Member Avatar for Excizted

Hello people,

I would like to add an extra monitor to my productivity box.
But back then I chose a motherboard without built-in graphics, so I only got the two ports provided by my graphics card.

I hope you could advice me how I could upgrade my PC to support an extra monitor?

I actually have a GeForce 9800GTX+ apart from my GeForce GTX 285, but I have only got a single PCI Express 2.0 x16 port.

How would the drivers like two cards even if I could put both of them in my motherboard?

Thank you for your thoughts! :)

My relevant hardware looks as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 810
RAM: Corsair DDR2 800MHz (maybe just 667MHz)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 285
Alternate GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9800GTX+
PSU: Corsair 650Watts
HDD: 2x 7200RPM's

Edited by Excizted because: added hardware info
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Dani AI

Generated

Short answer: TwinView is an NVIDIA single‑GPU feature — it only joins outputs driven by the same physical GPU, so you cannot get a single TwinView desktop that spans the GTX 285 and the 9800GTX+ together. To get a single desktop across two cards you must use Xinerama (or NVIDIA Mosaic/BaseMosaic/SLI‑Mosaic when the driver and card combination supports it). (download.nvidia.com)

Practical options and tradeoffs (so ’s suggestion of adding a cheap extra card makes sense as a short‑term fix):

  • Separate X screens: simplest to set up, each GPU drives its own screen, but windows cannot be dragged between screens.
  • Xinerama: merges multiple X screens into one logical desktop so you can drag windows across GPUs, but it commonly disables compositing/direct rendering (so Compiz/desktop effects and some accelerated features stop working) and GLX/X acceleration across all screens works best with similar/identical GPUs. (compiz-fusion.org)
  • NVIDIA BaseMosaic / SLI Mosaic: can provide one unified X screen with acceleration across GPUs, but support and limits vary by driver and GPU model (and some recent drivers changed BaseMosaic support), so check the NVIDIA README for your driver/version. (http.download.nvidia.com)

Quick steps to try right away:

  1. Install the same NVIDIA driver version for both cards.
  2. Find PCI BusIDs (eg. lspci | grep -i nvidia) and put a Device+Screen section for each GPU in xorg.conf, then enable Xinerama in the ServerLayout. A minimal example:
Section "Device"
  Identifier "GPU0"
  Driver     "nvidia"
  BusID      "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier "GPU1"
  Driver     "nvidia"
  BusID      "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier "Layout0"
  Screen     0 "Screen0" 0 0
  Screen     1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
  Option     "Xinerama" "True"
EndSection

If compositing/desktop effects are required, Xinerama may be unacceptable — in that case a single card with multiple outputs or a driver+card combo that supports BaseMosaic/Surround is the better long‑term solution. Read the NVIDIA Linux README for the exact options and examples for your driver version before making changes. (download.nvidia.com)

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Member Avatar for rch1231

You have 4 PCI Express and two PCI slots so go but a PCI or PCIE video card. It probably won't have the power of your current card but it will still work for the third monitor.

Member Avatar for Excizted

Just PCI video cards are expensive compared to their powerful PCIe x16 relatives.
And how would the driver handle two different cards btw?

Member Avatar for rch1231

It really is not problem for the driver for the second card to load. Basically it is like adding a second NIC or other card. I know a lot of systems where they simply added a card to get the dual monitor capability from their system when the primary adapter was on the mother board. My HP tower has a setting in the BIOS to let me use my PCIe card as the default over the built in. The Nvidia has two ports and I can use the onboard as a third. I Have tested it and even won a bet with another sysadmin that I could hook up a third monitor and use it without the onboard being the primary adapter. You can also change the primary display from windows if you don't have a BIOS setting.

Member Avatar for Excizted

Super.
I may look for a standard-PCI graphics card then.

Would it by any chance be better worth upgrading motherboard?
I could achieve USB 3 by that, but will most likely have to upgrade to DDR3 RAM aswell.
Should I wait with this, and let the PCI graphics card be a relatively short investment?

Member Avatar for rch1231

You might want to check out some of the used computer retailers or Craigs list for an old card rather than investing the money on something that you may upgrade soon.

As for the upgrade questions it is your time and money. I stand bu the line in my signature.....

Member Avatar for Excizted

Finally I have gotten my hands on an extra nvidia graphics card for PCI Express x1.

I'm really putting my hair out, as it totally seems I cannot have whats called twinview across multiple GPU's.

I can choose to have separate X screens, but it is not very productive as I can't drag my windows to all the monitors.

Whats even worse, I tried out booting Windows and it was 1-2-3 and I had all monitors set up and could drag windows around with no issues at all.

I really hope there is a way, or plans to help this issue?

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