Need dual monitor help Fedora 28

[DungeonLord]

so i recently got gifted a used dell poweredge r710 that has now become my only working pc at the moment due to finance issues.

It consists of 2 X5550 cpus, 8x 4gb hmt151r7bfr4c-h9 memory modules, Perc 6/i raid card, 1 Intel DC 3510 480gb ssd, 2x 870W cpu’s, a belkin f5d7050 wireless g usb stick, and i put fedora 28 64 bit on it. it has a built in matrox mga g200ew wpcm450 8mb graphics and i modified one of the x8 pcie lanes so i could add my HIS IceQ Radeon 4670 1gb card. i have the matrox gpu powering a 1024x768 monitor and the radeon powering a 1080p monitor.

on boot only the matrox screen shows anything, which i’m fine with. once fedora starts and i need to enter my password for the disk encryption both monitors show the same thing and this continues until i get to the log in screen when my radeon monitor goes black. after login it continues to stay black.

if i do “lspci | grep VGA” i see both graphics devices listed however when i type in “xrandr” it shows only the matrox device. in the display gui i do not get a drop-down option for my radeon screen. i have already googled the issue and haven’t found a clear cause or answer and typing in random commands from the internet on a fresh install just bothers me.

it seems to me like my radeon card is disabled in the kernel somehow like my usb wifi stick was and i dont know enough yet to turn it back on.

i could run both monitors off the radeon card and disable the matrox card in the bios, but i plan on gaming with this system until i can get a better system built and i want to offload as much as i can from my radeon card in the mean time so it gets better fps. so if anyone knows how to get my main radeon gpu working i would greatly appreciate it.

[CwF]

I'm not familiar with that Dell but am with some Supermicro equivalents. BTW, I have a pair of unused X5687's if you're interested. Anyway, to use both the AMD and Matrox you'll need to specify the AMD in usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/AMD-Matrox.conf and remember a full screen app will default to the primary card/screen/device, so potentially the matrox. The board may have a hardware disable for the matrox in addition to the bios selection. I'd suggest leaving the bios on a default order and use the hardware jumper if available. This way the boot screen will be on the amd. Also, the amd may need to be in a specific slot (6?) for a boot screen, but in any slot for the OS if correctly declared. Note that the Matrox will do 1980*1200or1080 with a custom mode but is slow, skip it, UNLESS you pass the AMD to a vm! Then it's worth keeping the matrox alive. Also the amd firmware needs installed I believe. "offloading" anything to the matrox will not help the AMD, disabling will. I assume you cut out the end of the slot to fit the x16 card? Kudos...

[DungeonLord]

so to go through your comment, i would love to have a 3.6ghz processor instead of a 2.6ghz, but i have no way to afford them right now. 

i looked in that folder and it has a 10-amdgpu.conf and a 10-radeon.conf and they both show

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Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "AMDgpu"
MatchDriver "amdgpu"
Driver "amdgpu"
EndSection
and 

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Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "Radeon"
MatchDriver "radeon"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection
i have a few other .conf files but none of them read matrox. unfortunately this computer has no jumpers inside of it other than a cmos reset jumper. the matrox card is dell specific and is limited to 1280x1024. yes i did remove the end of the slot to allow a x16 card in a x8 slot. and thank you for for the help rather than flaming me instantly for trying to game on a server.

[CwF]

thank you for for the help rather than flaming me instantly for trying to game on a server.

Ha! I have family that races Super Stock Trucks, round and round, in a truck? You'll find that ill-fated machine of yours will do fantastic. You'll find that you can get 99% out of that card in that butchered slot. You'll find you need an air conditioner...

Onwards, considering the matrox, it's in all vendors 5500/5520 series servers. A jumper is better, but if the bios allows disable great, use it. Without a jumper or bios disable it's likely the matrox address will be enumerated first - that's bad, it means default fallback actions will always have that matrox in the way and will force you to use a declaration file. I wired a spdt toggle to my jumper for play.

You can force the matrox like this, I tried 1920*1200 and it was offset to the left...I think 1080 worked, but settled on  1368*768 since it scaled well on my 1200p monitor.

Ask the computer how it sees the match with cvt

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cvt 1360 768
the return will be...
# 1360x768 59.80 Hz (CVT) hsync: 47.72 kHz; pclk: 84.75 MHz
Modeline "1360x768_60.00"   84.75  1360 1432 1568 1776  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsyncThen add the modes using the returned modeline:

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xrandr --newmode "1360x768_60.00"   84.75  1360 1432 1568 1776  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsync
Those will add to the available resolutions but still recommend not using the matrox unless you use it for a host/vm and use the amd in the vm. In that case, after learning that art, a similar declaration file needs to be in the vm.

More clear: some declaration I speak of is a file is where you found those generics tweaks, that file doesn't exist until you add it. Add a file named 52-somthing.conf to force xorg to your wishes. If you are wrong here you will be dumped to a prompt, so get ready to log on as root and...

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nano usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/52.*.conf
the "52-" part is a priority, I like 52. that and the name can be whatever...

Also note you can create this file with competing sections commented out so you can track multiple tries.

And note you need to find the pci BUSID, and the exact layout may not be exact here...
Create usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/52.gaming_server_video.conf

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Section “Screen”
    Identifier  “Default Screen”
    Device      “Card0”
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier  "Card0"
Driver      "amdgpu"
BusID       "PCI:0:4:0"
EndSectionSimply put, disabling the matrox avoids all of this headache and allows the autodetection to function correctly. Good luck!

And to add preemptively, once you rely on auto detection I can't help if the free AMD driver does or does not automagically  configure the second port on the amd card. I use the free nouveau and it does...

and load your distro's firmware-amd-graphics...

[DungeonLord]

yeah i guess i'll just disable the matrox card for now. i might be back with more questions if once i disable it my os doesnt automatically use the amd card
Post Merge: July 11, 2018, 01:39:04 AMwell i disabled the matrox card in the bios and there was a temporary black screen, which worried me i wont lie, but soon as memory check finished the bios started using my radeon card. i'm at desktop right now with both monitors working. have yet to start any games to see if i'm going to get playable fps, but i have high hopes.

[CwF]

Funny. Server boards can take forever to initialize when they are changed. I think I've felt that worry more than once. Beep, ahhhh.