BaseMosaic v295 vs v310 vs v325: Only up to three screens?

Hi,

I’m using Ubuntu 12.04 with 3 monitors hooked up to it using BaseMosaic. This worked fine. I was on NVIDIA drivers 310 using two GTX 560Ti graphics cards with a SLI connector.

A few days ago I tried hooking up a 4th monitor, configured the xorg.conf file, but still only 3 monitors popped up. Then I tried installing the v325 drivers after uninstalling all the ubuntu nvidia packages. This only worked for 2 monitors, because I couldn’t get BaseMosaic working anymore, even not from the NVIDIA GUI after enabling advanced options.

After a little bit of research I found that v310 only supports up to 3 monitors in BaseMosaic, the same is valid for v325.

In v295, however, it is possible to use 4 monitors using BaseMosaic. Why did the BaseMosaic supoort get limited to only 3 monitors? Currently I downgraded my drivers to v295 to be able to use 4 monitor without enabling Xinerama (I like the 3d support).

Will it be able in future drivers to support more then 3 monitors again using BaseMosaic?

Thnx in advance,

Arjen

Somebody knows an answer to this?

When I try to start X I get the following message in Xorg.0.log

[  2138.531] (WW) NVIDIA(0): More than three display devices requested in MetaMode
[  2138.531] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     "DFP-0:1920x1080_120+4240+0,2560x1440+1680+0,DFP-2:1680x1050+0+0,1680x1050+6160+0",
[  2138.531] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     but only three supported when Base Mosaic is enabled on
[  2138.531] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     this configuration; ignoring extra display devices.

Why is support for more then 3 monitors disabled in the newer versions of the drivers?

Is there anybody who can give me an answer please?

So I’m guessing nobody is active on these forums. Too bad, because I would really like to know why they nerfed base mosaic to only support a maximum of 3 monitors in the newer drivers.

This is expected behavior for latest drivers.

@sandipit
you’re not answering to anything related.

They asked:

  • Why is support for more then 3 monitors disabled in the newer versions of the drivers?
  • Will it be able in future drivers to support more then 3 monitors again using BaseMosaic?

As a side note, knowing that the removal of a feature is “expected” and not a bug, just make things worse.

For feature parity between Windows and Linux we set BaseMosaic to 3 screens on GeForce

@kokoko3k
Thanks for your response to sandipt. I don’t check this forum every day anymore.

@sandipt
If a maximum of 3 monitors was set for feature parity between Windows and Linux, then why does Windows still support 4 monitors without a problem? Will this mean that Windows will also be limited to a maximum of 3 monitors in the future?

Note: I don’t need BaseMosaic at all.

Does “feature parity” takes places only when the features are going to be removed?

I can’t figure out why nvidia went from 4 to 3 monitors on linux instead of just raising windows to 4.

Anyway, if i’m right, optimus support under linux is not on par with windows.
Are you nvidia going to fix optimus on linux, or “for feature parity” are you going to make the optimus support worse on windows too?
Maybe the same applies to stereo3d.

This doesn’t make any sense to me, and all points to some really bad (for the users and probably for the company image) marketing/managment choice.

Oh, and there is still a question waiting for an answer:

  • Will it be able in future drivers to support more then 3 monitors again using BaseMosaic?

Which, for “feature parity” means: Are you going to raise the number of monitors to 4 in windows so that “for feature parity” linux users can have it too?
Do a linux user have to post a bug report in the windows forum to have 4 monitors?

“Seriously, This Is Getting Ridiculous”

Dear Nvidia employees,

please forgive if i appear to be rude; but in my opinion, the linux user community really deserves some more information.
There are longstanding issues not being fixed, incompatibility with newer kernels, no proper optimus support, and now features are going to be removed from your linux driver. All this, while the popularity of linux in graphics-heavy areas (gaming, as am major point) slowly begins to rise, and lots of new interfaces and software related to graphics arise (DRI300, Wayland, Mir, etc). In other words, there is a lot of change going on right now.

So right now, we are very confused, because we are pretty sure that something is going to change on the part of nvidia, but we do not know at all what is going to change, or in which direction things will be going:
Will you abandon your current proprietary driver, in favor of a new, restructured one, possibly using other interfaces? Maybe you will not be maintaining a linux driver at all, and will support nouveau instead? Or is all of this just stupid speculation, and besides removing features from the current linux driver nothing will change?

I would really like to get some information about what your current and future plans for linux are. I am fully aware that supporting linux is harder and not as financially rewarding as supporting Windows, and i do not expect to get a fully satisfying driver as of tomorrow, but i think asking for some more information is not too demanding.

This response does not reflect the truth. I am sitting in windows right now and I’m looking at my fourth monitor running netflix. Now if yall were looking to have feature parity, I would able to do the same in ubuntu right now, and I wouldn’t have be here looking for a way to fix it.

@urmamasllama:
Have you a single desktop “spanned” over 4 monitors, with 2 monitors per card or are you using a single card with 4 outputs?

For “Feature Parity” could we please have support in the Linux driver for 3D vision without requiring a Quadro card? Windows driver allows this. Should I really need to buy another GPU just because this has been intentionally disabled in the Linux Driver?

my setup is nearly identical to the OP. two gtx560s each powering two monitors

Hello Sandip

Was this decision was made by an employee from India or from the United States?

I ask because it would be a terrible decision, but I don’t believe it was made as a decision. I think it is the excuse of the off-shore workers, who shouldn’t have done this.

Whatever is going on, this needs to be reversed and must never happen again. People purchased NVidia cards to operate 4 monitors with 3D acceleration. The 295 drivers and earlier supported that. Users tested their cards during the warranty period, and it worked.

Under the U.S. laws (Uniform Commercial Code), the historical support creates a Warranty for a Particular Purpose along with the Warranty of Merchantability and Fitness. Neither of these warranties can be waived. Nvidia could be sued by the class of affected users, and should lose.

That legal situation is as it should be. Companies have no right to withdraw features already sold to users, for any reason. To do so is stealing.

Haha, and to think I was gonna buy a nvidia card for my next machine. A++

Too bad nVIDIA, very bad!

And to think I was gonna buy a nVIDIA graphics card for my GNU/Linux.

Thanks for all the posts. I hope NVIDIA will come with a response soon. One that is a bit longer than 1 sentence.

BTW, just read the documentation of the v325 driver (Appendix B. X Config Options) It says that BaseMosaic will support up to 3 monitors and after that it gives an example configuration of a 2x2 setup (Which is 4 monitors)…