Some questions about eyefinity

[Novae]

11.2 was better, i was able to play LoL @ 5040x1050 at a decent(although not great compared to windows) frame rate. However i am still completely unable to play EVE. Ultimately i have no idea if this is an issue with the blob driver or some other competent of my system however EVE was happy to run with the current software configuration on a NVIDIA based system which makes me suspect its something to do with the driver.

I've decided to try the latest version of the OSS driver as it has just been given S3TS support which should allow it to run EVE with proper textures.

Here's a link to the gentoo forums details my current issues, http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p...7.html#6587067

[Novae]

I have played EVE-O with hd 5870 eyefinity, 3 monitors, successfully for over a year.



Are you experiencing the known audio bug in wine? See the page on winehq.org for eveonline client for a workaround (I just disable audio altogether, remember to also disable eve voice AFTER logging in but before choosing a character!). Not resolving this results in a hang at some point after choosing a character. There's also some help from ati users in the EVE-O linux thread.

It could also be related to the new char portraits failing. See this workaround.

I dont think it was related to either of these, as disable sound made no difference and the workaround for the portraits also did not help.

Anyway, i've been gaming in windows for the past few weeks, waiting for 11.2 to come out and hopefully fix some of my issues as i hot a brick wall. Just building it now and we'll see how it goes.

[BlackStar]

Cool I did not know this was being worked on. Finally I will be able to set up my third monitor above my second one without having all my desktop icons hiding in the blank space above my first monitor!

Heh. So far, they've been able to limit the mouse to the visible area (good) but desktop icons can still be moved outside (bad). Apparently, the latter is a WM issue and should be fixed downstream.

I think this bug was first reported back in 2002 but noone really started working on it until Ubuntu users started complaining...

[noobish]

That's true for when you want to be able to drag windows between all three screens without restriction, but if you can live with a dual screen desktop plus another desktop you can indeed have an accelerated 3 screen desktop with nVidia.

This can be useful for some but of course the ultimate is to have a properly unified desktop.

I have to do this at work with my two quadro cards and four monitors (2 twinview, 2 mirrored separate X screens). There's simply no way to have accelerated desktop with more than 1 nvidia gpu. AMD is miles ahead on this front.

[noobish]

Firstly i struggled to get my card to even detect so that aticonfig would make me a basic xorg.conf to work from. Then i finally got into X and it doesn't seem to want to keep my configuration(DFP2-DFP1-DFP3). It always starts mirrored although i can manually adjust it with xrandr fine.

I had problems with amdcccle initially not writing to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, despite proper root auth. I ended up just saving the amdcccle generated config to a user dir, then manually replacing /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

[noobish]

- the desktop expands to a single huge rectangle, meaning the mouse can move outside the visible area. This is a known X server issue and is expected to be fixed in an upcoming release.

Cool I did not know this was being worked on. Finally I will be able to set up my third monitor above my second one without having all my desktop icons hiding in the blank space above my first monitor!

[noobish]

I generally play EVE Online and a small amount of WoW plus a bunch of older(early mid 2000's) games.

I have played EVE-O with hd 5870 eyefinity, 3 monitors, successfully for over a year.

Getting wine to work correctly is being a major struggle, although i'm not sure if this is because i've set things up for my previous nvidia card that are interfering with the new card. Or if its just being a pita.

I was able to get WoW to run, albeit in a separate X session, at 5040x1050 with highest settings and it seemed to run fine. But i have been completely unable to get EVE to run correctly, with it generally locking up at one of the login screens and often causing my system to become completely unresponsive requiring a hard reset.

Can anyone point me to any good guides about the fglrx driver, preferably not ubuntu based guides as they rarely do want i require under gentoo?

Are you experiencing the known audio bug in wine? See the page on winehq.org for eveonline client for a workaround (I just disable audio altogether, remember to also disable eve voice AFTER logging in but before choosing a character!). Not resolving this results in a hang at some point after choosing a character. There's also some help from ati users in the EVE-O linux thread.

It could also be related to the new char portraits failing. See this workaround.

[mugginz]

While this is true, and for productivity type work would suit fine, this setup would not allow me to run full screen applications(read: games ) across all three monitors.

Yes, I like those "full screen applications" too.

[Novae]

That's true for when you want to be able to drag windows between all three screens without restriction, but if you can live with a dual screen desktop plus another desktop you can indeed have an accelerated 3 screen desktop with nVidia.

This can be useful for some but of course the ultimate is to have a properly unified desktop.

While this is true, and for productivity type work would suit fine, this setup would not allow me to run full screen applications(read: games ) across all three monitors.

[mugginz]

Sorry to hear that. On my system, "sudo aticonfig --initial && sudo amdcccle" was enough. The settings applied as expected and where saved between reboots. I never touched xorg.conf.

For 10.12 and I think 10.11 I had no issues with this. With some of the earlier drivers I ran into this issue and now with 11.1. A bit odd, but there you go I guess.

Why would you want to rotate two screens?

It might be more accurate to ask "Why would BlackStar want to rotate two screens?" For that matter, the OP has no requirement for monitor rotation at all. Had he raised it I think it'd be clearly a factory to consider.

Note that nvidia will stop vsyncing as soon as you rotate a screen, which means it's not a solution if you wish to watch video at all.

And the OP has no requirement for this. So for HIS situation, this issue might as well not exist. You are again transposing your requirements onto his. I think it's valid to make him aware of the issue, it's just not a reason to discount nVidia in itself given his requirements as defined earlier.

What's more, nvidia won't autodetect connected monitors. This is especially annoying on laptops, where external monitors/projectors are rather common. I've actually had people complain to me about this when I recommended a nvidia card. I'm more hesitant to recommend nvidia now for systems that may be used in such a way.

For someone needing monitor hotplug then AMD and intel seem better. Does he require this? For that matter, most people can deal with initial configuration niggles that they can work out themselves or get help from others to rectify, just as I've had to with AMD. To me that's a black eye to AMD but not a deal breaker. Same goes with nVidia in the areas where it needs by hand configuration. What I don't like are situations where no matter how much effort you're prepared to expend in configuration you still wind up with a crappy experience due to driver bugs.

The crux of the issue is that you (and a few other people) seem to consider nvidia as the end-all solution to Linux graphical needs. As soon as someone points at that it really isn't and it suffers from its own set of issues you get up in arms to defend the one true way.

No. I'm very happy to discuss nVidia's areas of weakness. Where those weaknesses will impact the user in THEIR circumstances they should be made aware of them so they can decide for themselves which are the lesser of the evils.

Based on my own, personal experience, I'd use ati on a multi-monitor system today. In fact, I just did this and I haven't regretted my decision despite all those (real or imaginary) shortcomings of ati drivers.

And these "imaginary" shortcomings, are they the same ones I was assured I'd not have by some AMD fabois on these very forums, but then upon buying the card, low and behold, there are those issues. Just as I have not had some of the issues with nVidia cards you raise as having doesn't mean you didn't have them. Even when I don't have an issue with a piece of hardware, if I'm aware of someone else having one I'll bring it up as possible shortcomings. Especially where there's a preponderance of evidence that suggests a given scenario will produce an unwanted outcome no matter who the vendor is.

In any case, I don't think this discussion belongs here anymore. If the OP encounters any other issues, I (or someone else) will be glad to help.

I think the true nature of the AMD and nVidia drivers are quite an appropriate topic for here.