Revisiting triple monitors

[Red Squirrel]

So a while back I unsuccessfully got triple monitors to work, I managed to get the 3rd one to run it's own X session (can't drag stuff between, basically) but it would get flacky and full of artifacts, the theme would screw up etc... I gave up, but the artifacts turned out to be the nvidia card, whether the card itself (the type) or the driver. Switched to ATI and that problem went away. Been stuck with one screen since, and I want to get back into programming projects which is hard to do with only one screen. Long story short, now that I have an ATI card I think I may have better luck, but from what I read ATI cards use "real" DVI, so DVI to VGA converters don't work, well it only works on the primary port.

I have some display port to DVI converters, but the DVI to VGA converter does not fit. I want to buy two new monitors. Is there anything specific I should look at when looking at monitors? I'm thinking of just making sure it has true DVI (DVI-D I think?) or even better, display port, then I can just buy a cable and not use a converter at all.

Anything else I need to look at, other than the obvious features like resolution and what not. I will buy two that have the same native res as my main monitor, so perhaps having the same resolution across the board will simplify things too.

Just thought I'd check in case there's anything Linux specific I should be looking out for, such as perhaps a certain brand of monitor to avoid, or try to get.

 

[Crusty]

For DVI It's not a conversion, it's a pass-through. To do Digital -> Analog you'd need access to a DSP, which those little dongles don't have.

There are 3 different kinds of DVI connectors.

DVI-D (digital only)
DVI-A (analog only)
DVI-I (analog and digital combined)

The easiest way to tell if your DVI port supports an analog signal is to look at the bar connector on your video cards DVI port, if there are 4 pins (2 on top, 2 on bottom) then you've got an analog signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface

Shows you exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh ok, I kind of suspected that. So if there's not the 4 pins it's digital, so as long as the monitor I buy supports DVI-D I should be good?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well triple is a no go again. It wont detect the 3rd one. Guessing it might be the video card, as it should at least be detecting it. Screw it, I'll just have to live with two I guess. But now they're not the same size, with triple at least it would be symmetrical. One of the monitors also has a bad pixel so I'll have to return it anyway and it was the only 2 they had. (kind of glad I bought locally...) I'll have to live with this.

Only thing though, what's with having to reboot constantly after making a change? This is not windows 95!

Guess this is a 3rd world problem at this point. At least I got two now... and they're both the same res so I do get a bit more pixel real estate than before so it should work out.