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Is it possible to dedicate a monitor for VirtualBox use?

Configuration

• Windows 7
• Intel i7-based platform
• ATI Raedon HD 5850 Display card
• VirtualBox with Ubuntu 10.10 as guest

Problem:

I wanted to connect another monitor to my current setup (Which is a single monitor, dell U2711 monitor) so that it would be dedicated to one (or more if possible) virtual machine and for virtual machine use only. Ideally, I do not want the Windows desktop to extend to that particular monitor.

How can I fit 6 7970 Graphics Cards in one computer?

Okay, based on my previous question, it turns out I can find a motherboard to support 6 PCI slots and therefore 6 GPUs. But now I want to use 6 GPU's, specifically, the Radeon 7970.

Obviously, they won't all fit in and at most, I can put in three. So using PCI risers, or an external PCI mount, or whatever, what cheap and available solutions exist?

My display is blank when I turn on my HDTV connected to Media Center

When I turn on my TV, it's often the case that the screen is blank and I have to unplug / plug the HDMI cable connected from the Windows Media Center to a Samsung LED TV.

This problem only occurs when the Media Center has played content that contains HDCP data (which is the case if you are using an ATI Digital Cable Tuner or OCUR device).

The card is an ATI HD4550 and the OS is Windows 7.

Multiple video cards on Windows 7

I've got an Nvidia Geforce 9500GT and am thinking of buying an ATI Radeon HD 4850. I have two PCI-Express slots. Would I be able to run these cards simultaneously on Windows 7? I want to also be able to use 4 monitors.

I've checked online and found plenty of SLI and Crossfire tutorials, and plenty of driver issue warnings, but no definitive answer.

Would it be as easy as putting in the new card and installing the drivers (assuming also my PSU can support both)?

Does the Radeon HD 5450 support three displays?

I know that ATI.com says that the Radeon HD 5450 supports three displays. My question is, how does it support three displays without DisplayPort? I see only VGA, HDMI, and DVI on 5450s.

ATI Temperature Monitoring

I'm trying to monitor the temperature of my GPUs (multiple ATI 5970) in my computation cluster. Problem is that the aticonfig tool does not work in headless mode

# /usr/bin/aticonfig --od-gettemperature
No protocol specified
ERROR - X needs to be running to perform ATI Overdrive(TM) commands

and even worse if I try to run aticonfig with my monitoring user (munin) it will ask to be executed as root. Is there a simple way to read the temperature of the GPUs without having to resort to X?

ATI Radeon 5770 Eyefinity - three monitors

How do I setup Eyefinity to support three monitors on a Radeon HD 5770 card? Currently I can setup only two at once in any combination.

Monitors are connected as DVI-DVI-HDMI.

Prevent Radeon driver from attaching to specific PCI devices?

I have two Radeon cards in this machine, a Radeon HD 6570 and a Radeon HD 6950:

lspci | grep VGA

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Turks [Radeon HD 6570]
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Cayman PRO [Radeon HD 6950]

I'm trying to get VGA passthrough to work with KVM on Debian 7 (Wheezy), passing through the 6950 as a secondary video card to a Windows 7 guest. This works fine if I blacklist the radeon kernel module via /etc/modprobe.d/.

If I remove the blacklist to run X11 (or even just a KMS console) on the 6570 the radeon module seems to attach to both cards:

dmesg | egrep "01:00.0|02:00.0|radeon"

