Skip to main content

nVidia Triple-head Display

What with the price of older-but-decent video cards and monitors being very reasonable, I decided to move from the dual-head display I have been using in various forms for the past 15 years to triple-head. I was currently running dual-head using a single vNidia 9800GT card and two monitors. I added a second vNidia 9800GT and a third Samsung SyncMaster 930b 17" monitor which was attached to the new video card.

After some aggravation, I got it working, except that the Google-Chrome browser goes wonky in the display, but Firefox and other apps seem to be unaffected. If you want to see the wonky behavior, a video is available. As it was, it was mostly unusable for daily work and completely useless for games.

After much tweaking and swearing, I chose the path of least resistance and purchased a newer video card that would work out-of-the-box with three monitors, a 4GB nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti.

There's a lot of help with this setup when using MS Windows as well as special external hardware that accomplishes it. For Linux, it was necessary to get a single head working with the nVidia driver, then use nvidia-settings to configure all three heads. Also. many of these multi-monitor setups used for gaming are used with wide-screen displays. That seems a little excessive to me, but that may be in my future if I have the extra cash.

As a result, the display performs flawlessly across three heads, but I need to learn the widescreen tweaks for my older video games. I can do that with information from the PC Gaming Wiki, an excellent site for the underlying details of PC games.

UPDATE - Nov. 26, 2017

I just acquired an Ultra-Wide-Screen monitor, an LG 20UM57-P. Resolution is 2560x1080 @60-Hz. It's different than viewing three separate monitors and may take some getting used to.

UPDATE - Feb. 8, 2018

I have been using the LG 20UM57-P flanked by the two Samsung SyncMaster 930bs. The LG is 2560x1080 and the 930bs are 1280x1024. I have X configured as a single X-server of 5120x1080. The small difference between the SyncMasters and the LG are not very noticeable.

My xorg.conf is:

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 262502)

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"
    AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
    Option "DontZap" "False" # disable <Ctrl><Alt><BS> (server abort)
    #DontZoom # disable <Ctrl><Alt><KP_+>/<KP_-> (resolution switching)
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "monitor1"
    VendorName "Plug'n Play"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 635 series and later"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "DynamicTwinView" "false"
    
    # Option "DPMS"
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "screen1"
    Device "device1"
    Monitor "monitor1"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout1"
    Screen "screen1"
EndSection

It seems that the nVidia driver has gotten smart enough to figure most of this stuff out.

I need to use nvidia-settings to establish the relationship of each monitor to the other. The left SyncMaster 930b is "LeftOf" the UltraWide 25UM58. The UltraWide 25UM58 is "absolute" and the right SyncMaster 930b is "RightOf" the UltraWide 25UM58. 

I have been able to make the game suse the UltraWide 25UM58 and have created an alias in .bashrc to do it by making the UltraWide 25UM58 the primary display. Otherwise, it uses the leftmost SyncMaster 930b which is the display used when booting the machine.
alias center="/usr/bin/xrandr --output HDMI-0 --primary"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DOS4GW.EXE Version 2.01a and Alternative DOS Extenders

DOS4GW.EXE The Tenberry DOS extender DOS4GW.EXE was used by many early DOS games. I still enjoy playing many of these games and DOS4GW.EXE is usable with DOSBox , so they can be played on Linux. However, the version of DOS4GW.EXE that was included with the game was whatever was current at the time. The most recent version that includes many bugfixes that possibly affected the games when used with DOSBox have been fixed in the latest version, 2.01a. It's not free at US$49, but you can downloaded it here . Simply substitute it for whatever version of DOS4GW.EXE your game provided and enjoy the bug-fixed goodness. Tenberry also makes a "high-performance" "pro" version of DOS4GW.EXE, but it costs $300. I think that they could sell quite a few of these to hobby users (since, you know, DOS is dead) for US$5. Open Souce to the Rescue There are better performing, free and Open Source alternatives available and worth a look. DPMI Explained Let's unders...
1 comment
Read more

Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Modern Linux

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a first-person shooter originally released on November 19, 2001. The game, like many other classic games, is available at GOG.com and costs only US$5.99. iortcw for Linux Don't bother with old and crusty Linux binaries offered by idsoft; they are problematic and it's painful to use them on a modern Linux. Fortunately for us, there are more modern GPL-licensed Linux binaries available for 32- and 64-bit systems as well as high resolution textures packages. The project at GitHub provides source code that can also be compiled for MS Windows using MinGW. iortcw for Windows and Mac You can download pre-compiled binaries for 32- and 64-bit Linux, MS Windows and Mac from here . Let's put our files in /usr/local/games/rtcw . As root, extract the downloaded .ZIP file for your architecture to  /usr/local/games/rtcw . All we are missing are the game data files. I purchased them from GOG.com. The game installer downloaded from GOG.com can be ...
1 comment
Read more

Unreal Tournament GOTY/UT99 for Modern Linux

Released on November 16, 1999, Unreal Tournament (also known as UT99) is an arena first-person shooter for Multiplayer on-line competition or you can play against bots off-line. It features several game types, with more details provided at Wikipedia . The game was re-released on February 25, 2000 as Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition (GOTY) which included the three bonus packs released previously and additional mods, or game modifiers that had become popular. It is the GOTY version that is available from STEAM or  GOG.com . The GOG version for Windows installs in Linux and plays well using WINE , PlayOnLinux or Codeweaver's Crossover . There is a Linux binary available in two versions, one for the original game and one for the GOTY edition . Also provided at that site is the Official Bonus Pack with a Linux installer. All these Linux installers are created with makeself . There are some issues using such a crusty old Linux binary. Let's see why getting...
2 comments
Read more