It has been a good four years since we've heard big things from the likes of Matrox. Headquartered in Dorval, Quebec, the company has been relatively quiet since the much-anticipated, but ultimately lackluster "Parhelia 512", which was announced in May of 2002. Today, they are breaking that silence with the release of the Matrox TripleHead2Go.

As a company, Matrox is well known for coming up with new and intriguing ways to use computer graphics technology. They pioneered the use of multiple monitors with a single video card ("MultiHead"), and now that feature is standard on virtually every video card. They also carved a name for themselves in the 2D quality/2D performance segment with their Millennium line of video cards, leading to the Matrox name becoming a common one amongst graphics professionals.

Even though the Parhelia was not the gaming card Matrox wanted it to be, it paved the way for the development of today's TripleHead2Go. One major feature that the Parhelia had was that of "Triple Head Gaming". The idea was that you could spread your game out over three displays, and enjoy a wider field of view, or additional display angles (i.e. Microsoft Flight Simulator). The concept of using more than one monitor for productivity had, of course, been seen before from both Matrox and competitors alike, but now Matrox has taken this a step further and combined the Parhelia's TripleHead capabilities with their previous DualHead2Go product to create an external display-connector break-out box which allows you to connect three displays to a single monitor output.

"Surround Gaming" is the new name of the game, but this new product promises to be an excellent solution for both the power user and gamer alike. Programming, web design, video editing, photo editing ... it has all been made possible on triple displays for the masses with a single video card. Laptop users are not left out in the cold either -- any laptop with a VGA video output can also add another three displays in addition to its own built-in display.

Matrox has created what looks like an incredible product, giving gamers a new form of immersion and allowing design/audio professionals a greater use of real estate. With our in-depth analysis, we will attempt to provide a real-world look at the benefits of the TripleHead2Go, as well as investigate any visual and performance impacts that going to triple displays may exhibit. We hope that this will give you a good understanding of a new product which could prove to be a revolutionary move on Matrox's part.

Matrox's TripleHead2Go is an incredibly simple-looking device. It is essentially a 10.5 x 8.5 x 2.5 cm black, metal box with four VGA connectors and a DC-in connector. One of those connectors is the input, which goes directly to the video card, while the other three branch out to the three independent displays (cleverly labeled "left", "center", and "right").

The TripleHead2Go has been implemented in such a way that the device is merely seen as a single, ultra-widescreen display (15:4 or 4:1, depending on your spanned resolution). As far as the video card and operating system are concerned, they only deal with outputting video at the correct resolution over a single VGA output, and the TripleHead2Go handles the splitting up of the signal on its own. This essentially makes the TripleHead2Go operating system-independent.

What do I mean when I say "ultra-widescreen"? Let's take a look at what sort of black magic the TripleHead2Go allows us to perform with our screen resolutions:

I've thrown in comparable 5:4/4:3 standard resolutions in order to serve as a reference for the pixel counts and video memory usage of the Triple-Head resolutions. Matrox has reported that while no NVIDIA cards seem to exhibit any issues with the highest Triple-Head resolutions, ATI's cards are somewhat problematic in 3D (no specifics were given, though it was mentioned that CrossFire absolutely will not do Triple-Head), and Intel's integrated graphics (popular in the laptop market) only work in the 640x480 based Triple-Head mode (1920x480).

As far as 3D rendering in "Surround Gaming" mode is concerned, the aspect ratio of what is being rendered has very little, if any, impact on frame rate. More important is the total pixel count, and in this case, gaming at 3840x1024 will be smooth as long as gaming at 2560x1600 is smooth, because these two resolutions have very close pixel counts. Matrox has stated that a number of games already support these non-standard resolutions out-of-the-box, along with properly-corrected fields of view. Those games that don't provision for non-standard resolutions can be helped out by Matrox's "Surround Gaming Utility", which we will discuss in more depth on the next page.

Let's sit here and absorb this information, though. A resolution of 3840x1024 spanned across three displays, readers ... we might just be able to fit all of Windows' system32 directory in a single Explorer window! ;-) Even more exciting is the prospect of photo/video editing and programming with three displays at your disposal. Now that's what I'm talking about! This product is being aimed at the business and production professionals just as much as the gamer. In fact, Matrox's previous DualHead2Go was aimed solely at the business and production professionals simply because it was not practical to play games in dual-head (lack of a "center" display).

The curious will want to know what happens when the desktop/game resolution is set to a standard single-display setting. Why you would want to do this when you have three awesome displays available is beyond me, but in case you do -- the TripleHead2Go will divert the signal to the center display only, and the other two will go into sleep mode. The assumption is that the center display is the one most comfortable to use with a particular user's desk layout.

