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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."

24 of 215 comments (clear)

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

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    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.

      --
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    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.
  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.
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    1. 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.
    2. 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?
    3. 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.

    4. 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.

      --
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  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.

  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.

    --
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  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

    --
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  11. 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.

  12. 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.

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

    Finally I can build the computer system from Swordfish!

  14. 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!