CentOS - Apr 2013 - 4 monitors with one graphics card and standard driver

I've just test an ATI FirePro 2460 graphics card on CentOS 6.4.  It
connects 4 monitors.
It worked with the standard radeon driver.  I was able to arrange the
monitors into my
preferred configuration (as a square array, 1 upper left, 2 lower left, 3
lower right, 4
upper right) simply by clicking System -> Preferences -> Display, and then
moving the
four monitor images.  This creates the file ~/.config/monitors.xml .

Moving windows among the monitors worked smoothly.  I did not install the
proprietary
ATI driver;  I don't need any of its features beyond what the standard
driver provides.

Some details:
  Dell Optiplex 9010, Small Form Factor (SFF) case requires SFF cards.
  CentOS 6.4 fully updated as of today.
  2.6.32-358.2.1.el6.x86_64 kernel
  xorg-x11-drv-ati 6.99.99 1.el6 x86_64
  BIOS shows the board in slot 1 (the blue connector) as "VGA
Compatible"
  lspci shows
    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller:
    Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Cedar [FirePro 2460]
    Kernel driver in use: radeon
  No xorg.conf was created or required.
  4 Dell 2007FP monitors, each at 1600x1200 connected via DVI.

I used to use Matrox M9140 cards, but that requires the Matrox proprietary
driver which has not been updated for CentOS 6.4 as of today.

I also tested two other cards: ATI FirePro 2450 and NVidia Quadro NVS 420.
For each of these cards, the BIOS shows the card in slot 1 as a PCI Bridge.
lspci reports two identical video cards at 03:00.0 and 04:00.0.
Though it's easy to set up two screens properly, xinerama would probably be
required in an xorg.conf to get all four screens working properly.

-- 
Dale Dellutri

Dale Dellutri wrote:
> I've just test an ATI FirePro 2460 graphics card on CentOS 6.4.  It
> connects 4 monitors.
> It worked with the standard radeon driver.  I was able to arrange the
> monitors into my preferred configuration (as a square array, 1 upper
> left, 2 lower left, 3 lower right, 4 upper right) simply by clicking
> System -> Preferences -> Display, and then moving the
> four monitor images.  This creates the file ~/.config/monitors.xml .
<snip>
> I also tested two other cards: ATI FirePro 2450 and NVidia Quadro NVS 420.
> For each of these cards, the BIOS shows the card in slot 1 as a PCI
> Bridge.
> lspci reports two identical video cards at 03:00.0 and 04:00.0.
> Though it's easy to set up two screens properly, xinerama would
probably
> be required in an xorg.conf to get all four screens working properly.
Would you mind sending me your xorg.conf offlist? I *may* have found
something in the one I've been handcrafting, but as my user is busy, I
won't be able to try it out for a while, and would love to see what you
did.

I'm still at the point of him having one monitor working fine, but the
other comes up, not mirrored, but unreachable by keyboard or mouse.
Looking at his old xorg.conf that worked with kmod-fglrx, and my own (an
NVidia card) I realized they only have one Screen sectiuon, and a viewport
on his (mine, of course, has twinview), so I've just edited his that way.

        mark

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Dale Dellutri <daledellutri at
gmail.com>wrote:
> I've just test an ATI FirePro 2460 graphics card on CentOS 6.4.  It
> connects 4 monitors.
> It worked with the standard radeon driver.  I was able to arrange the
> monitors into my
> preferred configuration (as a square array, 1 upper left, 2 lower left, 3
> lower right, 4
> upper right) simply by clicking System -> Preferences -> Display, and
then
> moving the
> four monitor images.  This creates the file ~/.config/monitors.xml .
>
> Moving windows among the monitors worked smoothly.  I did not install the
> proprietary
> ATI driver;  I don't need any of its features beyond what the standard
> driver provides.
>
> Some details:
>   Dell Optiplex 9010, Small Form Factor (SFF) case requires SFF cards.
>   CentOS 6.4 fully updated as of today.
>   2.6.32-358.2.1.el6.x86_64 kernel
>   xorg-x11-drv-ati 6.99.99 1.el6 x86_64
>   BIOS shows the board in slot 1 (the blue connector) as "VGA
Compatible"
>   lspci shows
>     01:00.0 VGA compatible controller:
>     Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Cedar [FirePro 2460]
>     Kernel driver in use: radeon
>   No xorg.conf was created or required.
>   4 Dell 2007FP monitors, each at 1600x1200 connected via DVI.
>
> I used to use Matrox M9140 cards, but that requires the Matrox proprietary
> driver which has not been updated for CentOS 6.4 as of today.
>
> I also tested two other cards: ATI FirePro 2450 and NVidia Quadro NVS 420.
> For each of these cards, the BIOS shows the card in slot 1 as a PCI Bridge.
> lspci reports two identical video cards at 03:00.0 and 04:00.0.
> Though it's easy to set up two screens properly, xinerama would
probably be
> required in an xorg.conf to get all four screens working properly.
>
As it turns out, the ATI FirePro 2460 works, but it's too slow with the
standard
radeon driver for our application.

I tested an NVidia NVS 510 with both the standard nouveau driver, and the
proprietary kmod-nvidia, nvidia-x11-drv rpms from elrepo.  The two gave very
similar quick response on our application, so we've decided to use the
standard
nouveau driver.

Of all the cards I've tested, the 510 is the best.

xorg-x11-drv-nouveau-1.0.1-3.el6.x86_64
lspci shows
  01:00.0 VGA compatible controller:
  NVIDIA Corporation Device 0ffd (rev a1)

The rest of the info is the same as shown above.

-- 
Dale Dellutri