Matrox Triple Head to go

[Balsy]

I got all excited about the triple head to go... and went to their site... Turns out it wont support 1920x1200 across 3 screens, only 3x1680x1050 as of August 5th.. .is this just a programming issue or do you think its hardware restricted?

I have 24 inch dell at 1920 x1200... and I'd like to keep that stretched across 3 if I can..but maybe its  more of a horsepower issue than anything.. What kind of PC would you need to drive 3x1920x1200 with decent fps?

Balsy

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The maximum resolution is limited by windows so you're fresh out of luck with high res screens. Triplehead requires lower res displays, irritating as it is.

[sethipus]

It would be great if the triple head to go would allow mixing of different size monitors (or at least, different resolutions), but I doubt we'll be so fortunate.  Yeah, not being able to have three 24" screens kinda sucks, and it would be nice to have a 24" in the middle and maybe a pair of 20" flanking it.  If the size/resolution ratio could match closely enough, it wouldn't look wierd.

[DDogs98]

Does this mean I could set overall resolution to the weakest of the three monitors (CRT or LCD)?  If that's true, then I could use a 22" LCD as primary (middle) with two 17" CRTs on either side with the resolution set to 1024X768 (the best resolution with 70HZ refresh of the weakest CRT)?  The only way I could afford this is to use two old CRT's in concert with my new LCD. 

Is anybody else in the same boat?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Yes it should be possible although I've seen tests where they had trouble getting a 30" Dell to work with smaller screens. Matrox claims the new firmware updates fixed those problems though.

Another problem seems to be that only nvidia 280 supports 3x1680x1050 at the moment, ATI is stuck at 1440x900 which kinda sucks. I have 2 screens with 1680x1050 ready but the 280 is ridiculously high (and there are reports of nvidia chips having a fatal flaw that is killing them in loads at the moment).

[Fulmar]

What kind of PC would you need to drive 3x1920x1200 with decent fps?

Balsy

You'd need some serious hardware.  When I was at the EAA, CH Products had a demo booth setup where you could fly FSX or IL2 1946 on 3 displayers.  I have no idea what resolution they were running or hardware, but they were custom machines that were watercooled.  FSX was sub 30 FPS for sure and IL2 was fairly okay but did have some FPS drops from what I could tell.

You'll probably need an E8400 or E8500 and probably top of the line video card, if not an SLI setup (but would you need the Matrox then?).  3gb of ram and a raptor would help a bit.

If you can't upgrade your current PC to any of this, then from scratch I see it costing about:
$230 processor
$500 video card
$150 Raptor
$80 Ram
$150 Motherboard
$370 24" Dell LCD x 2
$300 Matrox Triplehead
__________________
$2150
+Possible New PSU?
-Stick with standard HD?
-Stick with current RAM

You could break this down to individual products as this is just an estimate.

[Balsy]

You'd need some serious hardware.  When I was at the EAA, CH Products had a demo booth setup where you could fly FSX or IL2 1946 on 3 displayers.  I have no idea what resolution they were running or hardware, but they were custom machines that were watercooled.  FSX was sub 30 FPS for sure and IL2 was fairly okay but did have some FPS drops from what I could tell.

You'll probably need an E8400 or E8500 and probably top of the line video card, if not an SLI setup (but would you need the Matrox then?).  3gb of ram and a raptor would help a bit.

If you can't upgrade your current PC to any of this, then from scratch I see it costing about:
$230 processor
$500 video card
$150 Raptor
$80 Ram
$150 Motherboard
$370 24" Dell LCD x 2
$300 Matrox Triplehead
__________________
$2150
+Possible New PSU?
-Stick with standard HD?
-Stick with current RAM

You could break this down to individual products as this is just an estimate.

Right... I have found out a few things since this post.  Namely you will never get to 3x1900x1200 with the matrox product because it is (apparently) hardware limited by the bandwidth of a single DVI cable!  So I think the only option is dual vid cards (1+2 cables) to get to 3x19x12, versus the tripleh2go but you would then lose the bezel management of the matrox hardware.


