Catalyst 9.6 + 3 monitors in SurroundView

[sharms]

I went out and bought an ATI 4870 (2 dvi outs). I tried to configure it with 3 monitors (using my motherboards integrated 3200) with no luck. I could get 3 screens at 1680x1050 if I disabled RandR support, however I could never get the middle monitor to go to 1920x1080 (it's native resolution). Anyone get around it, or know when ATI is releasing a new driver?

At this point I am pretty frustrated with ATI, so if anyone from AMD wants to do some goodwill before I return it to Microcenter and get an NVidia as I should have done in the first place, now is that time.

Currently running open source ATI driver on Jaunty 9.04 x86_64 right now, because whenever I reconfigure fglrx, I can't restart X without rebooting which is insanely annoying.

[bridgman]

What was the aticonfig command you used when setting up fglrx ? If you're doing multi-GPU you need a fairly involved aticonfig command; it's been posted here a few times but I don't remember it off the top of my head.

I vaguely remember someone mentioning an X server issue that didn't like having the middle monitor higher res than the left one but no idea when/where; might be worth trying having the big one on the left though.

Have you posted logs etc previously ?

Not sure what you mean by "whenever I reconfigure fglrx, I can't restart X without rebooting", can you give a bit more detail pls ?

[sharms]

What was the aticonfig command you used when setting up fglrx ? If you're doing multi-GPU you need a fairly involved aticonfig command; it's been posted here a few times but I don't remember it off the top of my head.

I vaguely remember someone mentioning an X server issue that didn't like having the middle monitor higher res than the left one but no idea when/where; might be worth trying having the big one on the left though.

Have you posted logs etc previously ?

Not sure what you mean by "whenever I reconfigure fglrx, I can't restart X without rebooting", can you give a bit more detail pls ?

Sorry if my tone sounds offensive, but I have been through literally 200 reboots trying to find that right combination of magic.

I haven't yet re-ordered the monitors yet, but I will give it a shot tonight.

Initially config was done using 'aticonfig --initial'. After that, I tried to exclusively use amdcccle. Once I determined that wouldn't work, I ran:

aticonfig --set-pcs-str="DDX,EnableRandR12,FALSE"

I then ran amdcccle again and had 3 monitors at 1680x1050, however the middle one would not go to 1920x1080. I edited the /etc/ati/amdpcsdb by hand, and put my requested mode in, but it still said it couldn't go to that mode.

What I mean about restarting the system is: everytime I change a setting, I go to logout, then run /etc/init.d/gdm stop and kill any X server running so I can make sure fglrx isn't storing any x config. I then verify as many settings as I can in /etc/ati/amdpcsdb, and my xorg.conf. I then try to startup gdm / X, at which point the system freezes. On reboot it works.

I am really hoping since surround view was only added a few releases ago that this is just a known bug, but the public unofficial bugtracker doesn't look like a good way to address it. I did fill out the AMD feedback form, but never got a response from it. If you know anyone who can help, that would be great.

[bridgman]

Sounds like it might be a setup issue, probably not a bug. You need to run an aticonfig command line like :

aticonfig --initial=dual-head -f --adapters=all

If you want to try running with Xinerama (I haven't tried it), then :

aticonfig --initial=dual-head -f --adapters=all --xinerama=on

FYI the feedback form is not a support line (ie you should not expect a response), it just lets us collect feedback which gets used for future planning.

I don't think directly editing the pcs file is recommended. Stopping X then using aticonfig is probably the safest way.

Disabling RandR1.2 is probably a good idea if you're trying to use Multiview, since RandR in its current form doesn't really handle multiple GPUs well today.

[sharms]

Thank you so much for your help. I now have all three monitors working. Only odd think is I have 3 mouse cursors, any idea how to make them 1?

For those interested, I disabled Randr, and my xorg.conf is:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
	Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" LeftOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" LeftOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1"
	Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[1]-1" LeftOf "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	    "Xinerama" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
	Modeline "1680x1050_60.00"  147.14  1680 1784 1968 2256  1050 1051 1054 1087  -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
	Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  172.80  1920 2040 2248 2576  1080 1081 1084 1118  -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
	Modeline "1680x1050_60.00"  147.14  1680 1784 1968 2256  1050 1051 1054 1087  -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
	Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]-1"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
	Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes	"1680x1050_60.00"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-1"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1"

	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes "1920x1080_60.00"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes	"1680x1050_60.00"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-1"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]-1"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

[bridgman]

I haven't heard of three cursors before. Do they all move together ?

[sharms]

I haven't heard of three cursors before. Do they all move together ?

There are 3 mouse cursors, but each one is only active when my mouse is on that screen. Ie if I move the mouse to the center screen, then to the right screen, the center screen's mouse pointer is on the right side of the center screen where it was last dragged before going to right screen.

Xinerama is enabled, XRandR is disabled, I would think Xinerama would take care of the mouse pointer. Haven't tried it in 9.7 yet, any idea if 9.7 might take care of that?

[mmarshall]

I have the 'one cursor per monitor' problem as well. It only shows up when using Xinerama, not with BigDesktop. First started when I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04. Guess I should file a bug report or something...

MWM

[jeaneus]

Been looking for something on aticonfig for 2+ displays. Thanks for the information... however I am still having issues with setting up three displays. I have two ati4850 and three 24in displays that I would like to get up and running on ubuntu 9.04. I tried your xorg.conf as well as running aticonfig --set-pcs-str="DDX,EnableRandR12,FALSE" on my system but I am only able to get two up and running, with the same mouse issues. Did you run into this problem? I thought it was the way my displays were connected but that did not help either. Let me know if you could provide some input. I did change the xorg.conf a bit just to reduce the res. size and screen position.

[bridgman]

Did you start with something like aticonfig --initial=dual-head --all -f ?