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matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

Single card with dual GTX 460 GPU

I am building a new desktop which will be quite an upgrade from my aged budget Toshiba notebook. I am pretty wrapped up in the excitement of building a new, awesome-to-me system. Combine that with having slickdeals.net fever, and I ended up with an EVGA 2win Dual GTX 460 video card for $170. Seems like a nice deal, but only if it works. The card has three Dual-link DVI connectors and one Mini-HDMI. I want to run three (maybe four) displays and wonder if this card will work with GPU acceleration and full compositing (KWin) using any method -- Zaphod, Xinerama, Twinview+Zaphod, etc... Does anyone have any insight for me? Thanks.

ConnorBehan

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From: Long Island NY

Registered: 2007-07-05

Posts: 1,359

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Re: Single card with dual GTX 460 GPU

I'm not sure about the Nvidia driver so I'll say what I know about Nouveau.

The GTX 460 does work with nouveau but I can't find anything about people using the two GPUs on one card. So my guess is that you would face the same problems as people who try to get four screens with two cards. These are:

1. Xinerama can get all four monitors working but with no acceleration.
2. The preferred multi-monitor method - xrandr - allows acceleration across multiple monitors but it requires that the monitors be connected to the same GPU. If you have two GPUs, each of which has two monitors, the best you can do is have it function like two dualhead setups where each pair is on a separate X screen. This means you can move the cursor wherever you want but not drag any windows. Dave Airlie is working on changing this and the full support might be finished when xrandr 1.4 comes out.

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matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: Single card with dual GTX 460 GPU

Sorry it took me so long to get back. I have been busy with my wife and daughter welcoming our second baby girl into the world.

I appreciate the reply. After a little more reading, I am not sure this card will work at any rate. It seems that it is essentially two cards crammed into one and connected via internal SLI. I do not know if it can be operated as two discrete GPUs with separate connectors and there is no telling when RandR 1.4 will come out or if it actually will implement SLI.

I wonder if the GTX 600 series cards will work with the proprietary driver and TwinView or Nouveau and RandR for a hardware accelerated triple head setup. I like this card or this one. Both have a single GPU and support up to four concurrent displays. The 600 series does have proprietary driver support.

ewaller

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From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,696

Re: Single card with dual GTX 460 GPU

Sorry it took me so long to get back. I have been busy with my wife and daughter welcoming our second baby girl into the world..

Congratulations.  Here's hope that mother and child are both doing well

Last edited by ewaller (2012-08-12 19:50:49)

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matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: Single card with dual GTX 460 GPU

Thanks ewaller! Mom and baby are both doing fantastic. There is nothing nicer in life than a new baby! I could talk about my kids forever, but I'll try to stay on topic.

It seems that multihead is supported on the 600 series cards with TwinView which should now probably be renamed MultiView or something else more apt.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=178005
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=176876
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=182620

And from here at home...
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1092791

Also, Nouveau worked with the Kepler chipset from day one and at this point may also support multihead with RandR. It is nice to have options. I will probably poke around a little more and then go ahead and bite the bullet. Looks like I will be selling an EVGA GTX 460 2win video card. Thanks everyone.