–START OF THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE–

It has been announced that DirectX 11 will include a completely new type of graphics rendering called ray-tracing. Wait a minute. It’s not new. In fact, it’s been around since the 80’s. How come it took so long to be implemented for public use? How does it work? What advantages does it have over current-gen graphics? These questions are about to be answered.

Ray-Tracing

Ray-Tracing was first introduced in 1986, and is basically defined as tracing the paths of light as they interact with objects. This is essentially what our eyes do, so it creates quite a vivid and realistic picture. Unfortunately it wasn’t practical to use in everyday graphics because it took up so much raw power to compute. It was used scarcely in the 90’s, but only for demonstrations and now in the 21st century with multi-core technology it is finally possible to make Ray-Tracing practical.

So what happened? Well the movie-industry took advantage of it right off the bat. Many special effects were ray-traced to give a more realistic look. The movie Beowulf was entirely ray-traced. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close, and a heck of a lot better than what people have now. To give you an example of how much power it takes to ray-trace though, a person created a video of real-time ray tracing of a convertible on YouTube, and it takes the combined effort of THREE PS3 consoles. You can check it out here, it’s pretty cool. Remember each PS3 has 8 processors (6 active), so we are looking at over 20 processors for one, non-moving object.

Hmm. This is starting to explain some things. Like Why Nvidia did not support DX10.1 on their 9-series cards, and not have any new technology on the cards other than smaller chip-sizes. They realized that the old ways of graphics are dying. What’s the point of Directx 10.1 anyway? Rasterisation, what Nvidia and ATI use, has reached its peak. They both have perfected the art of essentially faking graphics. Now it’s time for the real stuff. It’s an open field, and apparently Intel is planning on joining the competition. They recently have been experimenting with combining a processor with the graphics card with successful results. This could spell bad news for both ATI and Nvidia, but knowing the way Intel prices things I’m sure there will still be close competition.

An interesting thing about ray-tracing is that it is fairly scalable. With rasterisation, you notice less and less with each improvement. For example the new 8-core skull-trail beast from Intel hardly earns gamers a few FPS on rasterisation. For ray-tracing however, it will be exactly 8 times better than a single-core. So what will this do? Well there will probably be a new multi-core processor every couple months, possibly reaching over 100 before 2010. If each has implemented graphics with ray-tracing technology, you can see the benefit of that over getting a separate graphics card.

Benefits of Ray Tracing

By now you probably want to see what ray-tracing can do compared to rasterizing. Well take a look at this image on the right. As you can plainly see, the ray-tracing image has more realistic reflections and shadows. Nvidia has worked their butts with their 3D shader processors, but they could never get anything close to this. It’s very encouraging to see the difference, but remember we are a ways off from getting objects of that clarity interactive on our computers. Directx 11 is only going to support a few limited things, so that the transition to ray-tracing is gradual, and not all at once. I won’t be surprised if Ray-Tracing Processing Units (RPU’s) are implemented on the Nvidia 10 series cards. At first maybe only characters are ray-traced. Then as new hardware is introduced, textures and objects within certain draw distance are ray-traced, until eventually everything as far as the eye can see is ray-traced and rasterisation becomes a thing of the past.

And This Matters Because…

Is this a good thing? Maybe. Everything would be a lot more predictable and you would be able to confidently tell which brand of graphics card is better just by looking at the data sheet, unlike today, where the only real way of telling which of two cards are better is by rigorously testing them in 3D programs, measuring their temperatures, calculating wattage, etc. So there will be two consequences. Either we will finally end the number game by being able to really tell what is what without any background info, or, more likely, it will simply enter the next stage of confusing the common public in return for profit.

The 9 series of NVIDIA graphics was speculated since at least October of 2007, when it became evident that NVIDIA would not release a 8900 and 8950, as many insisted (the inquirer, for example). New rumors speculated a 30% increase from the top 9-series card, the 9800GTX, over the 8800 ultra. Also to have over one billion transistors, 1GB of graphics memory, over one teraflops of shader processing power, and other features like DirectX 10.1 and a built in audio chip. What does this mean? Quite simply, it’s a beast. Many of this was just crazy talk (built in audio chip?), but some of it proved true.

