I have a primary monitor connected to an AMD 7970 and a secondary monitor connected to an integrated intel HD4000. Switched to linux about a week ago and everything was working great until I installed the AMD drivers. Now the intel iGPU seems to be disabled.
When I was using the open source drivers that came with linux mint both graphics cards were working but I could not play any 3D games very well.
I guess the question is: Is it possible to install an Intel graphics driver alongside the amd one to run both monitors simultaneously?
If you're wondering why I don't connect my second monitor to the 7970: the ports on the gpu are HDMI (first monitor), DVI and two Mini DP while my second monitor has two HDMI and one VGA port.
Use a displayport to vga adapter or try to get both drivers working side by side happily. Running multiple drivers seems to be a general source of headache so my solution would be spend $5 and get the adapter.
Or even simpler, maybe you could just plug the secondary monitor into the HDMI port with a regular HDMI cable and the primary monitor into the DVI port with a DVI cable, if the primary monitor has DVI input. Then all you would have to do is change the display arrangement in Linux so the DVI is the primary.
If the primary monitor doesn't have DVI input, then DVI to HDMI adapter might be the simplest way to hook up. The two are electrically compatible just different form factors, so a cable with HDMI on one end and DVI on the other needs no internal electronics and should be pretty cheap.
VGA is an analog signal and much crappier than digital signals like HDMI or DVI.
Trying to get two different display drivers running on the other hand sounds like a bad time.
Some cards have problems running dvi and hdmi at the same time which is why I said adapter. Although seeing if his works isn't a bad idea if it gets him out of buying an adapter.