pci 0000:01:00.0: [1002:6759] type 0 class 0x000300
pci 0000:01:00.0: reg 10: [mem 0xe0000000-0xefffffff 64bit pref]
pci 0000:01:00.0: reg 18: [mem 0xf7e20000-0xf7e3ffff 64bit]
pci 0000:01:00.0: reg 20: [io 0xe000-0xe0ff]
pci 0000:01:00.0: reg 30: [mem 0xf7e00000-0xf7e1ffff pref]
pci 0000:01:00.0: supports D1 D2
pci 0000:02:00.0: [1002:6719] type 0 class 0x000300
pci 0000:02:00.0: reg 10: [mem 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff 64bit pref]
pci 0000:02:00.0: reg 18: [mem 0xf7d20000-0xf7d3ffff 64bit]
pci 0000:02:00.0: reg 20: [io 0xd000-0xd0ff]
pci 0000:02:00.0: reg 30: [mem 0xf7d00000-0xf7d1ffff pref]
pci 0000:02:00.0: supports D1 D2
vgaarb: device added: PCI:0000:01:00.0,decodes=io+mem,owns=io+mem,locks=none
vgaarb: device added: PCI:0000:02:00.0,decodes=io+mem,owns=none,locks=none
vgaarb: bridge control possible 0000:02:00.0
vgaarb: bridge control possible 0000:01:00.0
pci 0000:01:00.0: Boot video device
[drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
radeon 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
radeon 0000:01:00.0: VRAM: 1024M 0x0000000000000000 - 0x000000003FFFFFFF (1024M used)
radeon 0000:01:00.0: GTT: 512M 0x0000000040000000 - 0x000000005FFFFFFF
[drm] radeon: 1024M of VRAM memory ready
[drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
radeon 0000:01:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X
radeon 0000:01:00.0: radeon: using MSI.
[drm] radeon: irq initialized.
radeon 0000:01:00.0: WB enabled
[drm] radeon: ib pool ready.
[drm] radeon: power management initialized
fbcon: radeondrmfb (fb0) is primary device
fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[drm] Initialized radeon 2.12.0 20080528 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0
radeon 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003)
radeon 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
radeon 0000:02:00.0: VRAM: 2048M 0x0000000000000000 - 0x000000007FFFFFFF (2048M used)
radeon 0000:02:00.0: GTT: 512M 0x0000000080000000 - 0x000000009FFFFFFF
[drm] radeon: 2048M of VRAM memory ready
[drm] radeon: 512M of GTT memory ready.
radeon 0000:02:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X
radeon 0000:02:00.0: radeon: using MSI.
[drm] radeon: irq initialized.
radeon 0000:02:00.0: WB enabled
[drm] radeon: ib pool ready.
[drm] radeon: power management initialized
fb1: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
[drm] Initialized radeon 2.12.0 20080528 for 0000:02:00.0 on minor 1
[drm] radeon: finishing device.
radeon 0000:02:00.0: ffff88041a941800 unpin not necessary
[drm] radeon: ttm finalized
pci-stub 0000:02:00.0: claimed by stub
pci-stub 0000:02:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X

This causes the Windows 7 VM to bluescreen on boot.

How can I configure things so that module radeon only attaches to the 6570 and not the 6950?

Confirm correctly working of hardware acceleration in Chrome (Windows 7)?

I'm having troubles getting hardware acceleration support for Youtube.

Both Windows and flash player are enabled for hardware acceleration. The drivers for the graphics card are installed.

The statistics in Youtube still show 'software video decoding'.

How can I confirm that hardware acceleration is correctly working (if at all) in Windows 7?

I'm using: Chrome, Ati Radeon HD 3450 AGP

How do I enable/disable overscan on my TV in Catalyst Control Center?

I've connected my PC to my TV via HDMI (I've also tried using DVI). Whatever the resolution (anything from 800 x 600 to 1080p), the image displayed on the TV does not fill the entire screen surface; there's a black border on the edge of the image. This happens in both Vista and Windows 7.

After a bit of searching I came to the conclusion it's got something to do with overscan done by the graphics card (ATI 3200HD). It's definitely not the TV because on my old PC there were no such problems. I've searched for the option in Catalyst Control Center 9.9 but it's not available for the TV; if I connect a normal LCD display, the option is there, but only for the LCD screen. If I choose Configure for my TV, where the overscan option should be, it takes me to the Welcome tab in CCC. How can I make the image fill the entire screen? How can I enable/disable overscan for my TV?

