please post your experince with the triplehead2Go

[dragonsprayer]

Hi
I am looking for info from gamers using a triple set up if they had success with most games and how they rate the wide view gaming?
thx!

 

[dragonsprayer]

wow! is this area slow!

anyone running triple set up?

what monitor?
how is it gaming?

thx!

 

[sws]

Well, nobody seems to want to answer so heres my experience..

I bought one without looking into it properly.

I run 1 X 24" @ 1920 X 1200
and 2 X 21" @ 1680 X 1050

Using 2 X Nvidia 8800GTX's

Without THTG Windows Desktop is great, native resolutions no issues.
I can even use SoftTH to run some games with no issues.

So... I plug in the THTG and realise, I have to unplug it again to reset my screen resolution to one supported by THTG, otherwise I get the lovely diag lines and cant see the screen, fair comment.

Using THTG under windows obviously wont let me run at native resolutions, it doesnt support 1680 X 1050 X 3 which would keep my desktop looking pretty normal.

Getting games to work, well theres a whole other problem.

Ive yet to find a way to easily plug in the THTG, load a game and play it in stereo widescreen.

SoftTH supports 5040 X 1050 no problems
THTG doesnt !

Using the supported widescreen resolutions available on the THTG digital edition produces fair results which look ok and perform ok, especially with SLI enabled, but its not an easy transition.

On most occassions I find it very difficult to get into the game to enable the widescreen profile without the screens going crazy or it crashing.

When I finally do, a few hours later it works very well, with decent framerates too.

Overall, I should have researched it more, it would also have been nice if the packaged cable was longer than a foot, which is barely enough to get it off the floor from behind your PC.

Personally... I think SoftTH has a lot more going for it, its just a shame about game support.

Now if I find an easy way to set up my system for THTG which allows me to swap back to my native 3 screen setup & back again when I please, then I may be happier.

But until then, the THTG is sat on a shelf and occassionally plugged in if I can be bothered to try and get it to work.


System :

Intel QX9650 Quad Extreme (Water Cooled)
OCZ 4GB RAM DDR2 800
2 X 8800 GTX
Vista X64 Ultimate
TrackIr & TripleHead2Go Digital

 

[pauldh]

My analog TH2G has basically gone unused for a year now. Problem is I never bought 3 identical 1280x1024 small bezel LCD's in hopes I'd get setup with 3 projectors instead. Overall, I thinks it's alot of fun for the right games if you have decent monitors. But for me I'd want it setup on a spare machine and still have normal single 22-24" widescreen gaming available at anytime on my main machine.

 

[jetdome]

I have three 26" Soyo Pearl LCDs, M3A32MVP Asus with 9950 Quad Phenom, three HD3870 ATI crossfires, and four SATA II Seagates. The TH2Go is nice, but it has a 5:4 supported solution, my monitors are all 16:9 which makes for an oval sight and squatty little soldiers running around. If the aspect rations and FOVs could be changed easily and according to game, the triple head would be great! With Vista 64, Horizontal Spanning has been discontinued and with crossfire for good frame rates, a single dvi output is a necessity! Too bad that matrox has left this sit for the last year and a half, a little more development would make them a mint. Power Desk SE is barily enough to make windows do what you want, a more elaborate version is necessary also. The short dvi supplied cable is also a let down. At this point, if you have vista 32 or 64 with the new WDDM drivers and / or SLI or Crossfire, it is the only choice for multi screen surround gaming. The vista desktop will still work on three, using hydravision supplied by ATI in Catalyst 8.10. I wish that Matrox would make the SGU gaming start program work for all current games on the market, that would be enough for me. 143 FPS in COD4 on three monitors is great, except for the oval scope and squatty soldiers. :-( Jetdome

 

[rangers]

triplehead2Go, sounds like a good title for a porno

 

[ricknau]

