[NCLUG] dualhead dvi video card w. open drivers ?

[Matt Taggart]

"Gabriel L. Somlo" writes...

> I'm looking for a card that would let me run dual-headed dvi at
> 1600x1200 each, with non-proprietary drivers.
> 
> Right now, I'm stuck with an nvidia card, and
> 
> 	1. the nv driver doesn't seem to allow it to run in
> dual-headed mode
> 	2. the proprietary nvidia driver is reported to crap out on
> FC2 (and I hate binary-only drivers for political reasons anyway :) )

Yeah nvidea sucks.

> So, I've been looking in the general direction of Matrox, and it looks
> like the P650 is also proprietary-only. The 550 won't do DVI (at least
> a bunch of folks I know tried and could only get it to work in analog
> mode).

The 550 can do DVI but only at 1280x1024(even though it can do analog at 
1600x1200). Something about the ramdac being fast enough.

> I also heard that the 550 only does 1280x1024 in dual-headed
> (analog) mode... Am I SOL, or is there another alternative ?

Well best case the DVI port would only be 1280x1024. You might be able to do a 
hetero resolution mix but it doesn't sound like what you want.

> Oh, and I don't care (much) about 3d accel -- all I want is screen
> real-estate (and freedom :) )...

Matrox are the best 2D cards out there, it's too bad that the newer models are 
proprietary only.

I recently switched to an ATI card(after using only Matrox for many years). I 
switched because I wanted DVI 1600x1200, which this card claims to be able to 
do. But so far I haven't been get the DVI to work as the primary head and am 
still using the analog. Development for the recent ATI cards is still in flux 
I guess, I expect I'll be able to use the full functionality of the card in a 
future release(maybe once Debian switches to X.org).

btw I bought a gigabyte branded radeon 9200 (vanilla, not that SE crap) that 
has one analog and one DVI. I think they make a similar card with two DVIs.

-- 
Matt Taggart
matt at lackof.org