Dual-head OpenBSD workstation?

[DraconianTimes]

Time to replace a bunch of ageing crap hardware with something a little more up-to-date. I'm planning on building an AMD64 machine from which I'll be running OpenBSD (probably -CURRENT). I already have an OpenBSD/amd64 machine as a server, which has been very reliable. This new machine will be my replacement home workstation, but I want to use two Dell 2408WFP 24" TFTs with it as I always have lots of stuff open (research, watching DVDs/AVIs, mail client, etc). So, question is:

Does anyone have any recommendations for supported (and decent performance) graphics cards I can put in my new system which will support the dual monitors? (or am I better off buying two graphics cards and configuring xenocara appropriately)

Thanks!

[jggimi]

Disclaimer: I have not tried the new radeon(4) driver, but it seems to support dual-head configurations, either via xrandr(1), or directly.

See:

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=artic...20080713015038

[adamk]

The radeon driver does support dualhead just fine under FreeBSD with xrandr 1.2. To get xrandr 1.2 support you need a rather new version of the driver, and I'm not sure what's available in OpenBSD, but if it's available, I would assume it should just work :-) *assume* being the key word here.

Even if xrandr 1.2 is not an option, separate screen sections with xinerama should work. I've also not tried that under OpenBSD, but it does work fine in FreeBSD and NetBSD (or did a few months ago).

Adam

[DraconianTimes]

Thanks to you both for the useful info.

Having reviewed the OpenBSD man page for xrandr, it seems it supports the 1.2 options.

I found a fairly priced dual-DVI Radeon HD 3870 which I'll probably go for - this card has the RV670 chip according to radeon(4). [ http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142605 ]

Cheers...

[adamk]

FYI, the HD cards are only newly supported in the radeon driver. You will need a *very* new version of the radeon driver for that particular card.

[DraconianTimes]

Originally Posted by adamk

FYI, the HD cards are only newly supported in the radeon driver. You will need a *very* new version of the radeon driver for that particular card.

I was planning on running 4.4-CURRENT - I checked the man page: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.c...64&format=html and it has listed the HD 3870 as supported - are there other things I should be looking out for as potential show stoppers?

Thx.

[adamk]

No, I think that's pretty much it. If the man page says it will work, it should certainly work.

Adam