[GRLUG] Video card woes

[Roberto Villarreal]

What should have started out as a simple hardware swap has turned into a 
full day of hair-pulling.

My problem is that I want three monitors using xinerama.  I have five 
heads to choose from; I'm not partial.

This was working using the onboard ATI, one head from the nVidia, and an 
old Matrox card... but it was so wimpy, I couldn't run the monitor to 
it's full resolution, so I bought the new ATI.

The only way I've gotten this to work is with the onboard ATI and both 
heads on the nVidia... but it is SLOW.  Even just switching tabs in a 
browser pegs the CPU at 100% for a good three seconds.  I tried this 
setup without the ATI with the same results.  This is using the latest 
binary drivers for both with TwinView disabled on the nVidia.  If 
someone has insight into why the nVidia setup is so slow, I can use that 
setup.

Any combination of the onboard ATI with the PCI ATI screws up the 
system:  50% it hangs the system, 50% I can kill X via ssh but lose the 
ability to do anything from a terminal.  The onboard *can* use the stock 
(radeon) or binary (fglrx), but only the binary will run my monitor 
correctly.  The PCI can only use the stock.  The hangs are independent 
of whether just one or both heads are in use.

Some minimal info is below; I can provide any configs and/or logs if 
it'll be of any help.  TIA!

Roberto

(On that note, if anybody has an old PCI Matrox card (>4MB) they want to 
sell, holler...)




System:
Linux fubar 2.6.14 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Dec 20 01:03:40 EST 2005 i686 
GNU/Linux

xorg: 6.8.2

libc6: 2.3.5

gcc: 4.0.3

ATI binary installer: ati-driver-installer-8.20.8-i386.run

nVidia binary installer: NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run

Video cards:
0000:01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 
[Radeon Xpress 200G Series] (onboard)
0000:02:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 
RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] (dual-head PCI)
0000:02:02.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 
[GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev c1) (dual-head PCI)