Zotac GeForce GTX 460 3dp in triple head setup

[frispete]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up a triple head system with the GTX 460 and 3 * 24" monitors.
ATM, I'm preparing the 270.41.06 drivers for it, but cannot roll them out for the
moment, since it would concern the whole company (openSUSE 11.1 diskless setup).

Hence it is using the 260.19.21 driver for the time being. One display is connected with the single DVI port, two displays are connected by DP to DVI adaptors. It should result in a 5760x1200 desktop. While the setup works with a manually adjusted xorg.conf (attached), a few issues remain:
* nvidia-settings detects the two DP displays as one (3840x1200)
Consequently switching to fullscreen on the 2nd or 3rd display extends the window to both displays (3840x1200), while it extends to the single display on the 1st screen.

* Trying to resize google earth 6.0.3 window results in a X crash
Backtrace:
0: /usr/bin/Xorg(xf86SigHandler+0x79) [0x80cbd99]
1: [0xffffe400]
2: /usr/lib/libnvidia-glcore.so.260.19.21 [0xb67b0da0]

This is from testing the setup for just a few minutes!

Question: is it possible to detect the three displays correctly or is the above the expected behavior?

TIA,
Pete

[MaDDeePee]

I can't say much about display ports but for me it looks like that you definitively want to go the Twinview way WITHOUT Xinerama.

I think it wont be possible to tell X that your large "displayport-screen" is on two monitors (window max - issue) but you can take a look at xrandr.

Theres a good guide about Twinview setup in each Nvidia release doc, or simply compare several xorg-conf in this forum

Basically, Nvidia cards can handle only two display outputs at once, no matter how much outputs the card have...and Twinview together with Xinerama is also no good way imho...

Good luck

[JaXXoN]

You could try to disable Xinerama and add the following lines in the screen sections:

    Option         "TwinView"                 "True"
    Option         "TwinViewOrientation"      "RightOf"
    Option         "TwinviewXineramaInfo"     "True"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOverride" "1920x1200+0+0, 1920x1200+1920+0, 1920x1200+3840+0"
    Option         "DynamicTwinView"          "False"
    Option         "MetaModes"                "1920x1200,3840x1200"
    Option         "SecondMonitorHorizSync"   "31-75"
    Option         "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "56-60"

Maybe this doesn't work OOTB, but should give you a rough idea
which options to touch.

BTW.: seems like nvidia now supports display port daisy chaining, because
otherwise it would make me wonder how you could successfully use three
displays with a single GPU without deploying a TH2G. Could somebody
please enlighten me? :-)

regards

Bernhard

[frispete]

Originally Posted by JaXXoN

You could try to disable Xinerama and add the following lines in the screen sections:[...]
Maybe this doesn't work OOTB, but should give you a rough idea
which options to touch.

Magnificant, Bernhard, combined with the driver update, it does exactly what I wanted to archive.

Thank you very much.

Originally Posted by JaXXoN

BTW.: seems like nvidia now supports display port daisy chaining, because
otherwise it would make me wonder how you could successfully use three
displays with a single GPU without deploying a TH2G. Could somebody
please enlighten me? :-)

Me, too, please.

It looks like I'm lucky, since all I need is changing the graphic card and add a monitor to the dual head setups.. The systems in question have µATX boards, hence a single PCI-E 16 slot only..

For what it worth, the named graphics card is able to drive 3 monitors the way I wanted, and Google Earth doesn't crash anymore. According to KDE (3!) flux screeen saver, all screens are 3D accelerated, and the unlock dialog isn't drawn between the 2nd and 3rd screen ;-).

Cool stuff,
Pete

[JaXXoN]

Originally Posted by frispete

combined with the driver update, it does exactly what I wanted to archive.

Success reports are always nice to read :-)

BTW.: while examine your Xorg.0.log for trying to understand why you can run more
than two LCDs off one GPU (highly uncommon for nvidia based products), I figured
out that it seems that your card has a video splitter (similar to the TH2G) on board
and you could probably even add another 1920x1200 LCD:

http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page...emart&Itemid=1

That's the reason why the "asymmetric" TH2G xorg configuration (that served
for me for a couple of years) works with your card as well (for details, please
check http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=106517)

Anyway, good to know that the Zotac GTX460 3DP can server as an reasonably
priced basis for a triple head setup without the need for an additional TH2G (which
is more expensive than the whole graphics card).

Can you please post your final xorg.conf as a reference? Or even better, can you
please post a mini-article on your experiences and setup details? TIA!

regards

Bernhard