Many expected it to come out before the holidays, but December came and went. Only until January rolled around did some hard evidence of the chips in progress appear. However the 9800GTX was now realized as not bring the top 9 series card. Pictures of the new top 9 series card, the 9800GX2 (two cores in one), were released, and many became intrigued. In late February the 9 series was officially underway with the release of the 9600 GT. About a month later in March the 9800GX2 was released. Around the same time prices and release dates were revealed for the rest of the 9 series.

So where does this leave you? Will these new graphic cards render yours obsolete? Here’s a list of some of the new technology.

Quad-SLI: Okay, so it’s not really new since the 7950X2 versions had it, but it’s worth mentioning due to its absence in the 8 series. Only available to the 9800X2 design, it lets you place two 9800GX2 models in two pci-express slots, utilizing the power of 4 graphics cards.

Pure-Video 3rd Generation Update: An update to the previous version of Pure Video, allowing things like better contrast ratios in high def viewing and the ability to keep the aero feature on vista while watching a high def movie.

G90 Core: The new chip that Nvidia has based its new technology on. It allows for a smaller card, less heat consumption, less heat, and less noise. Though no significant performance gains like the jump to the G80 core, it will be a blessing to those fed up with the heat and noise of the 8 series cards.

So the list is kind of short, which raises some eyebrows on why NVIDIA chose to start a new series. Let’s move on to the meat and potatoes, the specs. Listed below are some quick stats known to date of 5 9 series cards.

The 9800 GT was also announced, but not enough information to put on this chart, and there is still some tweaking time for Nvidia since its release is not until April. A new 9500 GS and 9600 GS are also rumored to appear, but not confirmed. Everything else is semi-official, except for the 9600GT and 9800GX2 which are 100% accurate due to the fact that they have already been released.

So, what’s true and what is rumor?

Well none of the 9 series cards will have directx10.1, support, not that it matters too much considering its small improvement over the directx10. None have a built-in audio chip, and I doubt that will ever catch on in the future. As far as the other statistics, like the amount of transistors, memory, and processing power, it is only true for the 9800GX2. The GTX overall has slightly lower numbers than the GX2 as expected, but will be the best single core graphics card, and allows tri-SLI.

Where does this leave you?

Well that depends on what you have and what you do. If you have a series 7 setup or lower (with possible exception to dual 7950 X2), a leap to the 9 series is definitely beneficial, due to its new smaller chip design that allows for better power consumption, lower temperatures, and quieter card than the 8 series. If you have an 8800 series card, I wouldn’t even consider it. There is just not enough new technology to justify moving, except the physical aspects pertaining to the chip size. If you need the extra speed and performance and will pay $600 for it, that’s your decision, but keep in mind that it won’t have any expandability for future games over the 8 series, due to its lack of new features. If you have a 8600 card or lower, moving to a 9600 GT is up to 90% better of raw performance, so it would be a very good decision in the long run, but only until the new 10 series comes out. Hopefully NVIDIA has some revolutionary designs in store for the double digit series, and is just using the 9 series to milk up more money from the 8 series by changing a few things and slapping a “9” sticker on it. It may have been that NVIDIA just got sick of the 8 series cards. Either way, there isn’t much new technology here, just some spec increases on a more affordable graphics card. So until the next series comes out, we have to painfully keep track of the NVIDIA number game as they continue to reap the rewards from the 8-series technology on a new chip.

Bottom Line

The 9-series appears to be for the mid-range consumers, as Nvidia is lowering the price of their cards for better performance. No $750 high-end card like the 8800 Ultra, as the GX2 comes in at roughly $600. The high end 8-series card prices will drop, like the 8800 GT, GTS, and GTX, so if you want one of those the 9-series might make it available to you for a $150-300 range. It also makes the extreme-gamers look a bit silly. Those that bought three 8800 Ultra cards in Tri-SLI for over $2000 will be bested by 2 9800 GX2 cards in Quad-SLI at a little over $1000. If you’re worried about your card being obsolete, unless you have a 7 series card or lower like mentioned above you shouldn’t worry. If you have an 8400, 8500, or 8600, you might want to check them out. 8800 cards or above, just enjoy the performance that you have and wish for built-in audio chips in the next Nvidia series.

