Created attachment 22050 [details]
output of lspci -vvnn

I was not able to get nv to send some signal out to the external monitor.

Hardware setup:
- Dell Inspiron 8600
- nVidia Geforce FX Go5200 64M
- internal DFP physical resolution is 1280x800
- external monitor is a NEC MultiSync FE1250+ connected to VGA
- 1GB RAM
- Intel Pentium M @ 1.4 GHz

Software setup:
- Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10, 32-bit)
- nv driver from repos (2.1.10)

The desired result:
- internal DFP at 1280x800 @ 60Hz
- external CRT at 1600x1200 @ 85Hz

Alternatives to nv:

This configuration can be done with TwinView using the nVidia binary blob which is not an option for me anymore because of the performance problems regarding KDE4. Currently I'm using the rather experimental nouveau driver which just makes things much easier because it can be configured like the Intel drivers for a dual head setup.

Results with nv:

When using the single head mode (Option "DualHead" "false") then everything works as expected. The DFP is set to 1280x800 and all things are fine (although the driver seems that the driver doesn't enable dithering as the lousy Dell panel is only displaying 6-bit color depth per channel which can be easily seen at the KDM4 standard login screen).

When turning on the dual head option (which I think is more than inappropriate) the DFP gets set to 1024x768, the screen size is set to 2048x768 but the external display remains blank (no signal at all).

Also I wonder myself why there is no entry visible in xrandr for the external connector although the external monitor gets recognized by the driver using EDID/DDC. But analysing the Xorg.0.log I come to the conclusing that the driver somehow mixes the two different displays. I had to manually set the DisplaySize in the xorg.conf for the internal DFP because the driver wanted to apply the dimensions of the external display (400mm x 300mm) to a resolution of 1280x800 resulting in very small font sizes.

The documentation for the driver is not helpfull at all and I couldn't see any restrictions or recommendations or any advanced information at all regarding dual head configurations.

Therfore I'm filing this bug here inhope either someone knows how to configure the driver appropriately or to give me the clear answer that this is not possible at all. But in the latter case I wonder why it is so easy to achieve the desired result with nouveau then (it seems to be very stable at least on my hardware).

Best regards and thanx,

Ancoron