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2 client(simultaneously in use) Linux gaming machine

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  • 2 client(simultaneously in use) Linux gaming machine

    First post on these boards, I read an article here about AMD releasing more source code for their ATi cards and have always wanted to make a 2 client gaming PC. I'm sure their source code won't change much doing this but I want to support AMD because of this and what better way them buying two HD 5xxx cards!

    I was wondering if it was possible to have a computer that could have 2 monitors, two mice, two keyboards, and two ear phones be able to play two player games like open arena simultaneously. I'm pretty sure I'll need two graphic cards which I don't have but here are the specs for my machine right now.

    Asus M4A78T-E(has two PCI 2.0 slots that are x8 when both in use)
    AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4x
    4 gigs of ram, the fastest my mother board supported at the time I bought it a year ago.
    850 Watt power supply, probably need a bigger one if I need two GPU's

    So if it is possible is my system fast enough? I haven't bought a graphic card yet as I was holding off on getting dual cards to link together. I was thinking I could get another monitor, unlink them, and have two clients going at the same time. If this is possible do I need much faster GPU's to do this?

    Also, I'm sure I'd have to get another sound card but that is no biggie.

    Right now I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 but could use any distro if need be, Gentoo go me started using Linux 100% on my personal computers so I could figure out pretty much any distro.

  • #2
    You mean like on localhost? Intriguing idea, network latency should be roughly zero if that works.

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    • #3
      Sure that's enough power. 2 cores and 2 gigs per user, plus one graphics card per user as well.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by curaga View Post
        Sure that's enough power. 2 cores and 2 gigs per user, plus one graphics card per user as well.
        Has it ever been done? I remember reading about a company that did this for lan houses, but didn't do gaming, this is where I came up with the idea.

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        • #5
          The keyword is "multiseat"; it's somewhat rare, but not unheard of here in linuxland. After all it's the multiuser OS for thousands of users.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by curaga View Post
            The keyword is "multiseat"; it's somewhat rare, but not unheard of here in linuxland. After all it's the multiuser OS for thousands of users.
            Ah, multiseat, now I'm getting results in google. Seems everyone that builds one stresses they are not building one for gaming purposes, which sucks, I would think with the right hardware it would be possible. I'll keep looking, thanx.

            If anyone knows of good resources for this please post them, most of what I'm finding are people talking about it and not actually doing it.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by second.exodous View Post
              Ah, multiseat, now I'm getting results in google. Seems everyone that builds one stresses they are not building one for gaming purposes, which sucks, I would think with the right hardware it would be possible.
              Right hardware bumps into the "hardware that happens to have drivers that can cope with such a setup", me thinks. Probably otherwise doesn't matter that much what kind of hardware you pick.

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              • #8
                You can run a multiseat setup with 3D acceleration and one graphics card. But you have to either use the Xephyr solution (which does not support compositing) or apply airlied's multiseat patches: http://airlied.livejournal.com/72187.html As these patches are already quite old and only for a specific piece of hardware, it may be necessary to adapt them to your setup.

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                • #9
                  I recall comments that fglrx works with multiseat; since it's for gaming, I assume that's what will be used.

                  IIRC multicard doesn't work on the open drivers currently.

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