Modern monitors have a feature dubbed "Display Data Channel" (DDC), which is a simple protocol for querying the monitor for a list of its capabilities (resolutions and refresh rates). It is because of DDC that you can plug that brand-spanking new monitor in, and Windows/OS X will automatically give you a list of all resolution/refresh rate combinations that the monitor can make use of. I haven't had as much luck with DDC on Linux, but hopefully that's been brought up-to-par with Windows/OS X by now. It also because of DDC that the TripleHead2Go is virtually 100% plug-and-play -- if your video card is capable of the odd 15:4/4:1 resolutions, they simply become an option on the display resolution slider in Windows, or the resolutions list in OS X.

Graphics aficionados will probably have already made note of the fact that I'm talking about VGA inputs and outputs rather than DVI. The TripleHead2Go, in its current form, is analog-only. The reasoning behind this is primarily one of market penetration. The "2Go" portion of the product's name is in reference to mobility and laptops -- Matrox is aiming the TripleHead2Go at the laptop market just as much as at the desktop market.

The problem with laptops is that not only do a frightening majority of them lack DVI output (the Apple PowerBook is the only one I can think of), but of those that do, even fewer of them have dual-link DVI. Dual-link DVI would be a requirement for a digital incarnation of the TripleHead2Go, as single-link DVI does not have enough bandwidth (165 MHz, 300 MHz is needed) to move all of the pixel data required to draw three screens at 60 Hz. The largest resolution possible with single-link DVI at 60 Hz is ~2.6 MP, which is not nearly enough to span three displays at the same resolutions that analog allows.

By first releasing a DVI version of the TripleHead2Go, Matrox would essentially be eliminating the philosophy behind the "2Go" portion of the name, along with cutting off a large potential market. Do not despair, however! Matrox's technology supports DVI, and they are planning to release a DVI version of the TripleHead2Go in the future.

Let's now take a gander or two at how this thing is actually installed and used in practice!

Due to the simple nature of the TripleHead2Go, I wasn't expecting to find a boat and a half in the box -- therefore I wasn't disappointed when all that I found was the following:

• TripleHead2Go device (surprised?)
• One 2-foot male-to-male VGA cable
• One 2-foot male-to-male DVI-to-VGA cable (think of a DVI-to-VGA adapter permanently built into the cable)
• DC power adapter and cord
• Software CD

All of the necessities required to make use of your shiny, new TripleHead2Go -- excellent! An issue was brought up in our lab regarding the length of the video cable that runs from the video card to the TripleHead2Go -- some mind find it too short if they want to place the TripleHead2Go on top of their computer case. My argument was that the cable length probably had to be kept to a minimum so as to minimize signal loss/introduction of noise. This is, after all, an analog VGA cable that will have to handle 3840x1024 at 60 Hz cleanly! The quality of the cable looks and feels superb, no doubt because of its intended purpose.

Installation of the TripleHead2Go literally takes minutes, given that your three displays are already set up on your desk, oriented properly, and the power cables plugged in. If you've ever successfully plugged a VGA connector into your video card, then you literally have all of the expertise required to set up the TripleHead2Go. The DC adapter isn't all that difficult to figure out either -- as long as you're at least 10 years old.

Upon first boot, I was presented with the regular Windows desktop of old, being displayed only on the center display. I quickly scurried over to the "Advanced" tab of Display Properties, and witnessed the great resolution potential of my resolution slider. I cranked that sucker up to 3840x1024, clicked "Apply", and ... the menacing hum of two CRTs powering up at once broke the dead silence in the room.

In all honesty, my very first impression was "Holy c**p, the distance between my Start button and my system tray is ginormous!" It really is. Without adjusting the sensitivity of your mouse, you're going to find yourself picking up the mouse a lot in order to navigate the pointer all the way from the left display to the right display. I used to be a heavy dual-monitor user in the day, so I'm used to the practice of scanning both displays at once and being able to work with two sources of information present. With three displays, it takes a little bit of getting used to, but the flow of working is absolutely wonderful.

In my mind, the core difference between two displays and three displays is that you go back to having a "central" display where you can do most of your stuff, while the side displays act as a complement -- whether that be some source of information, a few chat windows, a few terminal windows, a video playing, or even file management operations. I found it much easier to organize my workflow having a central display with two to complement it, rather than two displays where neither one is more important than the other.

After the initial excitement and goofing off, we installed the Matrox software, which consisted of a their multi-monitor PowerDesk software and the "Surround Gaming Utility" (henceforth to be referred to as "SGU" to save my hands from carpal tunnel syndrome). The SGU is what the gamer will want to focus on, and since we're a gaming folk here at Neoseeker, that is what we'll be taking a closer look at.

The SGU has a bit of a dated user interface, but it is otherwise easy to figure out. You are presented with a list of games that can be "optimized" to work in a Surround Gaming setup, along with buttons used to optimize, restore, or edit the configuration file of each game. Games that have been installed with official installers will most likely be detected, whereas games that do not have the appropriate Windows Registry entries will have to be located manually.