How to stop windows resizing when the monitor display channel is turned off / switched to different source

I have a new 6870 Amd Radeon adapter with its drivers set to 1080p 60Hz resolution hooked up to a 2008 47" high end Samsung HDMI based TV.

However, when the tv is turned to a different HDMI input -(when I come back into windows) somehow Windows decides to resize all the open apps to a lower resolution - including some of the side docked hidden pop-outs. When it resizes those though - it just sticked the pop-outs in the middle of the screen and all the resized windows from the open applications in the top left corner - all of them stacked on top of each other and resized to the smaller resolution.

The things that seem to be ok after returning are the icons on the desktop, the taskbar, and the sidebar.

Anyone have any knowledge of 1) how this happens 2) why it happens 3) how to stop it from resizing the applications and some of the docked pop-outs (they are not really resized after returning - they are just stuck in the middle of the screen approximately where they would be if the right or bottom sidebar should be if the screen was resized to that lower resolution).

My hypothesis is that upon losing HDMI signal - that Windows is told by something (driver, or windows itself) that the resolution to be without a signal being present (noting that HDMI signals and handshakes are two way on HDMI devices. If it loses the signal or the tv is switched to another device - then the display adapter must figure that out and tell Windows or figures it out and designs randomly to change the display size).

Any and all help is most appreciated. I asked AMD/ATI - but they said they don't know why or how this is happening. I was hoping that maybe this is THE place that the super users truly go to - those that develop display adapter drivers, or that dive deeply into these areas of windows. If there is better sites or just competing sites - please advise - noting I have already written AMD/ATI.

Response / Additions 4/7/2011

It is really nice to get your reply Shinrai. (BTW is it proper etiquette on these forums to have a discussion?) Yet 'only one issue' - I am using a single display in this case - so Windows doesn't move application windows to another desktop. Windows (or something) decides to shrink the desktop it currently has and resize all windows to the maximum size of the desktop. As such I would be glad if Windows would just keep the current size of the one desktop that is in operation.

I also know that this does NOT happen on monitors connected with DVI. There I have had one and two monitors setup and it doesn't resize those screens at all when disconnecting monitors, turning them off, whatever... they stay solid - everything in place - to such an extent that if you forgot the other monitor is off - you will have troubles finding some windows without using one of the control app utilities.

So if I could even get the HDMI handling by Windows (or the display driver) ( 1] which is doing this anyway the display driver or Windows - and 2] where is that other resolution size (1024x768) coming from - its not the smallest and its not the largest?) to be having like DVI - Life would be golden (for this aspect anyway).

** found others with same problem in this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1507324

Broken mouse cursor on main monitor, Windows 7 64 Bit, ATI Radeon HD 7870

UPDATE: Please check out the new answer I've posted to this problem. It might be that a solution to this frustrating problem exists now. Scroll down to see it.

Quite a while ago my graphic card died and I had to buy a new one. I decided for an ASUS Radeon HD 7870.

While I love the power of the graphic card and have no problems while playing games, I'm experiencing an annoying problem while I'm just on Windows with my dual monitor setup. Sometimes my mouse cursor gets broken on my main monitor and simply looks like this:

This seems to happen just at random situations and also sometimes when I move the mouse from one monitor to the other one. I can also always use a "workaround" to "fix" the problem, which means if I just move the mouse from one monitor to the other one often enough it becomes normal again at some point. But I don't want to do this all the time, so I'm searching for a solution.

I did a lot of Google research (try typing "ATI brok" in Google and it will already show you a lot of search entries for a broken Cursor), but the results where mostly not helping at all. Often they are "old" (from 2009 and before) and deal with mouse problems while playing games, which is not my problem. I'm missing up to date results from someone with maybe the same graphic card and can help me.

