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Date:      Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:39:28 -0500
From:      Josh Paetzel <josh@tcbug.org>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        dgmm <freebsd01@dgmm.net>
Subject:   Re: Dual head video cards
Message-ID:  <200707170739.31952.josh@tcbug.org>
In-Reply-To: <200707171222.51982.freebsd01@dgmm.net>
References:  <200707171222.51982.freebsd01@dgmm.net>

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On Tuesday 17 July 2007, dgmm wrote:
> Are there any "gotchas" I should look out for when purchasing a
> dual head video card?
>
> I'm currently looking for a cheap NVidia card with both analogue
> and digital output to use my old 21" CRT and the new 19" LCD but,
> as usual, there's very little info other than for Windows in the
> write ups/reviews.
>
> I've never used dual head before so I'm concerned that some cards
> might share resources to the extent that they are windows only .=20
> Maybe I'm seeing potential problems that aren't there?
>
> Budget is tight so I don't want to screw up the purchase.  "Cheap"
> is word I'm looking for :-)

You'll need to use the binary nvidia drivers, the open source nv=20
driver doesn't support dual-head at all.  So you run in to a couple=20
of gotchas there.  The first being that the nvidia drivers are i386=20
only, they aren't available for AMD64, and the second is that=20
twinview has a sort of odd behavior when you use different=20
resolutions on each monitor.  It's hard to describe but the driver=20
basically pretends that the resolutions are the same and then only=20
draws what can be displayed of the smaller one, so there's desktop=20
outside of the monitor that you can drag windows in to but obviously=20
can't see.

With regards to cards I've used the recent nvidia drivers and=20
dual-head with everything from an fx5500 PCI card to 6200LE to 6600GT=20
to 7200 cards.  I've used the legacy drivers with various 4x00ti=20
cards.

Here are links to cards I've personally used with dual head in the sub=20
$50 range USD.

pci-e
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=3DN82E16814121080

agp
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=3DN82E16814127290

=2D-=20
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel

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