nVidia GeForce8400 & NEC Monitor

[blueagle78]

I managed to install the nvidia drivers on my Fedora10 after quite a few hickups.
Firstly exiting the X Server was a challenge.
Then I was told I don't have a C Compiler so installed gcc.
Then I was told Kernel-source or kernel-devel was missing so did that.
At last it installed and straight-away my resolution dropped from 1024x768 to 640x480!
Did a reboot (I've been using Windows for last 13 years) no luck.
Then looked into nvidia X Configuration settings page and the highest resolution I can select is 640x480.
Its displaying correct graphics card there and I suspect its the monitor that's not getting recognised. How could I fix this issue? My monitor is an 18 inch NEC Multisync
PC Pro: Product Reviews: NEC MultiSync LCD 1880SX

Here's my xorg.conf file.

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder62) Tue Mar 24 06:15:32 PST 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from data in "/etc/sysconfig/keyboard"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

[waterhead]

When you make any changes to the display, do it with root privileges (su). Although I believe that the driver installation already runs this command, it won't hurt to run it again. You would enter this after the installation.

su <enter>
Password: <enter password>

nvidia-xconfig

Then run the configuration program, again with root permissions.

nvidia-settings

Make any changes using this GUI, and then have it save it to the xorg.conf file.

[blueagle78]

Waterhead thanks a lot for your response.
The problem is when I look at the nvidia configuration window the maximum resolution it would let me select is 640x480!
How could I tell it, I've got monitor which can do better than this? I believe graphics card is installed correctly because as I've said nvidia config has picked up 8400GS card.

[waterhead]

Sorry for the late reply, different time zones.

I'm not completely sure how to get around this. Does it recognize the monitor name/model correctly?

You could try updating the XServer to the latest version. There may also be a way to manually edit the xorg.conf file, and add the mode that you want. This is no longer guaranteed to work anymore, as that file isn't needed anymore.

[blueagle78]

I got it working!
I had been doing a lot of search on google yesterday and managed to get few answers.
I basically had to manually configure the xorg.conf file because system didn't know what monitor I had and what resolutions it supported.
Now I've got resolution set to 1280x1024 and I'm loving it!
I had lost the title bars after the xorg.conf file change but got those back when I disabled the desktop effects.

[waterhead]

Glad to hear. That is what I meant by manually editing the xorg.conf file.

If you could post the changes that you made to that file, it may help others with the same problem.

[ahmedhamdy27]

i tried this tutorial and it works for me on Centos , it should work for Fedora too
Configuring a NVIDIA graphics chip for CentOS and RHEL 5