What I read some times is that deactivating windows aero should "fix" the problem, but to be honest I enjoy Windows Aero a lot and would prefer something different (I don't want to sound arrogant). The same is that some people say it would help to activate mouse trails, but the look & feel (like lagging) then bothers me even more. I also tried to disallow that the mouse cursor gets changed through designs, but this didn't change anything

Here is for example a big thread where people are talking about a similar (same?) problem. Some also state that deactivating Catalst AI would solve it for them, but I can't find this option in my up to date Catalyst Control Center anymore (maybe possible in a file somewhere in the directory of the CCC?).

Well, what's left to say is that I always keep my system up to date and already often installed new graphic card drivers (even sometimes tried Beta Versions). But the problem never disappeared.

Can someone here help me, has some ideas or experienced the same? I would be glad to hear from you! I'm also curious if this could maybe mean my graphic card is broken? (Although somehow it's hard to imagine for me)

Thanks a lot for every thought you're sharing with me.

Edit: Today it has happened again with the new ATI drivers.

Edit 2: Please check out the new answer I've posted to this problem. It might be that a solution to this frustrating problem exists now. Scroll down to see it.

3 Monitor PCI-e Graphics card on Linux (without tremendous pain)?

As we are all painfully aware, the only way to get multiple monitors AND compositing (Compiz) on Linux is to use a single graphics card that can drive both (or in my case all three) screens.

I bought a Radeon 5750 specifically because it claims to able to drive 3 monitors. I can plug in 3 monitors (2 DVI, 1 HDMI) and the Catalyst Control Center shows all 3, but only 2 can be enabled at a time.

The exact message is:

The current settings cannot be applied.  Possible issues may include:
   - Display(s) cannot be enabled.
   - Setting(s) cannot be applied due to insufficient video memory.

So I'm going to assume that either the 5750 doesn't support 3 monitors, OR, more likely, ATI couldn't be bothered to add that support to their Linux drivers.

So this is a multipart question:

First, can anyone suggest a PCI Express Graphics card that can run 3 screens on linux without tremendous pain? I'm looking for something where you install the driver and all three screens "just work". Does such a card exist?

Second, if you have a 5750, have you been able to get it to do 3 monitors?

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 at the moment.

UPDATE:

I got my active adapter in the mail today (it's DisplayPort to DVI) and so far things seem to be better. I can run my third screen, drag things seamlessly between them, and I am also running compiz. The adapter I'm using is a "B087B-005B" made by "Accell", UPC is "826388106239".

There's still a couple "annoyances" that need worked out though:

The left most screen is always the primary monitor. Which means the "gnome bar" (is that what you call the applications-places-system menu?) is always on the left most screen.

It also means that new dialogue boxes always opened centred on the left screen, which is counter intuitive. Especially if you're using a program like GIMP and the text editor or color picker pops up on the left. Does anyone know of a way to change it so that new windows always pop up on the center screen?

Is integrated graphics card Radeon HD 4200 capable of handling full HD?

I enjoy my integrated graphics card Radeon HD 4200 at resolution of 1280x1024 pixels on a 19" inches LG Flatron (5: 4 aspect ratio) (playing FIFA 10 at max resolution, max quality). But recently I decided to upgrade my monitor and to get a 24" inches BENQ, 1920x1080, full HD.

Would I experience any problems with that graphics card on a such a big monitor? Usually I don't play games, just movies/music/and of programming, but it would be nice to be able to play some Counter Strike without artifacts.

Yes It is. This is the best integrated GPU i've ever seen

ATI and Ctrl+Shift+F11

I have a Radeon HD 6850 and when I push Ctrl + Shift + F11, it decides to do some really stupid thing and change the colors. Pushing again Ctrl + Shift + F11 does absolutely nothing. Taking a print screen gives me something like this:

but this isn't even representative of how ridiculous it looks. It looks a little more like this:

Now, I can fix the resolution and the colors by just changing the colors back, but now my text highlighting appears in cyan:

and even after trying to reset my display settings again, it's still cyan. Rebooting did nothing, reinstalling my graphics drivers did nothing. Does anyone know what this rather useless "feature" is and how I can fix my text highlighting? Also, how can I disable this functionality?