# Xorg can't configure video card



## semi-ambivalent (Oct 25, 2014)

Hi all,

I am trying to use a PNY NVS 300 video card in a 9.2-P14 box. The box has a single PCIe x1 socket for the card and it will drive a Viewsonic VG2230wm monitor (1600x1200 I think).

If I install the card and do nothing X comes up at what looks like 640x480. Everything works OK although it's hardly usable at that resolution. If I boot into console and do `Xorg -configure` and then run the resulting xorg.conf nothing happens but black and then it fails back to a corrupted console. Re-boot is the only fix. I'm using the nvidia driver, not nv and am currently running it with a "Cornerstone" brand PCI card which surprisingly runs it fine if a little slowly. Does anybody have any suggestions to get this working? Thanks for any tips.


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## Oko (Oct 25, 2014)

Get on eBay a $10 legacy ATi video card and forget about that.


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## RichardM (Oct 25, 2014)

I couldn't get the NVS300 to work reliably - it was related to this problem:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/...sd-9-1-failed-shmoo-sddr3-link-training-error

Did you get the "failed shmoo sddr3 link training" error?

However, if you want the NVS cards, maybe as they are passively cooled, I  found the 285, 290 etc worked fine, but didn't test in a x1 PCIe socket.


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## semi-ambivalent (Oct 26, 2014)

RichardM said:


> I couldn't get the NVS300 to work reliably - it was related to this problem:
> 
> https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/...sd-9-1-failed-shmoo-sddr3-link-training-error
> 
> ...



Thanks for the reply Richard! The card is for my machine at work; I'll fail it on Monday and see what the log says. The kernel has over 300 tunables so I'll dig around there a bit. Frustrating, since it _does_ run X, just not at the monitor's default resolution. I've found an old xorg.conf I'm going to mail to work and try that. Might just be an auto-configuration issue.


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## Juanitou (Oct 26, 2014)

Your mileage may vary, as my case is loosely related to yours, but who knows... I use an old AGP NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 XT which was also stuck at a suboptimal resolution and refused to work with `Xorg -configure`. After some tinkering, I added this to xorg.conf:

```
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Device0"
  Driver  "nvidia"
  VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
  Option  "ModeValidation" "NoDFPNativeResolutionCheck, NoWidthAlignmentCheck"
EndSection
```
These options allowed me to force upgrading the resolution with the MATE control panel to 1366x768.

Hope it helps!


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## MacGyver (Oct 30, 2014)

Since you can get 640x480, maybe use that and then try to adjust the config with x11/nvidia-settings or x11/nvidia-xconfig.

Granted, mine is a Quadro so it's not quite the same, but I have a PNY NVIDIA Quadro NVS 450 running with:

```
Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Device0"
  Driver  "nvidia"
  VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName  "Quadro NVS 450"
  BusID  "PCI:4:0:0"
  Screen  0
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Device1"
  Driver  "nvidia"
  VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName  "Quadro NVS 450"
  BusID  "PCI:3:0:0"
  Screen  0
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Device2"
  Driver  "nvidia"
  VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName  "Quadro NVS 450"
  BusID  "PCI:4:0:0"
  Screen  1
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier  "Device3"
  Driver  "nvidia"
  VendorName  "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName  "Quadro NVS 450"
  BusID  "PCI:3:0:0"
  Screen  1
EndSection
```


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