Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition

One game. Three monitors. You know you want one. Or do you? [/dun dun duuun]

Matrox have been in the multi-monitor business for a while now, its Parhelia graphics card capable of powering triple monitors even featured as the front cover of issue #20 back in September ’02.

Plenty of time has passed since then and leaps and bounds have been made in the graphics world.

Nowadays, Matrox make a range of multi-monitor products ranging from the humble work station orientated graphics card, to the remote graphics unit (RGU) and then through to the graphics expansion module (GXM). The GXM primordial pool is where the TripleHead2Go has evolved from.

The TripleHead2Go (TH2G) features a less intrusive multi-monitor solution. It does not bind you to a work station graphics card that is unsuitable for gaming, nor does it lock you into either NVIDIA or ATI graphics cards. Furthermore, it does not discriminate between a desktop or laptop graphics output – it simply just needs a VGA or DVI video signal to work its magic.

As such, we hooked up the TH2G to the output from our test bench’s 8800GTX and then attached three Samsung SyncMaster 940B 19” 4:3 ratio monitors running the native resolution of 1280 x 1024.

During the setup phase, we experienced one hiccup, a very frustrating one to say the least.

The USB connection used to power the TH2G requires a very specific level of power output. For reasons not clearly apparent, the TH2G did not wish to play ball with the rear USB ports of our labs bench EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. To fix this issue, we utilised the USB ports of the Pioneer DreamBook D90 which fixed the issue.

Once this hurdle was passed, the setup and configuration for both Windows desktop operation as well as ‘Surround Gaming’, as Matrox call it, was very easy and the supplied software is capable of changing game configuration files to utilise the 3840 x 1024 resolution.

Fully setup and operational, we took the system for a spin through a number of games including Company of Heroes, Oblivion and Call or Juarez – they all looked stunning and the triple monitor gaming experience is something to be seen to be truly understood. It was on par with the immersive sense of gaming on large widescreen panels such as 24”, 27” and 30”, however in a more unique way.

A neat idea, though costly after adding up the cost of the additional monitors, this is only something you’d get into if you were truly going to use the full potential available.