According to the story on Ars:

Microsoft’s data strongly indicates that the problems were real. Damon Poeter at CRN dug through the documentation to find that on page 47 of the PDF, NVIDIA drivers were identified as the cause of over 479,000 crashes, or just under 29 percent of all the crashes Microsoft logged. Microsoft’s own drivers follow, at 17.9 percent, and the “Unknown” category takes third place at 17 percent. ATI is in fourth place (9.3 percent) and Intel in fifth place (8.83 percent).

We have been hearing about problems with Nvidia under Vista from PCMech visitors. In fact, I personally had issues using Nvidia in 2007 under Vista. I had to actually go out and spring for an ATI card just to make my video system work under Windows Vista. Needless to say, I was pissed.

So, these emails pretty much confirm what we informally already knew: Nvidia was (and perhaps is still) problematic under Windows Vista.

Even Microsoft VPs got “personally burnt” by the Vista-capable stickers.

It really is hard to imagine how Microsoft could have so royally screwed up with Windows Vista.

Two words: Save XP.

Source: Ars Technica via Engadget

X2, Only Prettier

The HD 3870 X2 is exactly what its name sounds like. Following the same principle behind the GeForce 7950 GX2, AMD has placed 2 of its RV670 chips on one board, and linked them via a CrossFire bridge. I am not here to give a review, as there are a few out there already. I am here to tell you what AMD did here that was so smart, and what they’ll need to be careful of in the near future.

Smooth Moves

Price: The card itself isn’t really what you’d call an innovation. There was no new tech involved here, as is illustrated by the usage of the RV670 chip. What we see here is a company who played the game well and worked with what they had. There has been some talk of the fact that nVidia could do the same thing and stick a pair of G92 chips on a board and call it done. To directly contest the idea that this circumstance matters a whole lot, I’ll point out that nVidia wouldn’t likely accomplish the same feat at the price that AMD has done it. This card’s price is set at $450, which really turns the tide in arguably the most important segment in the market. While the enthusiast cares not about money, they make up a very small portion of computer users, let alone gamers. The bang-for-buck folk out there will be thrilled by this price, especially when comparable cards can only be bought for $700 and above. I doubt that nVidia can pull off the same thing without shifting their entire pricing lineup.

Compatibility: I said before that the two chips are linked by an onboard CrossFire solution. For those of you with alternate chipsets that don’t support CrossFire, you’ll be delighted to know that you’ll be able to run this monster without a problem. This is really smart, because in a world of proprietary systems and interfaces, we can’t always get what we want.

Timing: AMD is still strapped for cash in many areas, but by releasing a product like this, they can obtain the upper hand, even if for a short while, and produce some much needed revenue. This will also buy them some time to work out the next big issues. They need to fix Phenom, be ready to produce the next lineup of CPUs, and they also need to get the ball rolling on their next GPU. This industry is all about momentum, and no victories are won overnight. One great product has the potential to lead to many other great products, and that is what all of us should be hoping for.

Tradition: It used to be that the words ‘enthusiast product’ were synonymous with AMD. The FX line of processors, as an example, were the champion gaming CPUs of the day, and the company garnered for itself a very valuable fan base. I did say that the enthusiast market is a small one, and that still stands, but the fact that AMD placed a component in that segment again after a long hiatus is a sign that they are getting back on track.

Don’t Get Comfortable

Even though it is doubtful that nVidia will try to drop prices to compete with the new card, photos are already out depicting the new GeForce 9800 GX2. This victory is already being viewed as short-lived, even though it is not over yet. The fact remains that nVidia has more money, and thus more muscle in this fight. If AMD doesn’t use this victory to produce more of the same, it will find itself in trouble again. They key here is follow-through. Intel made a big mistake by trying to stretch a thing like the NetBurst architecture too far in a volatile market. The same thing could happen here if AMD pushes their current graphics chips into the next generation of products. If their next chip isn’t either a highly modified RV670 or a brand new architecture, they’ll find it difficult to market it to the masses.

