Triple displays output grafic card

**Jeep** · 08-27-2004, 02:44 AM

Matrox has a Triple displays grafic card, but it´s pretty expensive. Is there any other Triple cards out "there" ?

**Confused** · 08-27-2004, 02:59 AM

AFAIK, Matrox is the only triple head card. It's a real shame it didn't catch on, but reviews didn't bench it using it how it should be used, which is multi-monitor gaming. Instead they compared it on single display mode against the top at the time, and surprise surprise it was slower. But i'd like to have seen the fastest of the day try to do triple head gaming!

Unless you require the image stretched across all three, either get a dual head and a single head, or three single head cards.

If two screens are displaying the same image and the third a different, then you can use a dual-head card and use a VGA splitter

Garry

**cheerio** · 08-27-2004, 03:33 AM

using all three monitors at once doing diffrent activitys would probably kill CPU. Windows media player classing laggs video on my 2nd monitor for some reason, but WMP 9 works just fine. I guess its just crappy programming, but what else should i have expected =/
im not sure if its because one is PCI and one is VGA, or if windows just sucks all together. Maby someone can help me out with this problem, hehe.

**Nufis** · 08-27-2004, 03:44 AM

But anyone could simply stack up some 2 or 3 single-headed or dual-headed PCI nVidia's an efffect will be the same, or even better. nVidia's drivers will allow that. Actually I have tried it some 3 years ago using AGP Diamond Viper v330 (nVidia Riva 128) as primary and Matrox Mistique PCI as secondary, and it worked just fine.

**RS3RS** · 08-27-2004, 05:37 AM

I have triple monitors on my main desktop.

In the main AGP slot I have a 9800 pro (overclocked @ XT speeds), and in the PCI slot next to it I have an old S3 video card powering my third monitor. Before that, I had a dual head ti4200 in the AGP slot, plus a different PCI video card in the first PCI slot.

No need for triple head video cards unless you have some specific use for it.

**Jeep** · 08-27-2004, 10:00 AM

Well, need or not. My CarPC app I'm writing "needs" 3 diferent screens. One in the dash and one in each chair for the backseat. All tree monitors will have touch screen. Each screen can run what they like or share the same move, music or navigation, built in is also bluretooth control for a mobilephone, speech controled and lots of other cool features. All in one application (not one exe for each screen).

"RS3RS" do you have one wide desktop or tree separate in your config?

**Shayughul** · 08-27-2004, 10:57 AM

I bought into the Matrox Parhelia when it first came out. I was convinced that this was gonna be the next big thing in gaming. I think I paid approx $500 when it came out. I actaully went out and bought three identical CRT's so it would all be nice and even on the desk.

I then proceeded to game. On three monitors. It was OK at best. I played alot of Q3 and Wolfenstein. I played an online MMORPG called AO and I beta tested Star Wars Galaxies with this card.

I have played Q3 and Wolf forever.....I have modded my configs and all. I know how to get the highest FPS out of the games.

With the Matrox card on 3 monitors it never got above 62 FPS in Quake and never above 42FPS on Wolf. AO and SWG were not playable on this card. It is crap.

That was approx 3 years ago. I know the cards have probably gotten better. But I doubt it. The support for these cards is also crap.

If anybody cares the system it was running on was a Dual Proc 1800 with a Gig of RAM and and IDE Raid.

**cheerio** · 08-27-2004, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by Jeep

Well, need or not. My CarPC app I'm writing "needs" 3 diferent screens. One in the dash and one in each chair for the backseat. All tree monitors will have touch screen. Each screen can run what they like or share the same move, music or navigation, built in is also bluretooth control for a mobilephone, speech controled and lots of other cool features. All in one application (not one exe for each screen).

"RS3RS" do you have one wide desktop or tree separate in your config?

its a lot harder than you think

i was going to do the same to find out that it will kill your cpu. I have a nvida geforce mx 440 agp and a 3dfx voodo5 pci. If you take a app and drag it really fast back and forth throguh the monitors, the cpu usage gets higher and higher and higher...

**Jeep** · 08-28-2004, 06:11 PM

I don't think the CPU is a problem here. I run my own CarPC project on two screns (on a old matrox 450) with no problem at all on a 1.8GHz P4. I will try to just ad an PCI grafic card a do furter tests.