If you’ve ever needed a reason to get the most powerful video card you can afford, then this is it. Games that originally ran smoothly a year ago (at full resolution, with 4xAA and anisotropic filtering) will now become choppy, and you’ll find the need to reduce the quality settings. For example, games that use the Source engine (Half-Life2, Counter-Strike Source, etc.) are almost unplayable with the advanced filtering options turned on, but delivered very smooth framerates when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. It also helps to turn off V-sync and enable triple-buffering to compensate.
Half-Life 2
Here’s the specs on the test system:
- Intel E6600 Core2 Duo Processor @ 2.4GHz
- Asus P5W Deluxe motherboard (Intel 975 chipset)
- XFX 8800 GT PCI-Express
- Asus 7600 GT PCI-Express
- Asus 6600 PCI-Express
- Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum sound card
- Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB DDR2-800
- CoolIt Freezone CPU Cooler
- Ultra X3 1000W Power Supply
- 3x Western Digital 300GB HDD
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Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Performance Results
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Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
If your video card is powerful enough to deliver twice the framerate that you need at your single resolution-of-choice (60FPS or higher), then it will be powerful enough for a good Surround Gaming experience. For example, a single 7800GT is powerful enough for Half-Life 2, Quake 4, and any other game prior to this year. You’ll need a 8800 (preferably in SLI mode) to even think about BioShock in Surround Mode. I was able to play BioShock at a decent framerate across three monitors, but had to turn the resolution down to 1920×480 (basically 640×480 on each monitor). Even at the lower resolution, the gaming experience is much more thrilling than playing on a single monitor.
Once you get used to Surround Gaming, you will not want to go back, and you’ll discover that the TripleHead2Go is worth every penny you spent.
