# Video card choice



## nekoexmachina (Jan 21, 2011)

Hello forum!
I want to find an PCI-ex videocard, preferably radeon (or anything with xv/basic GL [the thing i want is dosbox games  and nexuiz] supported by mesa), working under BSD of course, with 3 or more monitor outputs. Two cards are not a good solution, may be some monitor-multiplexer or something could do the thing, if it even exists in the universe, but then I'd wanted to know does Xorg support division of big virtual screen into smaller ones two make, like, one WM workspace = one physical screen.
Any suggetions?
On local market Ive found some high-end Radeons, starting with HD4*. Does this HW work under BSD?


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## adamk (Jan 21, 2011)

HD4xxx cards support 2D and 3D acceleration on FreeBSD.  They only support 2 monitors, however.  HD5xxx cards only support 2D modesetting on FreeBSD.  Some support three or more monitors (though I have no idea if that really works on Xorg).  So those two options are out.

Matrox has a splitter: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/

Unless your window manager lets you specify outputs (compiz does, but I'm not familiar with any other window manager doing that), then the window manager will see X as one large screen across the three monitors.  Windows will maximize across all three, your taskbar will stretch across all three, etc.  I also have no idea if there are any tools to configure such a device for Xorg (ie, force each monitor to run at a certain resolution).

Adam


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## SirDice (Jan 21, 2011)

nekoexmachina said:
			
		

> Two cards are not a good solution, may be some monitor-multiplexer or something could do the thing, if it even exists in the universe,


Have a look at Matrox' dualhead2go and/or triplehead2go.

The dualhead will 'split' a 3200x1200 desktop across two 1600x1200 monitors. A triplehead does the same for 3 monitors and one input. The benefit of these things is that the OS thinks there's only one (very wide) monitor.


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## nekoexmachina (Jan 21, 2011)

> The benefit of these things is that the OS thinks there's only one (very wide) monitor.


Its not a benefit for me: I want them separated.


> Unless your window manager lets you specify outputs


Right now Im KDE3 user, but Im on the way to migrate back to ratpoison or xmonad or ion3. As of google xmonad can do the thing.


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## adamk (Jan 21, 2011)

Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to find any solution that fits all your requirements.

Adam


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## SirDice (Jan 21, 2011)

nekoexmachina said:
			
		

> Its not a benefit for me: I want them separated.



Then you'll need seperate outputs, i.e. cards with more then one monitor connector. 

There are cards that have more then 2 monitor connections but they're quite rare and, more importantly, quite expensive.


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## adamk (Jan 21, 2011)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Then you'll need seperate outputs, i.e. cards with more then one monitor connector.
> 
> There are cards that have more then 2 monitor connections but they're quite rare and, more importantly, quite expensive.



Yeah, and none of those cards fit his requirement of having Xv and basic OpenGL via mesa.  At least not on FreeBSD.

Adam


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