Matrox TripleHead2Go

Introduction

Matrox TripleHead2Go
Developer: Matrox (product page)
Price: US$299 (shop for this item)

Matrox was the first company to bring triple-head display support to the mainstream PC with their Parhelia graphics card in 2002. While the card earned praises for its sharp 2D image quality and ability to drive three monitors, its rather lackluster 3D performance left gamers wanting more. As ATI and NVIDIA continued their endless battle to capture the 3D gaming performance crown, Matrox was left farther and farther behind.

This wasn't a huge problem for the Montreal-based company, as they were (and are) privately owned and not subject to the whims of shareholders. Matrox makes most of its money providing high-end graphics solutions to large companies and institutions, including custom hardware that drives dozens of monitors at the same time. The company maintains a separate research and development division that works on small projects. Occasionally, the work done by this team catches the attention of the marketing folks, who see the possibility for a commercial product.

This happened with the Matrox DualHead2Go, a product designed to bring dual monitor support to laptops and desktops with integrated graphics chipsets. Matrox had done some surveys and realized that a large number of computer users were either unaware of the joys of dual monitors or did not have the proper hardware to utilize them. The product was released for a retail price of US$199, with a modest amount of fanfare. While Matrox would not tell me the exact numbers that have been sold, representative Dan Wood said that they were "happy" with the sales so far.

One thing that Matrox learned from their experiences with the DualHead2Go is that many of the people who bought it were interested in playing games over multiple monitors. As I and many other reviewers found out, it wasn't necessarily suited for this task. While the Windows desktop easily stretched across multiple monitors, it was more difficult to get full-screen DirectX games to do so. Many games simply wouldn't allow the user to select such an odd wide-screen resolution, and would instead simply show the same screen on both monitors.

While Wood pointed out that the card was not meant for gaming, it was clear from the public's reaction that there was a demand for a product that would serve this purpose. Gamers who already owned NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards already had the capability to drive two monitors, simply by using both the DVI and analog VGA outputs found on the back of almost all of these cards. What they couldn't easily do, however is drive three monitors, while still being able to utilize the power of their existing graphics card's GPU to accelerate 3D games.

Enter the Matrox Triplehead2Go.

Test hardware

• 2.4GHz Pentium 4
• ATI Radeon 9600 Pro graphics card (128MB)
• 1 GB RAM
• Windows XP SP2
• Samsung SyncMaster 930BF 19" LCD monitor
• NEC MultiSync FE700 17" CRT monitor
• ADC Spectrum 7Glr 17" CRT monitor

Packaging

The Triplehead2Go comes in a bright blue box, approximately 12in by 8in by 3in, slightly larger than the DualHead2Go box.

Package contents

• Short VGA cable
• DVI-to-VGA adapter cable
• 12 volt power supply
• Power cord
• CD with the TripleHead2Go software
• The unit itself

The actual unit is a bit wider than a stack of five or six 3.5 inch floppy disks, and has four analog VGA connectors, marked LEFT, CENTER, RIGHT, and INPUT.

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