Is Matrox TH2G still relevant?

[Dakx]

So, a few years ago, I took the plunge into widescreen gaming and purchased a Matrox THTG Digital for around 420 + tax. Now a few years in, and we have Eyefinity and Nvida Surround and I am left with a piece of hardware that seems almost useless. The maximum resolution on the TH2G is 3 x 1650 x 1050, which with my 24 inch screens (max res 1920 x 1200) is a bit of a bummer. I am not even sure if I can use the device in portrait mode, which would be nice.

I am trying to sell my THTG but no one seems interested, I can't blame them honestly.

Where is Matrox going with this product? Have they just given up? Have Nvidia and ATI killed this product and made it no longer relevant?

[GeneralAdmission]

The TH2Go has certainly been trumped by the new GPU vendor solutions--EF in particular. Unless Matrox can come up with a feature-competitive product at a much better (lower) price point, I don't see any long-term life for the TH2Go in terms of new customers.

That said, I love my TH2Go and will be using it for long time. Can't afford any monitor purchases to justify a jump to EF, even though I run a 5850. I also don't intend to ditch WinXP any time soon, and EF is no-go on XP.

Unless you get lucky, I expect you'll have to sell your TH2Go for a lot less than you want, and the odds of that increase as time goes on.

[phantom]

the Matrox TH2Go may still be relevant and useful for Mac users.

[Darkmotion]

I love my TH2Go, but what bothers me is, ATI dont support 3 x 1650 x 1050 with a HD5870 in her drivers. I must stay with my two HD4870. :(

[GeneralAdmission]

I love my TH2Go, but what bothers me is, ATI dont support 3 x 1650 x 1050 with a HD5870 in her drivers. I must stay with my two HD4870. :(

That is very strange. I'd say that is one of the most common 3 screen resolutions around, yet it's not supported? Is there a bug or something?

I assume you meant 1680x1050, right?

[Dem Pyros]

That is very strange. I'd say that is one of the most common 3 screen resolutions around, yet it's not supported? Is there a bug or something?

I believe he means that they don't support outputting that resolution (a la triplehead2go), forcing you to use Eyefinity.

[GeneralAdmission]

[quote]That is very strange. I'd say that is one of the most common 3 screen resolutions around, yet it's not supported? Is there a bug or something?

I believe he means that they don't support outputting that resolution (a la triplehead2go), forcing you to use Eyefinity.
Curious. I run 3840x1024 with my 5850 and TH2Go. Is there some reason 5040x1050 on a 5870 would be hardware limited?

[suiken_2mieu]

I'd say it's only relevant if you're still running XP, or if you want to expand the amount of monitors you can have in eyefinity or nVidia Surround.

[Paradigm Shifter]

It took AMD/ATi years to get triple 1680x1050 support in the 4000 series cards to work with the TH2Go... I think they finally released a driver which permitted it three months before the release of the 5000 series and EyeFinity. Catalyst 9.6 or something I think it was. Might even have been 9.7. Prior to that, the max you could do was triple 1440x900 IIRC.

If I wanted Surround on XP, I'd get a TH2Go. As it is, my XP box is feeling a little sorry for itself and probably needs a reinstall, so I think I'll take it to Windows 7.

[Dakx]

I figured it was a bit of an obsolete product, but good to know that some people still have a use for it... It is a bit disappointing though, seeing as how TH2G users put in all the money into hardware that they could have put towards a videocard that gives them better graphics + 3 screens.


Question, if I am looking to upgrade from TH2G to another solution, should I go with EyeFinity or Nvidia Surround? I dont think I would go with more than 3 screens (3 x 27 seems enough to me) but are there other feature sets with EF that are nice? As I really like the Fermi Architecture on the nVidia cards.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Only reasons I went nVidia Surround rather than EyeFinity were bezel management across different screens (EF requires all three screens to be the same model for bezel management) and the lack of DisplayPort requirement.

That said, I ended up with a DisplayPort capable middle monitor anyway, as I got a refurb Dell U2410 for a great deal. My nVidia Surround experience has been near flawless - only a couple of slight niggles stop it from being perfect: GRID has a weird crashing issue with bezel management enabled, no easy profile switching (say, from Surround to 'separate' monitors) and that other than 5760x1200 and 6064x1200, I can't get any Surround resolutions to stick. Dunno why. 5040x1050 just flickers like hell for a few minutes then dumps be back at 5760x1200 on the desktop. Non-native res issue? Not sure. Oh, and the issue that I'm sure all triple-monitor setups encounter... some games just don't play nice. I've had several that work great in Windows mode, but crap out in Fullscreen. Recent ones I can think of are Shatter (a Tetris-a-like-crossed-with-Stargunner on Steam) and Magic: the Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers (also on Steam).

Only reason I'd think about EyeFinity over nVidia Surround (from my perspective) is the profile switching. If you don't have issues with buying two cards (and potentially watercooling them, unless you've got a mobo that provides enough space for them to breathe, as Surround really hammers them hard) then the other advantage of EyeFinity, ie: driving three screens from one card, becomes moot.

[Darkmotion]

[quote]I love my TH2Go, but what bothers me is, ATI dont support 3 x 1650 x 1050 with a HD5870 in her drivers. I must stay with my two HD4870. :(

That is very strange. I'd say that is one of the most common 3 screen resolutions around, yet it's not supported? Is there a bug or something?

