# Cards, chips, drivers



## sossego (Oct 9, 2009)

I'm asking this out of pure curiosity.
Is it possible to use both the integrated ati chip and the nvidia pci card at the same time?


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## vermaden (Oct 9, 2009)

If your BIOS show both after you plug the discrete card, yes, but you will be able to start x11 only at on top of one of them.

... or start two x11 servers, one of top of each card.


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## adamk (Oct 9, 2009)

Technically it should be possible to run X on top of both of them, either as separate screens or with xinerama.  In practice, this can be very difficult to achieve as not all drivers can properly initialize a video card that the BIOS hasn't touched and there have been numerous changes to how Xorg handles multiple cards lately.  All I can really suggest is giving it a try and seeing if it works for you.

Here's an example of someone doing it on Debian with an nvidia card and a 3dfx card:

http://forum.soft32.com/linux/xinerama-multiple-graphics-cards-ftopict488095.html

Adam


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## sossego (Oct 9, 2009)

I see three card options: pcie, pci, integrated. PCI was selected. I switched it to PCI-E.
I can only choose one option. Ok, then, how would the system enable both? The ati driver can be added to the Linux installment and the ati/radeon driver I had enabled prior to buying the graphics card.
I'm going to have to look back at the given post because I don't see how it's done.


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