Video card not detected

D

drhowarddrfine

My wife's computer quit yesterday and she has the same nVidia graphics card I have in my FreeBSD workstation, a GeForce 9600 GT. I'm running two monitors with the one card now but I'm also inheriting her monitor so I can now run three monitors.

So I plug her graphics card into my computer and FreeBSD version 10.2p7 does not seem to detect it.

pciconf -vl shows the one card but not the second.

Code: 
vgapci0@pci0:1:0:0:    class=0x030000 card=0xc8673842 chip=0x062210de rev=0xa1 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
    device     = 'G94 [GeForce 9600 GT]'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA
dmesg|grep nvidia
Code: 
nvidia0: <GeForce 9600 GT> on vgapci0
vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io
vgapci0: child nvidia0 requested pci_enable_io

Here is the output of xrandr. I don't remember if DVI-I-0 and 1 were shown as disconnected before but is that a clue?

Code: 
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
TV-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-2 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95
   1600x1200     60.00
   1440x900      59.89
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02
   1280x960      60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94
DVI-I-3 connected 1920x1080+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 531mm x 299mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95
   1600x1200     60.00
   1440x900      59.89
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02
   1280x960      60.00
   1152x864      75.00
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25
   640x480       75.00    72.81    59.94

I built this workstation a year and a half ago and haven't touched anything on it since so I don't know where to go from here. I tried running nvidia-settings but I get errors with that. There's a PR out for it but I don't know if that's the issue considering it looks like the boards aren't even being detected. I removed /etc/X11/xorg.conf which had no effect on the two monitors I am using.
 
My first problem is that I don't think my second graphics card is being detected and I haven't had a chance to look into how to fix that yet but, protocelt sent me this link where the guy is trying to do the same as I on Linux. Not only did he have issues with which drivers to use, several didn't work, but he found he needed the SLI hardware bridge, something I'd have to try and find. A better discussion of his issue is here.

I wouldn't mind learning how to get the second card detected but, due to the additional work involved, I'm going to set this aside for more pressing issues.
 
SLI would let the graphics cards act as a single unit (I think). Technically, that should not be necessary. If I can find a power supply, I've got a system that needs to be set up where I can test that.
 
wblock@ One of the guys in that link said he needed it. Another guy never mentioned it. When I was fiddling with nvidia-settings or nvidia-xconfig, I sometimes saw it detected two devices but xrandr never showed two devices; nor did some other tests and sometimes even nvidia would lose it. Perhaps I got caught between restarting X, I don't know. I just wish I could reliably tell that both cards were detected in the first place. Thanks.

EDIT: I forgot I had this link: NVIDIA Accelerated FreeBSD Graphics Driver README and Installation Guide
 
Nvidia SLI isn't needed to use 2 Nvidia GPUs. You can use the Xinerama X extension instead for a similar effect but I do remember finding that it wasn't very stable at the time. I think this was with FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE or 9.1-RELEASE.

Using an SLI bridge like in the link I posted uses Nvidia's twinview extension which I believe is really just their own implementation of the Xinerama X extension. I found at the time I used a similar setup that it worked well. I don't remember having any problems with the driver version at the time, though I may have just been lucky.

I think I still have some notes on my configuration here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig them up some time tomorrow and post more information. At the very least, if I can't find the notes, I do also have 2 identical Nvidia cards(multiple sets actually as I enjoy games) and 3 monitors I can setup, configure, and test with a FreeBSD installation.
 
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