fglrx and multiple cards

[pflynn]

Hi all!

I have read somewhere that the AMD/ATI fglrx drivers currently support just one card: there is no support for two or more cards simultaneously. Is it true? On my system today I have a three monitor setup using two NVidia cards (two LCD panels connected to a FX 5600 AGP and the third one connected to a FX 5200 PCI) and Xinerama configured using the official NVidia drivers. There are no issues and everything runs fine (a large desktop stretched across the three monitors). I'm upgrading to a new computer (X48T-DQ6, QX9770) and I will keep the multi-monitor setup. But I'm thinking that this time I will forgot about NVidia and change to ATI (maybe the Radeon 4850). But I will only do that if it is possible to keep my three monitor setup. I suppose that the Radeon open source drivers allow the use of two ore more cards, but the thing is that support for the new 4850 and 4870 ATI cards is quite new yet regarding the open source drivers. So, guys, I will appreciate your opinions. Does anyone have any experience with the fglrx drivers running three ore more monitors?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Sorry, didn't see that there is a ATI/AMD Linux driver sub-forum. Is that necessary to swap?

[Michael]

Currently the fglrx driver only supports one card, but with the CrossFire support will come the support for multiple cards and multiple displays over multiple cards.

[pflynn]

Yes, you are right. Probably this is the way things will be. Now it is time to decide between waiting for AMD to add this feature and buying a pair of NVidia cards. Not easy if one remember all the NVidia 2D acceleration issues. Thank you!

[Kano]

You know that you need a Nvidia chipset for SLI?

[pflynn]

You know that you need a Nvidia chipset for SLI?

Hi Kano. The SLI enabled chipset is only needed if we intend to use the cards running in SLI mode, that is, two or more cards together producing one output. This is different from what I want to do, that is to use two cards independently of each other, each one generating its own output.