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Matrox TripleHead Triples Your Viewing Pleasure

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that's-a-lot-of-real-estate dept.

mikemuch writes "Matrox brings one of the coolest features of its Parhelia graphics card--the ability to drive three monitors--to any setup through a little VGA box. ExtremeTech has a review of the Matrox TripleHead2Go up. The review is pretty positive, the immersion in games and extra productivity area are a definite boon, but there are drawbacks: First of all, three hi-res monitors will set you back some serious dough, also there are some compatibility issues with ATI GPUs, and you may get a little vertigo while surrounded by your WoW world."

42 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect for by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Funny
    Flight simulators. Mmm. Surround vision.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    1. re: perfect for by jdbear · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Once you've flown just about any Flight Sim on multiple monitors, it's hard to go back to just one. Two is good, but there is the problem of having to deal with the divider in the screen, or living with your view being offset from center. I usually opt to fly with one monitor just offset from the center, and the other looking out one window. Three is much better, because you can center the main monitor and use the two on the sides for side window views. I've used multiple video cards and a product called WidevieW to achieve this. WidevieW allows Microsoft Flight Sim to run on multiple machines in Slave mode so that one machine controls the plane and the others just handle the view.

          The difference it makes in flying sims is too big to describe. I know guys who have opted for many more monitors (13 or 19 even) to get a full surround view. I think that 3 or 5 would be gracious plenty.

      The cost is not that big a deal, either. Fifteen or seventeen inch flat panel monitors are available for less than $250 each, and can be used on other systems if the multi-monitor setup is not needed all the time.

      --
      If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
    2. Re:Perfect for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny



      its not great if you use linux, as the support is genarally attrotious,

      You'd think this thing would be perfect for linux gaming. You could run each of the three available games simultaneously.

    3. Re: perfect for by owlstead · · Score: 3, Informative

      Of course, these things are NOT seen as three different monitors. This means that you have to have support from the game to put the side views on the single monitor. I doubt many flight sims are capable of that, although there are so many add-ins for MS flight sim that this may just be that one exception.

  2. So to come back to reality... by IflyRC · · Score: 4, Funny

    and you may get a little vertigo while surrounded by your WoW world.

    WoW is addictive enough, something like this will send people over the deep end.

    1. Re:So to come back to reality... by Blue0ctane · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is huge. It might inspire a new generation of fat WoW nerds to become even fatter and more addicted.

      --
      Everyone's favorite Jewish kid!
  3. cool but... by mytrip · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd really like to see more games support multiple monitors. I have a bunch that dont and only support up to 1280x1024.

    --
    Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
    1. Re:cool but... by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'd really like to see more games support multiple monitors. I have a bunch that dont and only support up to 1280x1024.

      That's because resolution isn't important; only FPS and polygon counts are. That's why you should always run your games in 640x480, so you can get the most frames-per-second.

  4. Whoa.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slow down there Matrox..... I'd be happy to just get some SingleHead

    1. Re:Whoa.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Think single head is rare, try getting married head ...

  5. "three hi-res monitors" by Z0mb1eman · · Score: 3, Informative
    FTA:

    Resolutions supported are limited to triple 640x480 (1920x480), triple 800x600(2400x600), triple 1024x768(3072x768), and triple 1280x1024(3840x1024).


    If you have the room for three 19" CRTs, they're dirt cheap nowadays. Even LCDs have come down in price a lot - 17" and 19" LCDs are generally 1280x1024, and you can easily find cheap 19" LCDs for under CAD$300 (and decent ones around $350). Not all three monitors need to be identical... I'd suggest a quality monitor in the middle (since it'll be used the most), and cheaper ones on the sides.
    --
    ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
    1. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by utlemming · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am thinking of the guy with a dual-head video card installing two of these...does that mean that using a dual-head monitor and two of these triple-head adapters, you can run six screens together? That would have to be one heck of a desk to have it all, but I could see the need for this. Better yet, if you hooked this thing up to a Quattro that supports four monitors, do you get 12 monitors for a resolution of 7680x2048? Or would you get 15360x1024?

      --
      The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
    2. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by setirw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For me, at least, the monitors have to be identical, as subtle color shifts between different monitors become especially evident when using a multimon setup. It's annoying when one monitor's 9300K differs from another's. It's also nice to have identical bezel widths, so that windows transition properly from one monitor to another.