The basic idea of the SGU is the following:

• Pick your desired Surround Gaming resolution at the top (out of the four available)
• Pick your game
• Click "Optimize"

If you don't trust the SGU, you can also click the "Edit" button in order to see what modifications the utility will actually be making to your configuration files. In the case of Doom 3, four key variables were to be changed -- r_customWidth, r_customHeight, r_mode, and g_fov. Most games with a flexible/console design will probably follow this same path.

To date the SGU supports 120(!) games out of the box, and Matrox is dedicated to supporting more games as they are released. We've also been told that Matrox takes an active interest in working with developers to ensure the best experience with the TripleHead2Go and it seems that some developers are taking note - a recent World of Warcraft patch enabled support for ultra wide (3840x1024) resolutions and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion works gorgeously right out of the box. In addition, new profiles are easily created by users who tinker with game configuration settings and fans will no doubt help populate the web with profiles for many, many titles.

As with every new and unique product, there are some cons that need to be addressed with the TripleHead2Go.

First of all, unless your CRTs have a very thin frame around them, you can probably forget about using CRTs in a triple-head configuration for reading/looking at information that spans across more than one display. The 4.5-inch gap between our hulking monstrosities is simply too distracting - LCD's with slim/narrow bezels will yield the most immersive and least distracting experience. However, even with CRTs, a work pattern consisting of three sets of information that stay on distinct displays is perfectly usable.

My second concern is closely tied to the first, and it's a simple one -- you can all but forget about "maximize". A browser window maximized across all three displays is simply not practical. What would normally be a wrapped paragraph on a website becomes one enormously-long line, and it becomes a strain reading and having to move your head back and forth. Relegate one browser window to only one display, and you'll be good.

My third and final concern is one of visual quality. As I talked about in the introduction, Matrox has always been known for their superb engineering when it comes to visual quality, and the TripleHead2Go is no exception. Matrox is doing more with analog than I ever thought would be possible, but unfortunately, real-world physics always snags you in the end. I compared the sharpness and solidity of white text on a black background, and with the TripleHead2Go at 3840x1024 said text is a touch fuzzier and fluctuates a tad more when compared to the same display connected directly to the video card and running at 1280x1024.

To Matrox's credit, the flickering was really only noticeable when I stared at a particular piece of text at a few inches away from the screen for a few seconds at a time, but the text fuzziness would be noticeable to a user just switching from the single display to the TripleHead2Go.

With everything now out of the way, and the road paved ... how does this thing make your games better?! Get going!

Test Setup

For the testing procedures, we are continuing to use the same system that has been set as the standard for video card reviews here at Neoseeker. With a product that is being aimed at everyone from the business laptop user to the hardcore gamer, we wanted to test a range of video cards representative of what is currently out there -- meaning low-end, middle-end, and big-bucks-end -- err, high-end. Matrox's SGU was used to configure the games for ultra-widescreen resolutions.

The hardware used for our testing was as follows:

• AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor @ 2.7 GHz (300 MHz * 9)
• ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard
• 2*512 MB OCZ PC4800 Platinum Edition memory (2.5-4-4-8 1T, 300 MHz)
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• FSP FX700-GLN power supply

The three video cards tested were the following:

• 2x BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC (512 MB, SLI)
• BFG GeForce 7600 GT OC (256 MB)
• Leadtek GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB)

And finally, our short list of games tested consisted of the following:

• F.E.A.R.
• Doom 3
• Half-Life 2 Video Stress Test (Counter-Strike: Source)
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 is normally not on our list of tested games for video card reviews, but we felt that it would give us meaningful results with the middle- and lower-end video cards, since it is an aging game that is still very popular online. As a side note, all game settings were set to maximum details and features, except where noted.

We are confident that these tests will yield results that accurately portray the performance you can expect with "Surround Gaming" on both common-place and high-end hardware. These results ought to be important when considering the purchase of the TripleHead2Go for the primary purpose of playing games.

Performance Results (in frames per second)

F.E.A.R.

Doom 3

Half-Life 2 Video Stress Test

Unreal Tournament 2004

* Texture detail was set to "medium" due to limited video memory

From the above, we can see that using the TripleHead2Go in "Surround Gaming" mode can be quite taxing on a system. For the most part, a single card with a middle- to high-end GPU will maintain playable performance levels. Even the low-end GeForce 6600 GT manages to maintain appealing frame rates with resolutions of 3072x768 and 2400x600, as long as you stick to the right games. F.E.A.R. seems to be the only game that absolutely requires ultra-high-end video capabilities for Surround Gaming.

