[ale] budget dual-head advice?

[Rich Faulkner]

If faced with a choice of PCI-X or AGP I would take AGP any day.  Now
the trick is to find one.  Not much on shelves these days.  Pretty
legacy.  

I have a pair if XFX 6800 GS x16 PCIe GPUs that were a major pain in
9.10.  Never got them working the way I wanted them to and wound-up
going to Fedora.  I have since retired that system and gone with a
single GPU Nvidia solution that worked GREAT OOB w/Maverick.  I couldn't
be happier and it was a no-brainer for install/config and in the $40-ish
range from Fry's.

Keep in mind that legacy ATi has less and less support from AMD.  Legacy
Nvidia has (IMHO) been a pain - but will defer to others w/more
experience here.  As cheap as h/w is today I'd look towards going
barebones and build a new system or buy a PCIe based box on the cheap.  

Happy Hunting!   Rich in Lilburn




On Wed, 2011-08-31 at 11:19 -0400, Björn Gustafsson wrote:
> Thanks all!
> 
> I'd prefer PCI-X but have the option of AGP if it makes sense
> budget-wise.  Sounds like nVidia isn't so bad after all, so I will
> probably end up going that way.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 11:09 AM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>         My experience is with cheap nvidia cards.  Basically, if they
>         have 2
>         outputs then you don't need to worry.  All of them will have
>         256MB of
>         RAM which is more than enough. $40 will get you a card with
>         1GB easy.
>         
>         Setting up dual monitors on nvidia is pretty easy. The first
>         google
>         search result (Ubuntu Dual Monitor with nVidia Driver) for
>         this issue is
>         my blog.  Unfortunately, I'm working a software issue today,
>         so the page
>         is down, but here's the google cached version:
>         
>         http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qVCw0DH9eAJ:blog.jdpfu.com/2010/05/12/ubuntu-10-04-dual-monitor-with-nvidia-driver+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu&source=encrypted.google.com
>         
>         There aren't any Ubuntu-specific commands used except for the
>         package
>         manager command to load the proprietary nvidia drivers. I
>         can't imagine
>         why the other steps wouldn't work for other distros.
>         
>         Are you sure that you need/want an AGP card and not PCI-x?
>         
>         On 08/31/2011 10:36 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>         > I just slapped CEntOS 6 on a box with some agp radeon card
>         having dvi
>         > and vga connectors. Dual display just worked. The only thing
>         I had to do
>         > was tell it which screen was on the left.
>         > Yes. Nvidia must be confugured using the nvidia display
>         manager tool
>         > shipping with the closed source driver.
>         > The neuvou [sic] driver was too unstable the last time I
>         tried it in
>         > 2009. It's should be much better now in current Ubuntu and
>         Fedora.
>         >
>         > On Aug 31, 2011 10:13 AM, "Björn Gustafsson"
>         <bg-ale at bjorng.net
>         
>         > <mailto:bg-ale at bjorng.net>> wrote:
>         >> My single-display system at home makes me sad when I have
>         to work from my
>         >> house, so I'm looking to create a dual-display setup on my
>         Ubuntu box.
>         >> Switching between virtual displays just isn't good enough
>         for me. I'm just
>         >> looking for more screen real estate, not gaming or other
>         high frame-rate
>         >> applications, so performance isn't a big issue as long as I
>         get the
>         > maximum
>         >> resolution for my buck.
>         >>
>         >> I've been pricing monitors that can handle 1920x1080, but
>         haven't done the
>         >> math yet to see how much video memory that requires.
>         >>
>         >> Pricewatch pointed me at two budget-minded dual-head DVI
>         cards, and I was
>         >> wondering if anyone had pointers on which might be
>         preferable. At work I
>         >> have an ATI Radeon dual-head setup on Ubuntu so I'm
>         confident that works.
>         >> I've been reading that nVidia-based dual display
>         configurations are
>         > more of
>         >> a hassle to set up, so that may drive me in the other
>         direction.
>         >>
>         >>
>         >
>         http://www.txmicro.com/1GB-DDR2-AGP-Dual-DVI-Video-Card-w-TV-Out-HDCP-p-5117.html
>         >>
>         >>
>         >
>         http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=01GP31526KR&vid=603&src=PW
>         >
>         <http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=01GP31526KR&vid=603&src=PW>
>         >>
>         >> Any advice would be appreciated.
>         >>
>         >> Thanks,
>         >> Björn
>         
> 
> -- 
> Björn Gustafsson
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