Have had a long running discussion on another site but figured I would ask around here. I have tried MANY different combination of kexts and bootloaders but neither myself (or anyone else I have talked to) has ever been able to get the 1 Gb version to support dual screens. The oddest thing is we have seen many reports of people who have the 512 Mb version of this card getting dual screens working with no problems.

Does anyone have any constructive ideas on why this may be happening?

What way of screen-conection have you been using? Dual-DVI or DVI+VGA cannot not work on any RV710 or RV730 GPU card on OS X. One screen needs to be connected via HDMI. (Tested with 4550 & 4650)

With the two above combinations you can only have the same signal beeing displayed on both screens with using Motmot or Flicker Framebuffer (For example booter like AsereBLN, PC_EFI beta, VGA-PC_EFI 10.6 from my HD46X0 Thread, Chameleon RC4 or ATY_Init with ATY,Motmot in Info.plist). Also this is only working till 10F58 or any earlier Framebuffer kexts + after wake on sleep you'll only have the signal on one screen.



I can take photo of working dual-monitoring also if necessary, but this would require to move my PC and one screen to the living room cause I don't have any HDMI screens around here. ;-)

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Now right there is a damn handy piece of information...I have tried HDMI several times in my experiments but always as an after thought. I have tested using DVI+VGA and DVI (+vga adapter) + VGA. I do not have a pure HDMI display, all testing with HDMI that I have done uses a HDMI to DVI adapter.

You seem quite knowledgeable, unfortunately I see you have the 512 version of the 4650. In all the works I have done on the other site I had multiple reports of working 512s but anyone with a 1Gb was unable to replicate the success.

You tell me, what combos do I need to get 2 working displays (not just mirrored but spanning)?

I have had one display connected via VGA + one connected to my TV via HDMI (both without any adapters) + Motmot Framebuffer + 10.6.3 with stock kexts (just devid, 10.6.4 might work as well, but if not ATI4600Controller, ATIFramebuffer + ATISupport from 10.6.3 might be worth trying) which was giving me true dual-monitoring (both displays beeing displayed in System-Profiler + the common options in System-Configuration) - worked (apart, both screens not waking-up from Sleep)

In generall it is already kind of fiddly job to get the right "combo" for one working display on ATI cards at all...

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Explain to me one thing please. How do I select which Framebuffer I am running. I have noticed this tends to change based on which bootloader I use, but never tried to select a particular one.

The codename of the Framebuffer driver you are currently using is displayed in System-Profiler > Hardware > PCI-Cards for example in my current case it says "ATY,MotmotParent"
If you want to use GraphicsEnabler=Yes for injection you would gonna need to change the source code of your prefered bootloader to use a different FB. If you want to try out some different combos it might be easier to change GraphicsEnabler to No & replace it with the latest ATY_Init.kext by netkas (32-Bit only) - just change both ATY,**** in "ATI Radeon 4600 Series" part of the Info.plist to the one you want to try - FBs worth trying on these cards are Motmot, Shrike, Flicker & Peregrine. But as I have been trying quite a lot myself, I don't think you'll have much luck with dualmonitoring + any D-SUB/DVI combination - even with changing this.

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thats laaaaame