Playing catchup is an expensive business to be in, because you end up putting a lot of time and effort into a product lineup that may or may not be successful. However, conservative business tactics are not the route to be taken, and it appears that AMD agrees with me. They need to do something different in order to stand out and be profitable. Fusion is a great example of this, and all of the steps they are taking quite clearly point to this goal. Intel, having caught wind of the plan, has also invested heavily in the graphics department. AMD having a strong graphics department in ATi should afford them the time (again, that timing issue) to pull off the project, but they need to get a working product out there before the higher-end Nehalem chips hits the shelves. One of the most important rules of marketing is to get there first. If you are there first, it will be very tough for competitors to topple you or loosen your grasp in the sector. The message here is simple: If AMD slacks off now, they’ll have an even tougher time recovering from the Core 2 Duo fallout than they did before.

This Is Good for Everybody

For those that need extra convincing, or those that are major fans of AMD’s competition, this is an extremely good thing for you as the consumer. Imagine if you held the championship title for a long time, and you finally got knocked out by a guy with less muscle. Would you be angry enough to get off your butt and do something about it? Exactly. This blow wasn’t a huge one, but I’ll bet it stung. AMD is doing a great job at keeping things under wraps until the last second, and I think it has helped them recently. Investors may disagree, but this tactic has been a smart one for the last while because they can’t afford to be predictable. If Intel and nVidia can anticipate their every move, then we’ll really be hooped.

Well done, AMD. Just don’t stop there.

Why? Because I can.

But, now that I am doing it, is it all roses? No. So, which operating system is better in this department? Windows XP or Mac OS X?

Fitts’s Law

One of the things that constantly strikes me about this issue is how both camps have such rock solid opinions. Well, truth be told, it seems it is the OS X users who get the most defensive about it. Apple is, of course, thought to be the king of interface design. In most areas, I would agree. When it comes to multi-screen support, I disagree.

Fitts’s Law is often quoted. Wikipedia defines it as:

Fitts’s law (often cited as Fitts’ law) is a model of human movement which predicts the time required to rapidly move to a target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.

It has an equation and everything. More simply stated, the idea is that the larger the target, the easier it is to use. So, the idea with the top menu bar in OS X is that it covers the entire top of the screen. The mouse cursor cannot move beyond it. This means that any flick of the mouse upward will hit the menu. Very large target.

Beyond Fitts’s Law

OK, Fitts’s law is a workable model. But, how does this translate into real-world use? That’s where I fail to see the point of it in the design of OS X. Let’s look at REAL WORLD use of multiple screens in both operating systems.

In Windows XP, multiple screens is easy. You install the video cards, install the drivers, and then all the screens will appear in your Display Properties. You can move them around in relation to one another, etc. When you operate an application on a particular screen, the menu bar goes with the program. So, no matter where the application is, the menu bar is within a short distance of your workspace.

Now, let’s take OS X. Driver installation is a non-issue because Apple so tightly controls the hardware. It does properly detect all screens. It doesn’t always detect the proper native resolution for the monitor, but that is an easy thing to correct. Changing arrangement and settings of multiple screens is really easy with OS X. You can give each screen it’s own background (harder to do that in Windows). Visually, the interface for managing multiple monitors in OS X is solid.

Practically, though, it is a nightmare. And that is due to the simple fact that the top menu bar is tied to one screen. Sure, you can easily choose which of your screens is primary (and hence which displays the menu and the Dock), but it does not move. That top menu bar is used for every application. All of Apple’s GUI design genius looks really stupid when they can’t think of something better than this.

So, I have four screens attached to the Mac Pro. If I am working with an application on the far screen, I have to scroll over TWO SCREENS to get to the menu bar for the program I am working with. I cannot barely put into words just how frickin’ idiotic that is. Here is a picture from my office to demonstrate:

The Verdict

OS X multiple monitor support is strong. I actually like the way it handles it better than in Windows XP. But, practically, it loses BIG TIME to Windows XP. Windows is so much better than OS X when it comes to ease of use in a multiple monitor environment.

To get around this, Apple needs to do one of the following:

1. Make the menu bar follow the active application.
2. Give an option to the user to embed the application menus inside the program menus.

#2 might be harder to implement because it could involve the cooperation of the developers of all applications for OS X. The top menu bar has been a staple of OS X for awhile now and it is hard to change. I understand that. But, #1 should be easier to implement. Until Apple does something to make this easier, I guess they’ll just have to continue to condition Mac lovers why this idiocy actually makes sense (some think so).

