfb95cc-1.10.x86_64
ucl02564:~ # rpm -qa|grep nvidia
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop-256.53_k2.6.34.0_12-15.1.x86_64
x11-video-nvidiaG02-256.53-16.1.x86_64
Cheers,
Robert