      --
      This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
    3. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You'll be reducing individual screen resolutions, color depth, or both to account for the memory shortfall on the video card. Just because you can connect a big screen to the card doesn't necessarily mean the card has enough memory to feed it all in 24-bit color.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    4. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by LibertineR · · Score: 3, Informative

      The way to insure that is to stick with Viewsonic. I run 3 VP201b monitors at 1600x1200 resolution and the color temps are identical across them all. You can select 9300, 6500, 5400, 5000, RGB and user adjusted from the front panel. The bezel is .5 inches and Viewsonic sells a stand that will let you mount 3 monitors on a single center leg. This only works with an Nvidia SLI setup, I use dual 7800GTX cards. WHen I am not gaming, I can run Visual studio on one monitor, Watch a DVD or a TiVo feed from WinDVR/S-video on another, and Excel, Word and Outlook on the third. I could never go back to working on one monitor.

    5. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I just bought 3 AOC 19" lcd's from newegg for $200.00US each. they look as good as my expensive Viewsonics and have a better warranty. Couple that with a dirt cheap Nvidia 6600AGP and a 6600PCI and I have 4 head capability with greater resolution capabilities for much much less while able to play any game at full res. (Yes even doom3/quake4 is smooth at full res) Matrox should give up and stay in the industrial 4-12 head video cards and not try to touch the home or media markets.. they simply can not compete.

      Problem is that no ID games have been able to do multi-head cince Quake III had a hack to support it.

      And flight sim's have sucked for decades because support for multiple PC's in MS flight sim has been missing for a really long time. (I had 4 monitors + 1 for instruments in MS flight sim 4.0 back in college... it was fun abusing the Computer lab!)

      I would love to see games or mods use just a second monitor for stats, top down map, etc... but nobody is doing it as less than 10% have more than 1 monitor on their computer... Some games (C&C generals) have major control probmens with multiple monitors because the mouse does not stop at the border and they are using a 1 pixel wide b order for scrolling.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:"three hi-res monitors" by DilbertLand · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'll 2nd the comment about Matrox sticking to industrial cards. I made one of the early purchases of the AGP Parhelia card when they made all these great claims about how they were going to take over the world with "surround gaming". Fast forward one year and the user base was having to make their own mods to the software just to get the latest games to run. Matrox completely dropped any gaming support (and fired most of the staff responsible for it) for the card - pretty sad when it wouldn't even run World of Warcraft on a single monitor without crashing - after 9 months they still didn't have a solution and I haven't checked back since (yes 9 months and they kept saying they were "looking into it" - are you kidding me!!!). Sure makes me feel warm and fuzzy about spending almost $500 on a card. They just don't have the resources to really give the level of support needed for gaming markets.

  6. I can save you some dough... by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Funny

    Change screen setting to letterbox.
    FOV=120
    Sit Really Close.

    --
    -Styopa
  7. VGA only. Obsolete. by Jarnis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In the days of DVI connectors, this product is DOA. It uses VGA connectors only. 3840x1024 outta analog VGA is going to look .. umm.. less than perfect.

    Besides, with sli/crossfire board setups you can already get three screens with DVI - even with 1600x1200 displays, and couple of dual DVI 6600s are not that much more expensive than this thingy. The only thing this has going for is that it's external, so it works for laptops.

    This is Matrox once again playing the 'stuff for 3-screen stock market gamblers'-market. Same as with parhelia - most common use for Parhelia in the real world was by stock traders who wanted their three screens full of graphs and stuff. They can't get Parhelia sold to laptops (Which are the New Toy of the stock gamblers), so they made an external triple head thingy, so you can bring your laptop to your desk, stick in this and turn on your three screens of crappy fuzzy picture and look like a l33t stock market specialist.

    1. Re:VGA only. Obsolete. by necro81 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree that not providing DVI support will certainly dampen this product's future.

      However, I have a practical question: is there enough room on the back of a standard PCI card for three DVI ports side-by-side? My workstation graphics card has dual DVI outputs, plus an S-Video port. Even if you took the S-Video port off, there doesn't appear to be enough room for a third DVI connector. I suppose you could do it with mini-DVI ports, such as they have on some laptops (e.g., iBooks) but then you'd need a mini-to-DVI adapter for each screen, and that adds to the cost.

    2. Re:VGA only. Obsolete. by pla · · Score: 2, Informative

      DVI is a solution in search of a problem.

      Then, no offense, but you either use so much higher quality displays than the rest of us that you can't fairly compare the two, or you've never used an LCD display.