Until Apple grows a brain on this issue, leave it to a third party utility to help make things a little easier. The utility is called DejaMenu. It will allow you to set up a key combination that will duplicate the top menu bar in contextual style. So, if I am working with that application in that far left monitor, I can hit that key combination and I get the entire contents of my top menu bar (which is TWO SCREENS away, mind you) right at my current cursor position. Not as easy as Windows XP, but this makes it much easier.

So, in this match of Windows versus OS X, Windows wipes the floor with OS X and then spits on it. OS X is just plain harder to use when you have more than one monitor. And it is disappointing that users like myself have to outsmart the stupid design by using third-party add-ons, becoming kings of keyboard shortcuts, or speeding the mouse cursor up to light speed to flip across several screens.

This should be easier, Apple. There is so much smart design in OS X. Why not this?

Rich takes us step by step through hardware and software methods of sharing your screen with two monitors. This is video 1 of 2.

A quick video guide to setting up dual screens on your PC. We talk about two screens on a laptop (which is pretty easy), multiple desktops using a cool PowerToy from Microsoft (called Virtual Desktop Manager), and setting up dual screens on your Windows XP desktop machine. And at the end you get a little look at David’s three-screen setup.

Introduction
Wanna play the latest video games at the highest resolutions with all the eye candy turned up? Well then, you better buy your self an ATvidia XYZ990000XT-OMG-ROLF or better yet, a pair of them. If you have a mere XYZ980000XT-OMG-LOL running in your system, you probably need to go out and spend your life savings on a new card for that extra 5 frames per second you’re missing out on.

As you’ve probably noticed, the world of video cards can be a bit confusing and overwhelming. With new products coming out every 6 months or so and a constant effort on the part of the 2 leading makers of graphics chips, ATI and nVidia, the market is never stagnant and seems harder to understand every day. In this article I will get to the bottom of all this confusion and make some recommendations that are valid for more than a week.

AGP and PCI-Express
AGP and PCI-Express are the 2 types of slots that video cards plug into. There’s really not much confusion here. AGP is an older technology that is just about at the end of its life and PCI-Express is the new technology. It is nearly impossible to get a new motherboard with an AGP slot, and if you still have one, it is getting increasingly difficult and expensive to get new video cards for that slot.

Chip Makers and Card Makers
In the graphics world, there are 2 types of manufacturers to talk about. A few companies make graphics chips, which are the actual chips that perform all the graphics processing, and several companies take these chips and use them to make complete video cards. When people talk about their video cards, they generally just talk about the chip. This is because you will get fairly identical performance with cards from several different video card makers if they use the same graphics chip.

ATI and nVidia are currently the only makers of graphics chips that are powerful enough to give a good experience in modern video games. While Intel makes integrated graphics chips suitable for 2D applications and a few other companies, such as Matrox, make dedicated cards suitable for 2D, anyone serious about gaming is only looking at products from ATI or nVidia. The remainder of this article will focus on chips from ATI and nVidia.

There are several manufacturers who make complete video cards, and they all make pretty good products. Some manufacturers, such as Gainward, are known for making premium products that are overclocked out of the box. Others release their products with novel cooling systems that are either quieter or offer better performance than the standard cooler. Beyond these two ways of differentiating video cards using the same chipset, the only real difference between cards from different makers is the warranty offered. If you are not looking for a premium card that’s factory overclocked or comes with a fancy cooler, you can generally be safe buying the cheapest card with the chip that you want. Well known makers of video cards include Asus, BFG, Gainward, HIS, Powercoler, Sapphire, PNY, eVGA, BFG, and ATI. That’s right; ATI also sells complete video cards using its chips, while nVidia does not.

Chips Chips Chips!
Now that you understand that chips determine the fundamental characteristics of a video card let’s make sense of all the various chips themselves. There are 3 main families of chips: enthusiast, mainstream, and budget. Enthusiast cards are for those who are only concerned with performance and usually cost $400 or more, with $600 cards being common. Budget cards are for those who are mainly concerned with costs and are a small step up from an integrated graphics processor. These cards generally cost under $100. Mainstream cards are everything in between and usually represent a good balance between price and performance.

