Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition - Multi-display gaming has never looked so good. We evaluate the new Matrox TrippleHead2Go Digital Edition which spreads your games across multiple-displays. We will look at features, show screenshots, test performance including SLI, and share our gameplay experiences.

The TripleHead2Go Digital Edition offers the best triple-display gameplay experience and makes multi-display NVIDA based SLI gaming a reality. The price may be too rich for the blood of many gamers though, placing this piece of hardware in the hands of a very small group of computer gamers who have the hardware and money to invest in it. If you have the computer hardware to back it up, and the three displays to make it happen, the Matrox TripleHead2Go will provide an excellent and much more immersive gaming experience.
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First to post \o/


I think i might be getting me one of these...

Seems very kick ass to have SLI and tri screen for EvE-Online :D
 
Kyle, you have long been a proponent of multi-display gaming. I bet you were in heaven. :D
 
How long ago was Parhelia introduced? and it's just now reaching maturity? I'll be thoroughly shocked if this investment ever pays off for them
 
I didn't read the entire article, but it seems you used CRT monitors instead of LCDs, why did you use CRTs when you have the TH2G digital edition?
 
I have this with three 20" HP LP2065 LCD's using an Ergotronics stand and it is fantastic!

I play WoW in triple-screen and flying with the HUD off is enough to get my wife to stop and look... which... trust me... is saying something.

I had a Parhelia back in 2003 and, unfortunately, it never had the power to do triple-head.

This box is the perfect solution for the ultimate in immersive gaming.

Now if NVidia would come out with their next line of GPU's I can upgrade past my 7800 GTX's!
 
Stoly said:
I didn't read the entire article, but it seems you used CRT monitors instead of LCDs, why did you use CRTs when you have the TH2G digital edition?
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3 CRTs are what I had readily available, it allowed me to test backwards compatibility with VGA, I also tested each DVI port with an LCD to make sure it worked. Whether CRT or LCD the tested resolution is the same 3840x1024 and allows us to test performance, image quality and evaluate the gaming experience at that resolution in a tri-screen setup.
 
With 3 identical LCD with thin bezels, this would be the best thing ever. Officially.
 
I like how the second post in this thread mentions EVE online because that was the first thing my mind went to as well. Too bad you all didnt include that game too. But wow, looks like there is finally a point to going SLI now.
 
Replicant1911 said:
I like how the second post in this thread mentions EVE online because that was the first thing my mind went to as well. Too bad you all didnt include that game too. But wow, looks like there is finally a point to going SLI now.
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I have seen EvE with tri monitor... and OMFG WOW :eek:

I'm finnaly glad to see a technology that can make SLI worth somthing more than that it is now.
 
my bosses at work bought this and when I tested it I was very much amazed. great product!
 
3 westy 37" @ 5760x1080

or

3 dell 30" @ 7680x1600 LOL

would make even a ULTRA SLI system a nice slideshow.
 
I was thinking of building 2 or 3 projectors to do this in style but then remembered that Laser TV's and projectors are coming out soon.
The potential resolution of a laser system might be the perfect projector to match with this!
I cant wait to see what these projectors can do next year :)
 
I have access to three 17" Dell Ultrasharp screens that came with old Dell servers a long while ago (Actually my dad had a Parhelia AGP video card that he used for 2 of those screens). Only problem is that those screens have HUGE bezels so this wouldn't look quite right. Very interesting idea though, I'm still curious. Although I would also have to seriously upgrade my computer, slow dual-core and an 8800GTS 320mb would be a slideshow on most games @ 3840x1024.

But CS:S at that resolution... mmm....
 
Ryle said:
3 westy 37" @ 5760x1080

or

3 dell 30" @ 7680x1600 LOL

would make even a ULTRA SLI system a nice slideshow.
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The system is not capable of this.

Nenu said:
I was thinking of building 2 or 3 projectors to do this in style but then remembered that Laser TV's and projectors are coming out soon.
The potential resolution of a laser system might be the perfect projector to match with this!
I cant wait to see what these projectors can do next year :)
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I've actually thought about this for my home system. Honestly, projectors are pretty damn cheap for 1280x1024. All you need is a piece of rear-projection screen material cut to the right size and mounted on a frame...and you have yourself a hell of a home system.

--------------

However...what i'm looking for is no bezel displays if I go to this. While a bezel isn't horrible...it isn't ideal.
 
