Matrox TripleHead2Go
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is uncategorized.
Please help improve this article by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related articles (how?). Please remove this tag after categorizing. |
[edit] Overview
The Matrox TripleHead2Go is a "Graphics eXpansion Module" which splits the output of a single graphics card across three monitors providing for a very large workspace or gaming environment. The TripleHead2Go is not a graphic card itself, and in fact requires a fairly powerful graphic card for playing games on three monitors (Surround Gaming).
While most modern graphic cards have support for dual monitors and can expand a desktop across three screens, 3D games are generally limited to a single monitor. The TripleHead2Go uses the standard EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) structure to communicate its capabilities to the graphics card just as a monitor does, however the TripleHead2Go's resolutions include all the pixels in the three monitors. If the TripleHead2Go were hooked up to three monitors with 800x600 resolution, the TripleHead2Go would report itself as a single monitor with 2400x600 resolution. The graphic card then sends out a 2400x600 signal which the TripleHead2Go divides and distributes to the appropriate monitors.
The TripleHead2Go is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate in most resolutions which makes it unsuitable for CRT monitors, however it also only accepts and sends analog VGA signals which are not the standard for digital LCD monitors.
[edit] Gaming
At this writing (2006) the Matrox TripleHead2Go is the only consumer level device which allows 3D gaming across three monitors with an expanded field of view (FOV). Very few games directly support playing at these large resolutions, however many can be tweaked to run on the TripleHead2Go. Matrox maintains a compatibility list of games and provides a Surround Gaming Utility to automatically adjust the game settings to run on three monitors. Some problems remain with distortions to the user interface and geometric distortions at the edges of the display since the games weren't written with such a wide FOV in mind.
