Print Article: Matrox TripleHead2Go Preview



		Matrox TripleHead2Go Preview March 02, 2006 Brandon Sandman Bell

Summary: What if you could connect three monitors to your GeForce or Radeon-equipped system for a wider field-of-view in games -- would you be interested? Hardware enthusiasts may recall this technology was first demonstrated over three years ago in the Matrox Parhelia. Well today Matrox brings TripleHead support to practically anyone with a laptop or PC with their TripleHead2Go module. See how it works and how much it will cost in today's article!

Introduction Page:: ( 1 / 2 )

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One of the coolest features of Matrox’s Parhelia-512 was its support for up to three independent displays. Bob wrote an in-depth article on this feature, dubbed Surround Gaming by Matrox, testing the technology out on a wide variety of games and walked
away very impressed with the technology.

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The premise behind Surround Gaming was simple: with up to three monitors at your disposal, your field of view is increased from what’s directly in front of you, to objects on your front left and front right sides. This was demonstrated most profoundly in racing sims like the NASCAR series where you could see your opponents earlier as they came in to make a pass.

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Unfortunately, that was over three years ago. Since then newer, more graphically-intensive games have been released that are too much for the Parhelia to handle. But what if you could run three monitors off your GeForce 7800 GT SLI setup or your Radeon X800 XL? That’s where Matrox’s TripleHead2Go comes in.

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It’s important to note that in order to get the 3840x1024 resolution, your graphics card must have at least a 300MHz RAMDAC, but this shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most gamers as even old GeForce4 MX GPUs shipped with dual 350MHz RAMDACs. It’s also important to keep in mind that TripleHead2Go takes the analog signal from the GPU in order to work, so VGA connections are used to output to your three monitors.

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Gaming with TripleHead2Go Page:: ( 2 / 2 )

Matrox will provide a utility to ease the process, similar to how NVIDIA provides SLI profiles end users can customize to add SLI support to their favorite games.

Here are a few demo shots of Surround Gaming provided by Matrox of TripleHead2Go in action:

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Matrox plans to support all of ATI and NVIDIA’s latest major GPU releases as well as integrated chipsets with TripleHead2Go, and will maintain a list of supported products on their website. Since some GPUs are better equipped to handle TripleHead2Go’s 3840x1024 mode better than others (say for instance older GeForce MX and Radeon LE cards), Matrox will also provide screen resolution recommendations for all supported products on their website as well.

Price and availability

Matrox’s TripleHead2Go module will retail for an MSRP of $299 ($130 more than Matrox DualHead2Go) and will go on sale next month in April. Matrox expects the first TripleHead2Go modules to hit shelves in about six weeks.

We’re eager to see how well the technology works with existing games and GPUs, if it’s anything like Surround Gaming on the Parhelia, we have a feeling that the hardcore flight sim and racing sim communities in particular will be all over TripleHead2Go technology as gamers in these genres will benefit greatly from the wider field of view TripleHead2Go brings. The beauty of it is that it should work seamlessly with existing graphics cards, with the only caveat being that you’ll have to run one of TripleHead2Go’s four resolution modes over a VGA connection. Workstation and even regular Windows users should also enjoy the benefits of a third monitor as well.

Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see how it all works in a few weeks, but if everything works as easily as Matrox suggests, TripleHead2Go could be a very interesting product when it debuts next month.

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