Bomber said:
New use for a 22u rack and some blade servers running in cluster? :D
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Sounds like a good idea to me. Anyone care to help donate some cash to the project :D

Can anyone else comment on this product and using World of Warcraft. I have a Del 24" widescreen now and a 8800 GTX. I'd like to upgrade to SLI and grab this setup (and get 3 19" monitors) but I'd like to know how much this would help with in WoW?
 
Seems like the dualhead2go would be perfect for two 1080p projectors; grab 2 optoma hd80's and you can have a 3840x1080 screen with around 200" plus screen width and no gap in the middle. The triplehead2go would work well with 3 720p projectors (HD70's are under 1k); you could have a 300" wide screen with 3840x720 resolution.

Is the matrox system setup for MAX 3840x1024 so that you can use native resolution on displays with a lower horizontal height, or is it fixed at 1024 high?

I'm also wondering if this will work with the edimensional glasses; imagine a 3840x720 300" wide screen with full 3d, talk about virtual reality....If I only had a spare $10k to blow on video games...I guess I could sell my race car and just race on-line - probably end up cheaper in the long run.
 
bobzdar said:
Seems like the dualhead2go would be perfect for two 1080p projectors; grab 2 optoma hd80's and you can have a 3840x1080 screen with around 200" plus screen width and no gap in the middle. The triplehead2go would work well with 3 720p projectors (HD70's are under 1k); you could have a 300" wide screen with 3840x720 resolution.

Is the matrox system setup for MAX 3840x1024 so that you can use native resolution on displays with a lower horizontal height, or is it fixed at 1024 high?

I'm also wondering if this will work with the edimensional glasses; imagine a 3840x720 300" wide screen with full 3d, talk about virtual reality....If I only had a spare $10k to blow on video games...I guess I could sell my race car and just race on-line - probably end up cheaper in the long run.
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The view port on the glasses is too small, they need to be made wider unless you sit farther back from the screens..
The other problem is the approximately 50% performance hit when using the glasses

I'm waiting for laser projectors to come out.
Hopefully they will scale to these resolutions whilst still remaining relatively cheap.
But yes, 2 or 3 projectors would be AWESOME!
 
Citizen86 said:
I have access to three 17" Dell Ultrasharp screens that came with old Dell servers a long while ago (Actually my dad had a Parhelia AGP video card that he used for 2 of those screens). Only problem is that those screens have HUGE bezels so this wouldn't look quite right. .
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Gut them and mount the guts to a piece of plywood!

Come on man, get hardcore! :D
 
bobzdar said:
Seems like the dualhead2go would be perfect for two 1080p projectors; grab 2 optoma hd80's and you can have a 3840x1080 screen with around 200" plus screen width and no gap in the middle. The triplehead2go would work well with 3 720p projectors (HD70's are under 1k); you could have a 300" wide screen with 3840x720 resolution.

Is the matrox system setup for MAX 3840x1024 so that you can use native resolution on displays with a lower horizontal height, or is it fixed at 1024 high?

I'm also wondering if this will work with the edimensional glasses; imagine a 3840x720 300" wide screen with full 3d, talk about virtual reality....If I only had a spare $10k to blow on video games...I guess I could sell my race car and just race on-line - probably end up cheaper in the long run.
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That is a MAX resolution. It will do some lower widescreen res as well...
 
Don't know if i was the only one who noticed, but in the "Select Page" box down at the bottom, it says "TrippleHead" and opposed to "TripleHead.

That aside, this is really nifty, nice review.
 
Hard to tell from the pics, but in WoW, are you really getting a true side view or is it just a really wide screen?
 
Ryle said:
3 westy 37" @ 5760x1080

or

3 dell 30" @ 7680x1600 LOL

would make even a ULTRA SLI system a nice slideshow.
Click to expand...

Sorry, max res is 3840x1200. (2x 1920x1200).

The limit is in DVI bandwidth. A singlelink DVI maxes out at 1920x1200x24bit, a dual link is twice as wide. The DVI replacement coming down the pipe eventually has 2x the bandwidth of a dual link DVI port. That'd let you use 2x 2560x1600 monitors*. To get 3 chained together you'd need the equivilant of a dual link again, I don't know if the new spec supports them or not.

* Bandwidth number I saw was 2560x1600x48bit color depth. The ability to do 5120x1600x24bit is assumed since it's a digital interface but not something I saw in the spec description.
 
Ryle said:
3 westy 37" @ 5760x1080

or

3 dell 30" @ 7680x1600 LOL

would make even a ULTRA SLI system a nice slideshow.
Click to expand...

