linux on Radeon HD 4850 X2

[IcoNyx]

This is my first little dip back into the Ati world after being BADLY burned back in 99... we don't talk about that though...

It has come to me attention that Nvidia simply can't fulfill my desire to have quad display support WITH desktop effects (compiz). I know this sounds trivial but hey, it's my computer, and I want quad displays with compiz! :P

Anyway... my questions are simple; how hard is it to set up the Radeon HD 4850 X2 in linux (particularly OpenSuSE) using all 4 displays, and second, are compiz and opengl supported?

[yanadu]

Hi!
I am still trying to figure it out. Dualhead with 3D works fine, but I am currently having problems with more than 2 displays attached. See following thread: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814102809&Local=y&Pa ge=5
Here one user named 'Matt' seemed to got something working.

Anyway, discussion it on this thread, too:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...9519#post59519

Yours,
yanadu

[IcoNyx]

Hi!
I am still trying to figure it out. Dualhead with 3D works fine, but I am currently having problems with more than 2 displays attached. See following thread: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16814102809&Local=y&Pa ge=5
Here one user named 'Matt' seemed to got something working.

Anyway, discussion it on this thread, too:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...9519#post59519

Yours,
yanadu

Yeah... it's not doable the way we think... the problem is with X and xinerama... xinerama is not compatible with compiz... AT ALL. so basically the only way we can have 3D effects on more than 2 displays is if there is a card with more than two heads on one die (one GPU) the only cards I know of that do that are nvidia NVS garbage...

there is another alternative though... some one over at nvidia forums got a Matrox Tripple Head 2 Go to span three screens with 3D effects and GREAT 3d rendering... he even got Xplane and UT2004 working BEAUTIFULLY on tri-displays! And of course there is a config for up to SIX displays... though I think that may be somewhat hard on any video card it is configured for... though fun to experiment with!

As far as I can tell it should be EASY to configure for an ATI card but you will want a rather beefy SINGLE GPU controller though... and crossfire's out.

[yanadu]

Hi!
I don't know this compiz stuff all are talking about, I am just using a plain window manager called xmonad. Anyway, so how do I do my quad display? Just tried a normal Xinerama Setup, or are there special tricks in the link you provided? Whats about 3D/OpenGl etc, do I have to disable that in my xorg.conf? I don't really believe these things are gonna solve our problems for our spezific model, but I'll give it a shot.
yours,
yanadu

Yeah... it's not doable the way we think... the problem is with X and xinerama... xinerama is not compatible with compiz... AT ALL. so basically the only way we can have 3D effects on more than 2 displays is if there is a card with more than two heads on one die (one GPU) the only cards I know of that do that are nvidia NVS garbage...

there is another alternative though... some one over at nvidia forums got a Matrox Tripple Head 2 Go to span three screens with 3D effects and GREAT 3d rendering... he even got Xplane and UT2004 working BEAUTIFULLY on tri-displays! And of course there is a config for up to SIX displays... though I think that may be somewhat hard on any video card it is configured for... though fun to experiment with!

As far as I can tell it should be EASY to configure for an ATI card but you will want a rather beefy SINGLE GPU controller though... and crossfire's out.