The BFG GeForce 7900 GTX OC in SLI, representing our high-end segment, has shown us that all of NVIDIA's talk about ultra-high-resolution gaming has not just been a bunch of hot air. These cards really do shine once we crank up that pixel count. We did not test the mid- or lower-end cards in an SLI configuration, but I would be willing to bet that if you were to invest in this configuration, you would see a healthy jump in performance.

Just how enjoyable was Surround Gaming? Continue on to the conclusion to find out.

Here are some custom shots of the Matrox TripleHead2Go in action at the Neo Lab.

Call of Duty 2

Counter-Strike: Source

Doom 3

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Unreal Tournament 2004

Windows Explorer

This gaming setup looks and feels absolutely amazing. It has to be tried to be believed.

I was extraordinarily excited when I first heard that I would have the opportunity to review a new offering from Matrox. They has been on my short list for a very long time, and I have been silently keeping my ears perked for news of any new products that would be coming out from behind their walls in Quebec. I was particularly excited about the Parhelia's triple-head gaming capabilities back in 2002, and since then, this technology has been improved and made available to the masses -- and that fulfills a secret wish of mine.

After spending a good deal of time with the TripleHead2Go, we are very impressed with the overall product. The potential for increased productivity shoots up through the roof, the burden of complex work is alleviated to a great degree, and Surround Gaming is -- for lack of a better word, sweet. The immersion of having an image spread across three displays, and curving in towards you, is definitely something that has to be experienced. The greatly enhanced field of view not only allows you to suspend belief, but gives you a significantly increased tactical advantage. You see the enemy long before he can even begin to hope to see you.

Take a look at the following in-game screenshots from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Unreal Tournament 2004 for an idea of just how much more game you get:

The difference is literally breath-taking.

There are, as always, some cons to this technology. Most games are not designed to be used in such an odd aspect ratio, and it shows -- usually in the form of warped in-game menus. Even in games that look nearly perfect being stretched across three displays, menus remain warped in awkward-to-read ways, and in the case of Unreal Tournament 2004, clickable elements overlap each other. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if there wasn't a 4.5-inch gap in between each display, leading me to think that three LCD panels, as opposed to CRT displays, would be the optimal way to play games on the TripleHead2Go.

Text clarity also seemed to be affected, and did not look as crisp to the eye with the TripleHead2Go as it does with only one monitor. This could pose a problem for some if the system is being used for prolonged periods of time for writing/reading/programming/etc. Flicker and colour vibrance were not an issue at all.

As you may have noticed, we exclusively used only NVIDIA-based video cards in our testing. As mentioned before, a representative from Matrox informed us that as of press time, ATI-based video cards had only limited functionality with the TripleHead2Go. CrossFire apparently does not work at all in a triple-head setup. Matrox did mention that ATI is in the progress of implementing support for triple-head (possibly in their next driver revision), but at the time of testing, nothing had been confirmed. On the other hand, Tom's 12" iBook G4 managed to drive all three CRT displays, along with its own built-in LCD, almost perfectly -- and it has a Radeon 9550 with 32 MB of dedicated video RAM. This leads us to believe that the ATI support issue is definitely one of software only.

The only anomaly displayed (no pun intended) was about half-way in on the last display, where windows would simply stop being drawn. Due to OS X's hardware-accelerated GUI (and hence probably more intense VRAM requirements), I'm willing to bet that this anomaly was a result of not enough video memory for the last portion of the frame buffer. In any case, the operating system-independent theory has been proven correct.

Matrox is pushing the TripleHead2Go as not only a gaming solution, but as with most of their products to date, as a solution for production professionals. Unfortunately, as none of us here at Neoseeker are into the production business full-time, we are unable to provide too much insight into how the TripleHead2Go would change the typical production work regimen.

Based on my time with the TripleHead2Go, I believe that this product could earn a top spot in many gaming setups. There is, of course, the question of whether a 30" widescreen LCD would serve the same purpose better, but that would only become a choice if the buyer was trying to decide on the TripleHead2Go + three new 17"/19" LCD panels vs. said 30" LCD. The TripleHead2Go route is most likely a great deal more cost-effective, given the fact that most of us have at least one or two decent CRTs laying around. With an MSRP of $299 USD, you could easily put together a set of CRTs at a reasonable price and have a decent widescreen setup.

The TripleHead2Go may also be the best reason to jump onboard with SLI, as we did see some very nice results when using two of our high-end cards in SLI. LCDs are becoming more affordable every day, meaning that you could buy the TripleHead2Go today and use it with some CRTs, and upgrade to some fresh, new LCD panels at a later date. The upgradeability potential is significant.

In summary, Matrox's TripleHead2Go is one of the most exciting products that we've played with here at the Neo Lab. It's been a long time since we've seen a product with so much "wow!" factor, and it's been even longer since we've seen a product with "wow!" factor that retains long-term benefits. Whether you're a video producer, photographer, or you just want to straight-up get your game on, Matrox definitely has a winner with the TripleHead2Go.

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