TripleHead2Gone?

Many of you would be familiar with the Matrox product TripleHead2Go, which comes in two flavours, analog and digital, the digital one offering a higher potential resolution that the other. The basic idea is that this little gadget splits a single display across three screens. VBS2 supports this by default with a 12:3 triplehead aspect ratio in the options. The down side for the average person on a budget is these boxes cost about $500 Australian.

Fortunately there's a cheaper solution, if you have more than 1 PCI Express X16 slot on your motherboard, you can simply install another GPU (provided your power supply can handle the load). The bonus here is that if you're not running the cards in SLI or crossfire, there is no requirement for them to be the same card model at all, for example I can pair my 285 GTX with my old 8800GTS and there would be no dramas. The only reason for another card is to display output for a third monitor, ensuring your most powerful GPU is supporting the primary display and is in the primary PCI-E slot. No graphics processing will actually be done on the lesser card in the pairing. Minor configuration is required in windows to ensure the monitors are displaying in the right order, and selecting the triplehead aspect ratio in the VBS2 options will enable you to stretch across 3 screens. Running windowed mode, all that is required usually is to manually stretch the window across the 3 displays.

In theory this should work for any PCI-e card on the lower end including 6800s as all the low-end card does is output the display and offers up extra DVI ports for your monitors. The only limitation in capability is derived from your monitors and the display output your GPUs can achieve. If you are attempting this and in doubt, seek technical assistance and advice on your particular PC.

Jamie.