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Written By:
Date Posted: October 2 , 2002
DualHead/TripleHead/Surround Gaming
Lets look at one major feature that makes the Parhelia different from any other card in its price/performance range multi monitor support. Matrox was a pioneer in bringing multi-monitor support to the regular person, introducing it with the G400 series. This feature has slowly become commonplace in many video cards with all new Radeon and GeForce 4's coming with multi-monitor functions.
TripleHead can be useful for video editing
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It can also be useful for writing a review
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And lastly for playing games
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While it may seem at first glance to just be an evolutionary and not revolutionary step forward for DualHead, TripleHead can bring much more to the table that DualHead could not. Lets look at a few of the uses for Triple Head. Unlike DualHead you can actually play FPS games correctly and not have the side of the monitor being where the crosshairs are as you would with DualHead. The TripleHead desktop give you plenty of space to work with as we can see above. You could have two websites open fullscreen on two of the monitors (research and a Parhelia review perhaps) and then have your html editing program open on the other. Or you could have a single video editing application (Adobe Premiere or Ulead Media Studio Pro) stretched across the all three screens, allowing you to see more of the all important timeline. Two of my personal favorite DualHead features is that of independent displays in Windows 2000, and the DVD-Max feature that puts any overlay video onto the second monitor/TV.
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| TripleHead and the Reef demo |
DVD-Max in action (note small video window in upper right screen of left monitor) |
There are, in my opinion, two weak points with TripleHead at this point. First the resolutions of the three monitors are not independent, all three monitors are limited by the weakest monitor in both resolution and refresh rates. The other feature that is missing is to have two independent/dependent DualHead monitors and then have a TV using DVD-Max on the third head to allow video editors to have more space to work with while being able to watch the results on the TV. Or it could allow you to watch DVD movies while working with two other programs in the other windows. For other uses of DualHead please look at on it.
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