NVidia Twinview vs Xinerama

NVidia
8 March 2005

Clitunno has a PNY GeForce FX-5500

The review calls it a low-end card; nVidia does not call it a gamer card

PNY Quadro FX 600 PCI 256MB DDR/PCI/Dual-DVI is a fancy cousin -- $630

You'd likely be better off getting a gaming machine with PCI-Express

For links and details, see Sigillo/nVidia.
Randall Donald, Debian's nVidia maintainer

Configuration ideas -- http://sh.nu/nvidia/

Getting GLX
20 November 2005

I noticed to my horror I was unable to run xtraceroute -- or glxgears. Solution:

just reconfigure nvidia-glx

That built TLS links, which apparently are needed (I'm not positive). Then edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf, uncommenting glx -- not sure why it was commented out. Restart X.

Building from source
28 October 2005

There's a problem with the 7174 driver for the kernel patch remove register_ioctl32_conversion from 6 September 2005 -- it fails to build on vanilla 2.6.14.

Go to the experimental archive and grab the source package (tar, diff and dsc) for the latest nvidia package for debian, and then do this:

dpkg-source -x *dsc
cd nvidia-*
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
cd ..
dpkg -i nvidia*source*deb
apt-get install module-assistant
m-a -t prepare
m-a a-i -t nvidia
dpkg -i nvidia-glx*deb

Worked! This created three deb glx packages:

nvidia-glx_1.0.7676-1_amd64.deb
nvidia-glx-dev_1.0.7676-1_amd64.deb
nvidia-glx-ia32_1.0.7676-1_amd64.deb

I installed all three. It also created nvidia-kernel-source_1.0.7676-1_amd64.deb, which appears to provide nvidia-kernel-2.6.14 -- a bit confusing, but it all works.

Overclocking
6 June 2005

nVidia is releasing software to overclock their cards' GPU; see review and instructions.

Twinview vs Xinerama
8 March 2005

After adding Option "Xinerama" to trevi's XFconfig, I'm able to use KSnapshot with the "Region" setting, though the behavior is odd: When clicking "New snapshot", the left screen is duplicated on the right, and you have to take the snapshot on the right. After taking it, the screens return to normal.

Details:

NVidia calls it TwinView, XFree's version ix Xinerama. The config below is for Xinerama, the TwinView stuff is commented out. Both Screens (DFPs in this case) are connected to one card, it's a GF5700 AGP with two DVI ports. I'm running this on i386.

TwinView has one advantage: it's possible to assign nvidia-settings to both screens. The downer is, applications and your window manager don't recognize the two screens. To them, it's only one very-wide screen. With Xinerama you can eg. maximize to only one screen and KDE panels (GNOME ones as well I guess) can be assigned to exactly one screen. In my case this outweighs the benefits of TwinView.

yours,
Sönke von Stamm <sstamm@affili.net>

[Someone added: "I thought there was an option in TwinView to provide xinerama compatible
features so window managers would know the actual layout of the screen. I thought the main difference was support for opengl on both screens or not, and video overlay support and such."]

[Yet another chimed in,

I am using Nvidia's TwinView/Xinerama in XF86Config-4:

        Option          "NvAGP" "1"
        Option          "TwinView"      "true"
        Option          "SecondMonitorHorizSync"        "30.0-75.0"
        Option          "SecondMonitorVertRefresh"      "50.0-85.0"
        Option          "MetaModes"     "1280x1024, 1280x1024; 1280x1024, 1280x1024;"
        Option          "TwinViewOrientation"   "RightOf"
        Option          "Xinerama"      "on"

(in "Screen" section), and it works exactly as Lennart describes (panels on one screen etc.). I haven't managed to play any games apart from tuxracer yet, but it presents a problem in the fact that the game displays at 640x480 (or 800x600 i think) in between the two screens, so half the game is on the First VDU (video display unit), the other half is on the Second VDU.]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# XF86Config-4 (XFree86 X Window System server configuration file)

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "Xinerama"
EndSection

# Layout mit Xinerama
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Dual DFP"
        Screen      0  "Left DFP Screen"
        Screen      1  "Right DFP Screen" RightOf "Left DFP Screen"
        InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
        InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

## NVidia twinview
#Section "ServerLayout"
#    Identifier  "AGPTwinView"
#    Screen      "Screen AGP TwinView"
#    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
#    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
#EndSection

Section "Files"
        # local font server
        # if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
        FontPath     "unix/:7100"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/type1"
        FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
        FontPath     "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "bitmap"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "ddc"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "int10"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "speedo"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "vbe"
# removed for nvidia driver:
#       Load  "GLcore"
#       Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver      "keyboard"
        Option      "CoreKeyboard"
        Option      "XkbRules" "xfree86"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "de"
        Option      "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "CorePointer"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "DFP-1"
        Option      "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "DFP-2"
        Option      "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Gainward 980 Port 1"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        Option      "CRT2Position" "RightOf"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option      "Xinerama" "true"
        Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Gainward 980 Port 2"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        Option      "CRT1Position" "LeftOf"
        BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option      "Xinerama" "true"
        Screen 1
EndSection

#Section "Device"
#    Identifier "NV AGP TwinView"
#    VendorName "nvidia"
#    Driver "nvidia"
#    # update this with the PCI id of your card.  Consult the output
#    # of the 'lspci' command. The  BusID is usually optional when
#    # only using one graphics card.
#    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
#
#    # sample twinview setup
#    Option "TwinView"
#    # be sure to replace the HorizSync and VertRefresh with correct values
#    # for your monitor!
#    Option "TwinViewOrientation"      "RightOf"
#    Option "MetaModes"                "1280x1024,1280x1024; 
1024x768,1024x768"
#    Option "ConnectedMonitor"         "dfp,dfp"
#EndSection


Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Left DFP Screen"
        Device     "Gainward 980 Port 1"
        Monitor    "DFP-1"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" 
"800x600"
"640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Right DFP Screen"
        Device     "Gainward 980 Port 2"
        Monitor    "DFP-2"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" 
"800x600"
"640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

## From NVidia sample
#Section "Screen"
#    Identifier "Screen AGP TwinView"
#    Device "NV AGP TwinView"
#    Monitor "DFP-1"
#    DefaultColorDepth 24
#    Subsection "Display"
#        Depth       24
#        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
#    EndSubsection
#EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Mode         0666
EndSection

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