SoftTH won't work for the old Grand Prix Legends (GPL) F1 game that I play exclusively. So I got a TH2G Digital a few weeks ago. I installed the firmware update so it would do 5040x1050 across my 3 1680x1050 LCD monitors. Even though the Matrox website says it supports GPL it doesn't show up on it's Surround Gaming Utility list of automatically optimized games. No biggie since optimization likely wouldn't support the new 5040x1050 res anyway. Using a recent 3rd party resolution hack found at the Race Sim Central web forum I was able to get GPL to run at 5040x1050. Other hacks/utilities allowed me to set the FOV to 120 degrees and move the driver's head position around in the cockpit. With that I was ready to go. The TH2G worked great and the multi-monitor racing is awesome. I'm no faster but the view is fantastic. I am able to avoid contact with cars edging me off the track which is so common in online racing. I'm very happy with the TH2G but there are some issues I wasn't expecting. These are much like sws reported.

Windows runs beautifully in triple wide-screen mode except I did notice that in this mode (5040x1050) the text is not perfectly clear, i.e., it is not bring displayed in its native resolution. The Matrox Power Desk setup routine lets me easily change from 3 screens to 2 with a few clicks. When I ran in 2 screen mode (3360x1050) the text is crystal clear. Hmm... what's up with that I thought. Well, using the monitor's self check of it's incoming resolution I found it to be 1680x1024 when running in triple screen. After scratching my head a lot what I've come to believe is that this is not a problem of the TH2G. It is a limitation of my video card/cards (2 8800s in SLI). They can only put out so many total pixels (around 4 Mega pixels). And 5040x1050 overruns this limit. So the card (I believe) cuts its output back to something less that the pixel limit. 1680x1024 doesn't look that bad but if I want a very crisp display in Windows I just cut back to two monitors. Lesson: if you want true 5040x1050 resolution you better get a card that can display 5,292,000 pixels.

The only other issue I have right now though is trying to get a "certified" game to run in wide screen. For the heck of it I though I'd install my old copy of F1 2002 which I did. Matrox detects it and I click the auto-optimize button. I start the game... but no triple screen! I can see that the FOV is altered but it only displays on one screen in a distorted view. I've fought this longer that I worked to get the old GPL running in 3 wide. Does anybody have any idea how to get one of these "certified" games to work? Matrox should have a user's forum but they don't. They probably don't want to broadcast all the issues that people fight to get the many games out there working properly. Does anyone know of a good tech forum for this stuff?

 

[J0hnny_B1aze]

Check out this review (It's almost complete)

http://octoolbox.com/?p=15

Still reviewing it, video review and benchmarking coming in the near future (maybe a week or so).

Personally I really enjoy the TH2G in full 5040 x 1050 resolution playing games like L4D and TF2. I have been playing these recently and am thrilled by the additional perspective this device gives you. The most difficult part of setting this up was finding the vista crack to allow it to work on Vista.

 

[tapher]

J0hnny,

What graphics card or cards are you using to achieve functional 5040 x 1050 with the THTG digital?

 

[nsb]

I picked one of these up to add multi-monitor support to my new macbook ( and am somewhat disappointed to report that their support is lacking - it works...mostly, but not in 3x1680x1050. Also, it doesn't properly resume from sleep mode - you have to go hit the 'apply settings' button again every time .... but I digress ).

When I hooked this thing up to my PC, XP was happy to display at 5040x1050 with a single evga 8800GTS. I've since upgraded to a GTX 285. For crystal clear performance, you'll want to make sure your monitors are native 1680x1050. Any higher-res and you'll see blurring as they scale the image down to that resolution. I run 3x Dell 2208WFP 22" displays and they're fantastic.

 

[cygone]

*** ING BITCH to set up and it takes hours apon hours to get it done right.

If you arnt very technical dont even bother trying to get this to work.

You cant get 5040*1050 to work without a custom res set up, as you are trying to push 5.3million pixels down a duel link DVi lead. and the lead itself cant cope with that amount of data, so you need to tweek it to work.

 

[cygone]

but when working correctly, they are astonishing. FPS/RACE and general surfing as an insane experiance. far better than a 30" panel

 

[ordcestus]

Frankly eyefinity from ATI is the best way to do this

 

[Wolfshadw]

Frankly eyefinity from ATI is the best way to do this

When the thread was started (a year and a half ago), Eyefinity was barely a twinkle in ATI's eye.

-Wolf sends