[Nottingham] multihead gfx cards?

James Beckett jmb at hackery.net
Fri Jul 16 14:39:57 BST 2004


I'm looking for a new graphics card to replace the ageing TNT2 in
my Linux development box at home; any recommendations?

 AGP
 Multiple output, Dual head at least, triple if not too pricy
   at at least 1280x1024x24 per screen.
 DVI-I output
 Not fussed on 3D/gaming performance, just need large 2D desktop
 Passive cooling (or adaptable to same)
 Don't care about TV-out.
 Prefer not needing proprietary driver modules, but not going
  to get religious about it.

Alternatively, is it recommended to use multiple cards (AGP+PCI
or NxPCI) for multihead?

I thought Matrox had long been the first choice for multihead,
so have mostly looked at their stuff so far..

I ordered a Matrox G550 Dual DVI this week (<£70) but on arrival
it turned out to have a nasty 60-pin connector on the bracket and
a splitter to two /VGA/ connectors. For dual DVI you actually need
a different splitter, cost near £50 - and not available anywhere.

It went back.

The next one up, the P650 at £99+v would be cheaper and has two real
DVI connectors on the bracket, still passive cooled (and upgrades
to 3head (DVI+2xVGA)) but I've read that it doesn't work well
with Linux. Maybe you know different.

cheers,
-- 
James Beckett <jmb at hackery.net>
<www.hackery.net/jmb/>




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