I assume you meant 1680x1050, right?

Jeah. ATI tell me: Ask Matrox for a new driver. :evil:
But that's not the problem of Matrox. ATI will force us to Eyefinity.

[duniek]

[quote][quote]I love my TH2Go, but what bothers me is, ATI dont support 3 x 1650 x 1050 with a HD5870 in her drivers. I must stay with my two HD4870. :(

That is very strange. I'd say that is one of the most common 3 screen resolutions around, yet it's not supported? Is there a bug or something?

I assume you meant 1680x1050, right?

Jeah. ATI tell me: Ask Matrox for a new driver. :evil:
But that's not the problem of Matrox. ATI will force us to Eyefinity.

WTF?
I checked yesterday and yes, HD4890 cant support triple 1680x1050 :(

5xxx the same situation?

[Dakx]

Only reasons I went nVidia Surround rather than EyeFinity were bezel management across different screens (EF requires all three screens to be the same model for bezel management) and the lack of DisplayPort requirement.

That said, I ended up with a DisplayPort capable middle monitor anyway, as I got a refurb Dell U2410 for a great deal. My nVidia Surround experience has been near flawless - only a couple of slight niggles stop it from being perfect: GRID has a weird crashing issue with bezel management enabled, no easy profile switching (say, from Surround to 'separate' monitors) and that other than 5760x1200 and 6064x1200, I can't get any Surround resolutions to stick. Dunno why. 5040x1050 just flickers like hell for a few minutes then dumps be back at 5760x1200 on the desktop. Non-native res issue? Not sure. Oh, and the issue that I'm sure all triple-monitor setups encounter... some games just don't play nice. I've had several that work great in Windows mode, but crap out in Fullscreen. Recent ones I can think of are Shatter (a Tetris-a-like-crossed-with-Stargunner on Steam) and Magic: the Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers (also on Steam).

Only reason I'd think about EyeFinity over nVidia Surround (from my perspective) is the profile switching. If you don't have issues with buying two cards (and potentially watercooling them, unless you've got a mobo that provides enough space for them to breathe, as Surround really hammers them hard) then the other advantage of EyeFinity, ie: driving three screens from one card, becomes moot.

Thanks, that is good advice!

[thales100]

Nvidia Surround smashed it. :P

[skipclarke]

That said, I love my TH2Go and will be using it for long time. Can't afford any monitor purchases to justify a jump to EF, even though I run a 5850. I also don't intend to ditch WinXP any time soon, and EF is no-go on XP.

The new SL-DVI adapters can let you make the jump to EF with DVI monitors, with cheap adapters.

[scavvenjahh]

The new SL-DVI adapters can let you make the jump to EF with DVI monitors, with cheap adapters.

...But again not in XP.

Stuff that sucks about TH2G (based on my experience with the Digital Edition):
-Win7 support is flawed: manual refresh rate required for 5040 which breaks DX10+ support, erratic support of lower triplewide res's, limited max bezel management. Granted, TripleWide was little more than a firmware-based "bonus", and TH2G DP probably fixes all of this.
-pricey additional piece of hardware. Now that AMD & Nvidia have GPU-level alternatives to TripleHead, nobody wants to pay a dime more than necessary.
-limited resolution. AMD & Nvidia's alternatives let you use any fancy panel size at native res.

The strong points of TH2G
-triplewide display in WinXP.
-a real investment. Buy one and all the good features will stick through any hardware/software upgrades (ideally).
-triple display from one output. You can connect TH and a secondary monitor to any card. Compare to Nvidia's "you need two cards for this and oh, by the way - the fourth output can't be used".
-bezel management ownz "compensation" in my book. Hotkey toggle, adjustable at any time and independently on the left and right monitors; no resolution change. Your GPU doesn't have to deal with even more pixels and game FOVs/HUDs won't struggle with strange, per-user ARs.

I can understand that TripleHead2Go may not be appealing to many padawan surround gamers today, but it still has some valuable unique features. I'm not selling mine anyway, even though I will go the Nv Surround route soon; in fact, I plan to build a WinXP/TH2G PC for all my games that either don't need loads of horsepower to run smoothly, aren't Hor+ or have compatibility issues with 7. And that's a lot of games, including brand new ones.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I can understand that TripleHead2Go may not be appealing to many padawan surround gamers today, but it still has some valuable unique features. I'm not selling mine anyway, even though I will go the Nv Surround route soon; in fact, I plan to build a WinXP/TH2G PC for all my games that either don't need loads of horsepower to run smoothly, aren't Hor+ or have compatibility issues with 7. And that's a lot of games, including brand new ones.

If I had any XP-based games I wanted to play in Surround that don't work on Win 7, I'd be very strongly tempted with a TH2Go/XP rig. But first I'd need to change my 2405s for 2410s, so that all the monitors have two DVI inputs. :)

Actually, I want to play GRID in Surround... but it doesn't like bezel compensation in nVidia Surround. (But it's not worth building a system for, as as soon as I play it, I'll remember why I stopped... ;))

[matrices]

Isn't one remaining key feature the ability to do PLP? Or can that not be done on any of the three technologies? I'd really like to do 20+30+20 but it seems like that's never going to happen, especially since no one makes IPS 20" anymore and way too few people buy IPS at all for Nvidia or ATI to care about people with vertically oriented monitors.

[scavvenjahh]

AFAIK only SoftTH supports that kind of monitor setups.