[SFS] Trouble with CentOS7 box with 3 monitors ...

[Davide Del Vento]

Not sure with NVIDIA, however I always struggled with having more than
2 monitors on my laptops. Until I realized that my graphic card on the
laptop (intel chip) did not support more than 2 screens being "on" at
the same time (I could hook 3 monitors just fine and use the GUI to
select which ones to use, but if I switched "on" more than two, it did
not work -- any other combination worked). Then, with latest laptop my
employer gave me (still with intel graphic card), everything worked
out of the box on first attempt MATE install. Upon closer examination
of some very hidden specs of the chipset, this one supports 3 monitors
and the previous ones did not.

So I suggest you FIRST google the EXACT chipset of your cards and make sure that
a) it supports 3 monitors at the resolution you want (both individual
screen resolutions and total number of horizontal and vertical pixels)
b) anyone has been able to hook them up with 3 monitors with hw
configuration as close to yours as possible (maybe even on MS
windows).

After that, I suggest that you try some more-hw-friendly distro (e.g.
ubuntu), maybe off a live DVD, to see if it works. Often, if it
doesn't work out of the box with the latest Ubuntu, 95% you can't make
it work in any other way, so give up and stop struggling.

After that's done, you can start investigating how to make it work in
your favorite distro. Often, you need a newer kernel and the
corresponding newer drivers.

Good luck.
Davide

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 9:09 PM, marcoz <marcoz@osource.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>  I'm usually just a lurker on this list but I've got a problem. One of my
> coworkers has spent 2 days trying to get a new HP machine up and running
> with his 3 monitor setup, with no luck. Google has been no help. He's about
> to lose his mind.
>
> Has anyone worked with a 3-monitor setup? If so, might you be able to help?
>
> It's 2 identical Nvidia GeFoce 7xxx PCIe cards, if that matters/helps.
>
> thanks for any help or suggestions,
> Matt
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