Introduction

TripleHead2Go module

Triple monitors on your PC

TripleHead2Go supports laptops as well

One of the coolest features of Matrox’s Parhelia-512 was its support for up to three independent displays. Bob wrote an in-depth article on this feature, dubbed Surround Gaming by Matrox, testing the technology out on a wide variety of games and walked
away very impressed with the technology.

SolidWorks

The premise behind Surround Gaming was simple: with up to three monitors at your disposal, your field of view is increased from what’s directly in front of you, to objects on your front left and front right sides. This was demonstrated most profoundly in racing sims like the NASCAR series where you could see your opponents earlier as they came in to make a pass.

The back of the unit

The front

Top

Unfortunately, that was over three years ago. Since then newer, more graphically-intensive games have been released that are too much for the Parhelia to handle. But what if you could run three monitors off your GeForce 7800 GT SLI setup or your Radeon X800 XL? That’s where Matrox’s TripleHead2Go comes in.

TripleHead2Go is based on the same technology that was first unveiled by Matrox in their DualHead2Go module late last year. Matrox refers to them as Graphics eXpansion Modules (GXMs). GXMs aren’t design to replace your PC’s existing graphics card, your card will still handle all the graphics rendering, all TripleHead2Go does is add support for three displays to your existing card. Once everything’s hooked up to your PC, TripleHead2Go looks like one really big 3840x1024 monitor to your PC, no custom graphics driver is needed to get it to work. Matrox uses the EDID standard to report the resolution to Windows (both Windows XP and Windows 2000 are supported), from there the TripleHead2Go module outputs the data from the GPU to the displays. Up to four resolutions are supported: 3840x1024@60Hz (giving you three 1280x1024 displays), 3072x768@75Hz (three 1024x768 displays), 2400x600@60Hz (three 800x600 displays), and finally, 1920x480@ 60Hz (three 640x480 displays).

TripleHead2Go tech diagram

TripleHead2Go with cables

Display properties

It’s important to note that in order to get the 3840x1024 resolution, your graphics card must have at least a 300MHz RAMDAC, but this shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most gamers as even old GeForce4 MX GPUs shipped with dual 350MHz RAMDACs. It’s also important to keep in mind that TripleHead2Go takes the analog signal from the GPU in order to work, so VGA connections are used to output to your three monitors.

TripleHead2Go with Catia (also works with AutoCad)