# Video card not detected



## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2015)

My wife's computer quit yesterday and she has the same nVidia graphics card I have in my FreeBSD workstation, a GeForce 9600 GT. I'm running two monitors with the one card now but I'm also inheriting her monitor so I can now run three monitors.

So  I plug her graphics card into my computer and FreeBSD version 10.2p7 does not seem to detect it.

`pciconf -vl` shows the one card but not the second.


```
vgapci0@pci0:1:0:0:    class=0x030000 card=0xc8673842 chip=0x062210de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
    device     = 'G94 [GeForce 9600 GT]'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA
```
`dmesg|grep nvidia`

```
nvidia0: <GeForce 9600 GT> on vgapci0
vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
```

Here is the output of `xrandr`. I don't remember if DVI-I-0 and 1 were shown as disconnected before but is that a clue?


```
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-2 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95
   1600x1200     60.00
   1440x900      59.89
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02
   1280x960      60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94
DVI-I-3 connected 1920x1080+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95
   1600x1200     60.00
   1440x900      59.89
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02
   1280x960      60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94
```

I built this workstation a year and a half ago and haven't touched anything on it since so I don't know where to go from here. I tried running `nvidia-settings` but I get errors with that. There's a PR out for it but I don't know if that's the issue considering it looks like the boards aren't even being detected. I removed  /etc/X11/xorg.conf which had no effect on the two monitors I am using.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2015)

My first problem is that I don't think my second graphics card is being detected and I haven't had a chance to look into how to fix that yet but, protocelt sent me this link where the guy is trying to do the same as I on Linux. Not only did he have issues with which drivers to use, several didn't work, but he found he needed the SLI hardware bridge, something I'd have to try and find. A better discussion of his issue is here.

I wouldn't mind learning how to get the second card detected but, due to the additional work involved, I'm going to set this aside for more pressing issues.


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## wblock@ (Nov 14, 2015)

SLI would let the graphics cards act as a single unit (I think).  Technically, that should not be necessary.  If I can find a power supply, I've got a system that needs to be set up where I can test that.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 14, 2015)

wblock@ One of the guys in that link said he needed it. Another guy never mentioned it. When I was fiddling with nvidia-settings or nvidia-xconfig, I sometimes saw it detected two devices but xrandr never showed two devices; nor did some other tests and sometimes even nvidia would lose it. Perhaps I got caught between restarting X, I don't know. I just wish I could reliably tell that both cards were detected in the first place. Thanks.

EDIT: I forgot I had this link: *NVIDIA Accelerated FreeBSD Graphics Driver README and Installation Guide*


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## protocelt (Nov 14, 2015)

Nvidia SLI isn't needed to use 2 Nvidia GPUs. You can use the Xinerama X extension instead for a similar effect but I do remember finding that it wasn't very stable at the time. I think this was with FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE or 9.1-RELEASE.

Using an SLI bridge like in the link I posted uses Nvidia's twinview extension which I believe is really just their own implementation of the Xinerama X extension. I found at the time I used a similar setup that it worked well. I don't remember having any problems with the driver version at the time, though I may have just been lucky.

I think I still have some notes on my configuration here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig them up some time tomorrow and post more information. At the very least, if I can't find the notes, I do also have 2 identical Nvidia cards(multiple sets actually as I enjoy games) and 3 monitors I can setup, configure, and test with a FreeBSD installation.


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