# 2 video cards from different makers on same board?

## h2sammo

i currently have an nvidia card and have twinview enabled from nvidia drivers on 2 screens. i would like to use a second PCI video card (not nvidia) to use with additional monitors. is this doable in gentoo?

related question: what if a single card has a digital and an analog output? can i use both at the same time to display on 2 different monitors at the same time (one for the digital and one for the analog)?

thank youLast edited by h2sammo on Thu Jun 03, 2010 3:02 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## [n00b@localhost]

Yes and yes.

Just write separate device sections in your xorg.conf for the different cards (with the different drivers) and then use those entries to define different screen sections.  I did this ages ago with a Geforce 2 GTS (AGP) and a Trident(?) 3D card (PCI) and was able to stretch a single desktop across three monitors.

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## h2sammo

how would 3D rendering be displayed over the screens which are part of the same desktop but are rendered by the "inferior" video card?

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## [n00b@localhost]

I'm not entirely sure.  The PCI card was so old I couldn't get 3D hardware acceleration working on it.  Glxgears worked fine on the primary monitor though.

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## h2sammo

so in your instance the PCI card was feeding a separate desktop than whatever was fed into the other monitors hooked up to your more powerful video card? 

basically i have several video cards i could use but they are NOT close in GPU clock speed, memory, etc.  I will need to make a decision whether i will have all monitors share the same desktop (xinerama or twinview for nivida cards) or whether i should have a desktop per video card so that each desktop (even if it has more than one monitor to it) has its own 3D rendering capabilities.

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## [n00b@localhost]

Yes although I'm pretty sure you I could have set up xinerama on it.

I would use separate desktops per video card in your case to get stable 3D acceleration working on each one.  It would still be possible to connect two monitors to either video card (if they support it) and use xinerama to extend the desktop for that video card across the two monitors connected to it.

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