Citizen86 said:
That would be amazing....
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well 5760x1080=6,220,800 pixels right?
How about 4960x1600=7,936,000?

Here it is running of a 8800GTX and 7600GT with SoftTH:

HelmetCam.jpg
 
I was immediately wondering about how thin of a bezel is available these days in a reasonably priced LCD, or, as at least one has suggested, if bezels can safely be removed. I hadn't thought of the 3-projector idea, which neatly solves the problem if only for exclusively high-end applications.

As far as laser projectors go, I don't think there would be an advantage. If the projector is configurable for the triple-wide resolution natively, then there's no reason to buy the TripleHead. Plus you would lose the peripheral-vision effect of the two angled side panels/projectors. You could use it with some kind of angled or curved screen, but correcting the distortion thus produced would be well-nigh impossible.

I hope this device is revisited once the high-end G9X cards come out, whenever that may prove to be. It would be nice to see if the 1-teraflop monster could meet or exceed GTX SLI with a single card. It would also be nice to find out what SLI Ultras could do, and I'm curious as to the resolution limitation in Crossfire. Still some kind of funky compositing bandwidth limitation behind the scenes?
 
Great review. I knew you guys would be reviewing this. You guys love this stuff, and so do I. Great job! Those pictures of the 3 monitors running the games really sold it. Thanks!
 
SpeedyVV said:
well 5760x1080=6,220,800 pixels right?
How about 4960x1600=7,936,000?

Here it is running of a 8800GTX and 7600GT with SoftTH:

HelmetCam.jpg
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Didn't you say you used software instead of Matrox to achieve this? Honestly, your implementation looks better than 3 of the same display.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Didn't you say you used software instead of Matrox to achieve this? Honestly, your implementation looks better than 3 of the same display.
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Yes, this is using a free piece of software called SoftTH. I just tried it to see if it works, and now I am hooked on triple screen race gaming ;-)

My point though, is that high res multi monitor gaming is possible, but only with when the games are properly optimized. There are unfortunately too many games that will bring any GPU to its knees.

BTW, I think the Matrox implementation is a lot more robust than the SoftTH approach, and if you are serious about surround gaming that would be the way to go.

The reason I did not go with a TripleHead2GO solution is because I am actually looking for more real estate from monitors for work, and less so for games. If matrox provided support for 4960x1600, I think i would definately pick one up.
 
I want! I want! I want!

While the maximum resolution is a little disappointing, it really isn't that bad--only about 15% shorter than the 1200 lines you get on a 24" widescreen.

The fact that it worked flawessly is a huge credit to the engineers and management at Matrox. Honestly ask yourself--how often has [H] reviewed something that has worked flawlessly? It worked out of the box. The software has a small footprint, is stable, and just works. Most games of recent origin work quite easily. True, there are some games you can't play with this, but that is a failing of the game, not of this hardware (EA, I'm looking at you!). I think Microsoft and the game developers also deserve some kudos for making DirectX and games capable of handling these resolutions this easily.

Minimal bezel width would definitely help here. Nothing on newegg seems to have an uber-slim bezel, although the bezel on the 19" LCD's is proportionately smaller. A triple-projector setup would be just too sweet. Eat your heart out, console fans!

On the 'con' side, I would definitely list the price as one of the downers. For a piece of hardware that essentially just multiplexes the video, it seems awful expensive. The only other complaint I have is the resolution restrictions, but that's something that's beyond Matrox's control. But maybe they could support a three-monitor setup with a widescreen LCD in the middle? 1280x1024, 1680x1050 (or 1024), 1280x1024 would be sweet--it would give you a wider field of view on the center monitor.
 
Wow, I go and buy a beautiful 30" monitor for my SLI rig and now I want 3 24" instead ;)

Seriously, I have another 24" monitor next to my 30" (hooked up to the laptop), and with SLI enabled, I of course get a blank screen.

I was hoping this Matrix device would solve my problems, but doesn't look like it.

Years ago nVidia said they'd enable SLI + dual monitors.. LIARS! :(
 
Uhmm come to think of it, is there any technical reason why nVidia cant supply a driver that allows a spanned display across GPUs?

You can do that for 2 monitors, and obviously it is more than just a theoretical possibility because the softTH smart programmer as a hobby can make it work.

Well, I guess nVidia has got more pressing issues with their drivers at the moment :(
 
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