      Not a solution in search of a problem, DVI removes exactly such a beast - Namely, removing an D2A2D path that compensates for a digital device trying to maintain backward compatibility with old analogue (CRT) displays. Yes, newer flat panels do a pretty good job of autosyncing - But particularly if you use ClearType (or whatever your preferred platform calls its version of subpixel sampling), you can see the difference even on high-quality analogue displays (most people complain about this as either moire or color-fringed text).



      Now, a bit more on-topic, I have a very serious problem with this device... While a neat idea, it seems to me that:

      1) Few video cards support a 3840x1024 output device, and
      2) A pair of GF6600s, giving quad DVI out up to 2048x1536 per panel, costs half as much.

      Considering that, why would anyone buy this? Okay, someone mentioned the laptop market - But I have a pretty kickass Latitude less than a year old, and it won't drive anything above 1920 (I suppose it might go to 2048 if I manually hacked the timing, but 1920 pushes the available video bandwidth). Incidentally, for everyone wondering why Matrox didn't use DVI, I just gave the answer... DVI has a bandwidth of 165MHz, into which a mode of 2048x1200@60Hz using CV-RB just barely squeezes. At 3840x1024@60Hz (again using CV-RB), you need 252.8MHz - Or looking at it from a different direction to make it work, you'd need a refresh rate of 36Hz. If that doesn't cause eye-bleedyness, I don't know what would.

  8. PARHELIA OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS NEEDED! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Many of you might not know it, but Matrox has become hard to deal with when it comes to open source OS support.

    Matrox Parhelia open source drivers are badly needed! Since Parhelia was introduced something happened at Matrox and now they are not willing to do co-operation with open source people. Open source world has needed bug free, up to date Parhelia drivers for years, but without success.

    I'm writing this right now on a FreeBSD box that uses VESA driver to display X graphics. Would be damn nice to finally be able to use my video card properly. I own Matrox Millenium P650 AGP.

    There's one guy who provides up to date drivers to Linux community. You can find his unofficial Parhelia drivers here. He's a regular contributor at Matrox Technical Support Forums, but does not belong to Matrox staff.

  9. Diminishing Returns by VorpalRodent · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Working as a software engineer, I enjoy using multiple monitors for efficient multi-tasking (ie - I do not have to mess around with sizing different windows, I just throw them onto the other monitor).

    However, I wonder at what point this becomes no more beneficial. I could foresee finding uses for three monitors in a work environment (although less frequently than I utilize two monitors). But four monitors? Five?

    At some point, its got to become more difficult to keep track of where you've put everything than the efficiency of having everything available warrants.

    I can understand the benefit in games with immersive environments. I've played many a game where I would have enjoyed having three or more monitors in front of me, all useful to the game itself, but as far as productivity applications go, there's got to be a limit. More can't always be better.

    And then there's the...other...application. Will Slashdotters soon find themselves utilizing three whole monitors of porn? I know I like to keep my monitors having screenfulls of fluffy bunnies and puppies.

    --
    Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
  10. Re:this is news? by aero2600-5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's news because it's not a card. It's a box that you can attach to almost VGA card, but you would know that if you had RTFA, or even the summary.

    I'm not much of a gamer, but I can see this being pretty useful while coding. I usually have more than one source file open at a time. More desktop real estate can come in handy.

    Aero

    --
    Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
  11. Re:How many games support these resolutions? by portwojc · · Score: 2, Informative

    A bunch of games support this and the list grows.

    http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/th2go/gamin g/list.cfm

  12. Is this the answer for Multiple Monitors and KVMs? by $1uck · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've got two monitor system at home and 3 pc's hooked up into a KVM switch. Only one machine gets to use the second monitor in the current setup. Even if my other machines had the video output for multiple monitors I wouldn't be able to pipe them all through the kvm switch. Can this device sit outside the kvm switch and allow all three pc's access to both (or even all three if I bought another monitor)? If so this would definitely beat buying video cards that allow 3 monitors (or 2 monitors) for all three pcs. I guess I should RTFA and find out.

  13. Forget the 3 monitors... by bugnuts · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Get yourself 3 projectors and a huge wrap-around screen (hell, white cardboard). VGA is fine on projectors, and you can blend the edges.

    Talk about immersive... imagine a driving game on that.

  14. on a related note by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i used to have real estate envy, and car envy

    now i suffer from multiple monitor envy

    scroll down to the 8 screen, zenview and arena displays, and let your mouth hang open, watering

    hmmm, maybe i should rob a bank...

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  15. Productivity Problem by VorpalRodent · · Score: 5, Funny
    I was looking at the website, and it clearly depicts how Windows handles this. Windows believes that you have a single monitor that is three times as wide. The problem with this is that if I maximize a windowed application, it spans three monitors. It even shows a picture of this happening in their little demo advertisement.

