Rob Malpass wrote:
> Dear all
>
> Thanks to everyone who replied on this one. I've had several
> independent problems over the last few days including a lighting
> problem and a complete XP crash (blue screen) so I've lost the
> original messages - hence I can't just reply. Back to the plot - we
> were at the stage of me posting my xorg.conf and xorg.0.log. Both of
> these are given below.
>
> I'm totally out of my depth here I'm afraid. According to
> xorg.0.log, 2 cards seem to have been detected - one which is nvidia
> 6100 (which is not the card I have inside so I assume that's the
> onboard). The other - which should be an 8400 seems to have been
> misdetected "chipset unknown". I've had a fiddle with org.conf using
> vi but I'm still getting errors.
>
> To be honest, I don't particularly mind which card it uses - though I
> had hoped to run KDE or maybe compiz-fusion so it would be good if the
> better card is the one detected. The irony of this is that I played
> with FC8 a few weeks before Christmas and it couldn't detect the
> onboard graphics of that machine (different from this) so I
> deliberately bought the 8400 thinking it was more likely to be
> detected by the installer. Now it seems my best shot may be to use
> the onboard!!!
>
> Lastly - Sean asked which mobo I have and it's WinFast mcp61pm2ma
Hi Rob,
It looks like you are correct in your assumption that the on-board
graphics are handled by an nvidia 6100 chip.
This link points to two possibilities for your board, both of which
rather unhelpfully list the graphics as, "VGA on Die: Integrated":
http://tinyurl.com/2ej3ov
However, googling reveals that both options listed there use GeForce 6100.
A quick peek in the manual would appear to confirm that you are also
correct when you say that it appears you cannot disable the on-board
graphics. That said, there appears to be a dual-monitor option and I
wonder if enabling that is the key to enabling your PCI-E card?
Based on that I guess you need to review what your requirements are for
Linux: if you want to play with flashy graphics or graphics intensive
games I would say that you probably want to go for the PCI-E card as
that should give better peformance. If this is not important to you then
the on-board solution will probably suffice.
Either way it looks like the nvidia drivers are the way to go for better
performance. On that topic I found some stuff on this forum:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=930150#post930150
It might be worth taking up PabloTwo's advice and searching the forum
for your mobo/card(s)/distro to see if there are any HOWTOs that detail
the best way to enable nvidia graphics in FC8 generally or specifically
for your hardware.
One thing worthy of mention is that you ensure that the monitor is
plugged in to the correct card (on-board or PCI-E) when testing changes
- I've been caught out by that before! <blush>
Finally, try substituting 'vesa' or 'nv' for 'nvidia' here:
Section "Device"
Identifier "nvidia GeForce 6100"
Boardname "nv"
Busid "PCI:0:13:0"
Driver "nvidia"
Screen 0
EndSection
It doesn't use the more powerful nvidia drivers but it might get you up
and running with the on-board card while you install them.
Sean
