8 screens on Linux?

[hm2304]

Hi all,

I want to have a Linux box with 8 monitors at the same time. Can I use the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 280 PCI express? Has anyone tested such a setup, or is it likely to fail with 4 of those cards?

Applications are just 2D, for something like a monitoring application.

Thanks,

Holger

[mooninite]

It is probably better to setup 4 boxes and use the Xdmx server (I think that's it) for a 8 screen setup. Two screens per box = 8 screens. I mention this because I'm not positive that the nVidia driver supports more than one card in a box. I know the fglrx driver does not.

[zander]

@hm2304: the Quadro NVS 280 PCI-E is supported by the 1.0-8762 NVIDIA Linux graphics driver release; barring any SBIOS related problems, you should be able to build an 8-screen system with these GPUs.

@mooninite: the NVIDIA UNIX graphics drivers currently support up to 8 GPUs in a single system.

[jkw]

We have a working system with 8 monitors built around an ASUS
A8N-SLI motherboard and two PNY Quadro NVS 440 PCIe x16 cards.
It's quite late and I'm worn out, but I will post more details about
the configuration and the hoops we had to jump through tomorrow
if you are interested. Let me know.

best,
Jim

[M3PH]

Originally Posted by mooninite

It is probably better to setup 4 boxes and use the Xdmx server (I think that's it) for a 8 screen setup. Two screens per box = 8 screens. I mention this because I'm not positive that the nVidia driver supports more than one card in a box. I know the fglrx driver does not.

so if the driver only supports one card per box i guess sli is a waste of time then? (that may sound sarcsatic but it's not meant to) i'm still abit noobie with the whole 3d graphics and linux thing

[pe1chl]

Originally Posted by M3PH

so if the driver only supports one card per box i guess sli is a waste of time then?

But the driver supports 8 cards per box. What is your problem?

[netllama]

The nvidia X driver, supported up to 8 GPUs in a single system, in any combination of videocards.

Thanks,
Lonni

[jkw]

Originally Posted by M3PH

so if the driver only supports one card per box i guess sli is a waste of time then? (that may sound sarcsatic but it's not meant to) i'm still abit noobie with the whole 3d graphics and linux thing

SLI sort of goes in the opposite direction, though. SLI is about taking
multiple cards and using them to drive a single display faster. The main thing
is that most SLI boards now provide 2 x16 slots, which can usually be used in
non-SLI mode to provide two 8-lane PCI Express slots for driving a pair of
cards to drive 2 or 4 or even, in our case, 8 displays.

[barts1.]

Is there more information on the problems you encountered? I want to do exactly the same thing except x1 NVS 440 and using a quad dual core xeon box

[brettquinton]

I've managed to get 12 screens via 3 quad head nvidia quadro nvs cards in one box, but on Fedora Core 4 only. Have tried FC5 and FC6, but haven't had much luck with the nvidia drivers on those systems.