    This totally defeats the purpose for productivity type things. I want to be able to maximize things onto a single monitor. I don't want to take the extra step of properly sizing something to fill a third of my "monitor".

    Do they provide a means to trick Windows into artificially separating the monitor? Perhaps they could team up with Sony and provide a rootkit that does it for me that I can never remove, so that when I get rid of this, I only ever maximize things to one-third of my screen. That would be a hoot.

    --
    Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
    1. Re:Productivity Problem by ABoerma · · Score: 3, Informative

      TFA actually includes a nice little picture showing you can adjust these settings.

    2. Re:Productivity Problem by LibertineR · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dont use the Matrox solution for what you want. Get a couple Nvidia cards with dual DVI output. You have the option for 3 or 4 independent screens, or to combine all of them into one. This way, you can maximize a window to a single monitor, but then you can still drag a window from one monitor to another or have it span between two monitors if you want.

  16. Ob-Simpsons Quote by Otto · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Increase my killing power, eh?"

    --
    - Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
  17. Ribbed for her pleasure by Unski · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Matrox TripleHead Triples Your Viewing Pleasure"

    I'm sorry but the headline reads like a condom advertisement. Mind you, I do have the tiny puerile mind of an adolescent.

  18. Re:Even better for by Andy+Gardner · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Space flight simulators.

    Especially when they're free. ;)

  19. Not much has changed in the past few years ... by RembrandtX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was an early adopeter of the Parhelia card, [with 3 19 inch CRTS none the less] and sent it back in under a week.

    This box, 4 or 5 years later, is exactly the same thing, low resolution, flickery displays .. at least its a lot cheaper. still, for $50 you can buy an extra video card.. sure you can't have 180 degree WOW .. but have you ever tried to play WOW across even 2 monitors ?

    --

    --Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
  20. Re:How many games support these resolutions? by Pollardito · · Score: 2, Informative
    it looks like they've thought of that. from TFA:
    The other big killer app is "Surround Gaming." Matrox includes a Surround Gaming Utility, the latest version of which supports around 120 games. This simple application will find supported games on your hard drive and automatically edit their configuration files to support triple-wide display resolutions like 1920x480, 2400x600, 3072x768, or 3840x1024. Because the OS sees the TripleHead2Go device as though it were a single monitor with a maximum resolution of 3840x1024, it works just fine with SLI configurations.
  21. trip heads ... can't live without em ... by teckfrek · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been using the dualhead2go for about 4 months now. I hang it off my lappy and run trip heads and frankly, I can't live without it. Takes a little mucking to get it working right with Linux but it's well worth it. One note, I've attempted to get this working under FC5 with Xorg.7.0 and no luck. The accelerated ATI drivers aren't working well with it either, but the radeon drivers with Xorg.6.8 work great. To anyone with spare monitors, I highly recommend it.

  22. Its about time! by stinerman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Finally I can build the computer system from Swordfish!

  23. Or even better... by temojen · · Score: 2, Funny

    3 times the frozen bubbles!!!1!



    w00t!

  24. awww yeah by sentientbrendan · · Score: 2, Funny

    >Matrox TripleHead Triples Your Viewing Pleasure
    Awesome, but... when did Matrox expand into the prostitution business?

  25. Big monitors and vertigo... by plasticpixel · · Score: 4, Insightful
    and you may get a little vertigo while surrounded by your WoW world.


    You get used to it. I set up a Sharp Aquos 45" as my desktop
    monitor. Sitting 3ft away from it gives a pretty immersive
    view of games running at 1920x1080i. I was a little sick to
    the stomach at first, but it soon passed. Now playing World
    of Warcraft on anything else feels like peering into another world through
    a keyhole.

    I also find that with a big monitor, I don't hunch over the desk anymore
    to make out the letters. My neck and back problems have dissapeared.

    Bigger is better.

    To be truely immersive with three monitors, they should probably be
    in the 24" wide size. Three tiny little 17" or 19" monitors won't
    cut it. Or better yet, mount three projectors to a rail, line up
    the edges where the picture meets, and you have a really cool wrap-around
    experience!

  26. Re:/nitpick on by snuf23 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The article notes that the device has software fixes for the games to support the 3 display mode. World of Warcraft is one of the games they tested with it and they said it ran fine (unlike Oblivion which was slow).
    Maybe Chuck Norris was using this product.

    --
    Sometimes my arms bend back.