So the choice seems to be (2 new 24inch dells included in both)  either paying for a second vid card or paying for the matrox external box.  I believe the matrox box provides you with 2 benefits...1. being you dont have to add hardware, and the bezel management...the downside is your resolution limited...

Time to upgrade the PC anyhow

[Fulmar]

$300 seems steep for the Matrox IMO.  I'd rather spend money on another video card for SLI or another VC + SLI Motherboard even if it was more than $300.  Granted I'd probably have to stick in a bigger PSU.

[kamori]

Waste of time and dollars..Look at the perspective of the images all wrong...Lame

  What is that the leaning tower of Water?

Kam

[Fulmar]

Waste of time and dollars..Look at the perspective of the images all wrong...Lame

  What is that the leaning tower of Water?

Kam

I believe the AH photos on those 3 screens were photoshopped, not actually gameplay screenshots.  Thus the perspective is off.

[TequilaChaser]

in reference to the DUAL vid cards..........

Right... I have found out a few things since this post.  Namely you will never get to 3x1900x1200 with the matrox product because it is (apparently) hardware limited by the bandwidth of a single DVI cable!  So I think the only option is dual vid cards (1+2 cables) to get to 3x19x12, versus the tripleh2go but you would then lose the bezel management of the matrox hardware.


So the choice seems to be (2 new 24inch dells included in both)  either paying for a second vid card or paying for the matrox external box.  I believe the matrox box provides you with 2 benefits...1. being you dont have to add hardware, and the bezel management...the downside is your resolution limited...

Time to upgrade the PC anyhow

just out of curiosity

The following ATI branded cards have either 4 or 3 DVI connections on the back:
ASUS Radeon EAH3870X2/G/3DHTI/1GB GDDR3 Video Card has (4) DVI connections  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121247

POWERCOLOR AX3870X21GBD4PH Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR4 Video Card has (3) DVI connections http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131100


would this not make it possible to support  3 or 4 monitors using the same resolution and keep the same max allowable refresh rate that DVI cables support? without going through the process of using the  triple head to go hardware? and also allow you to specify the desired screen resolution one would like to use?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

No, the triplehead splits one large virtual screen into several monitors i.e. the computer sees one monitor which in reality is several monitors. Several heads on a displaycard enable you to get multiple desktops but only MS flight simulator and a couple other games have support for separate screens rendering multiple displays totally useless for gaming.

IIRC the maximum available resolution is limited not only by DVI specs but DirectX which sets a maximum resolution for 3D.

[Balsy]

No, the triplehead splits one large virtual screen into several monitors i.e. the computer sees one monitor which in reality is several monitors. Several heads on a displaycard enable you to get multiple desktops but only MS flight simulator and a couple other games have support for separate screens rendering multiple displays totally useless for gaming.

IIRC the maximum available resolution is limited not only by DVI specs but DirectX which sets a maximum resolution for 3D.

So your saying its not possible to use multiple cards with multiple cables for gaming...only for windows essentially?

[Eagler]

I think the new multi monitor support in AH is only if you use the Matrox triple head thingy and split the res of one monitor into three

Did you ever get your dell to spin into portrait mode in AH Balsy?

[sethipus]

Did you ever get your dell to spin into portrait mode in AH Balsy?

I'm not Balsy, but I did rotate my Dell 24" lcd into portrait mode to try Aces High in, after reading that some others did that.  I couldn't stand it.  I saw pretty much the same stuff side to side as I did before, but my monitor is just under 13" side to side, while it's almost 21" wide, and I couldn't stand having the same stuff I see in landscape mode side to side being squished down into 13".  Yeah, i saw plenty more at the top and bottom of the screen, which would be cool, but I couldn't deal with how narrow the view was, so I changed it back.

Heck yeah on the upcoming change to a true widescreen mode!  Wish the matrox hardware could support 3x1920x1200 but oh well.  It would totally rock.