These 3 families and smaller gradations within them translate into numbers and letters representing products from ATI or nVidia in a fairly basic way that has become more and more confusing over the last few years. The first number in the name of a graphics chip denotes simply the generation of the card, the middle numbers denote the performance class of a card, and the last couple numbers and letters tacked on the end denote finer gradations of performance. Generally, enthusiast cards have an 8 in the middle of their name, mainstream cards have a 6 in the middle of their name, and budget cards have a 2 or 3 in the middle of their name. Sometimes new cards come out that have improved performance but are still not a new generation, so a 9 will take the place of an 8 in the middle of the name or “50” will take the place of “00” at the end of the name.

How does this translate into real products? Let’s look at some current and past examples of various cards and explain where they fall in the product line. As of the writing of this article, the current flagship chip from ATI is the X1900 XTX, with the X1900 XT being very slightly slower. A few months ago the top was the X1800 XT, a year ago it was the X850 XT, and 2 years ago it was the 9800 XT. The X1600 Pro is a current mainstream chip and the X1300 is a current budget card from ATI. nVidia’s current flagship chip is the 7900 GTX, which is slightly faster than the 7900 GT. A few months ago the 7800 GTX was the flagship, a year ago it was the 6800 Ultra, and 2 years ago it was the 5950 Ultra. A current mainstream chip from nVidia is the 6600 GT and the 6200 is a budget chip.

It seems like the suffixes tacked on to the names of the chips get more confusing with each new generation of chips. I have fond memories of the days when an ATI name was either plain or Pro and an nVidia name was either plain or Ultra, but those days are long gone. Right now X’s and T’s and G’s are in fashion, and it’s hard to generalize very much what they mean since both companies seem to change there scheme at the drop of a hat. ATI’s current top product ends in XTX and nVidia’s ends in GTX. The next step down for nVidia is GT, and for ATI it is the XT, but they are soon coming out with a GT.

SLI and Crossfire
No discussion of modern video cards would be complete without talking about SLI (nVidia) and Crossfire (ATI). These are marketing names for linking two video cards together to (hopefully) get a large performance increase. Running a dual card setup is very expensive and the performance increase is not fully doubled.  Nevertheless, it is becoming easier to set up these systems, new drivers are making them more reliable and better performing, while new games are often written to take advantage of these setups. nVidia just released an innovative product called the 7950 GX2 that has two entire video card chips combined into one unit that only needs one PCI-Express slot to plug into. It is currently the fastest single-slot graphics solution on the market, but it has a price tag to match. I personally think the performance benefit does not make up for the increased power consumption, heat production, and most importantly the increased price, but only time will tell if I am right or not.

Buying Recommendations
For most people I would recommend getting a current generation mainstream class of card. However, sometimes it makes sense to get an older enthusiast card rather than a current mainstream card. Right now the nVidia 7600 GT and ATI X1800 XT cards are moderately priced cards that offer good performance. In any specific situation, it is necessary to look at several benchmarks using both synthetic tests such as 3dMark and real games to decide what the best performance for your money is. If money is absolutely no object, get one or a pair of the top of the line cards from either ATI or nVidia. Right now this means the ATI X1900 XTX or the nVidia 7900 GTX. If money is very important and you rarely play any 3D games, a budget card such as the current ATI X1300 or nVidia 6200 would be just fine for. Each of these companies has their die-hard fans, but in all honestly the competition is so fierce between them that their products are almost always very similar in performance and price.

Conclusion
I hope this discussion of modern video cards has been informing. This can be a very confusing area because of the short time between product releases, but it also means that the price for current and older cards is always dropping. For more information about any specific card and to see several performance tests, I would suggest taking a look at the interactive VGA charts over at Tom’s Hardware. This site and many other sites review just about every new video card that comes out.

Multiple monitor functionality was brought to the Windows world with Windows 95. Unfortunately, that implementation had some problems, and monitors were so expensive that most people didn’t use more than one. Now, however, monitors are fairly inexpensive and many video cards have built-in support for 2 or more monitors. Quite a bit of software has been written with multiple monitors in mind. If you haven’t tried multiple monitors before, or if you want to learn how to make your current multi-monitor setup better, just keep reading.

Benefits

The most obvious benefit of having multiple monitors is that you get more desktop area to have more applications visible at one time. Instead of being limited to 1280×1024 of a single 19″ CRT/LCD monitor, you can have 2560×1024 of total area on two 19″ CRT/LCDs or even 3840×1024 with three.

However, the advantages don’t end with a larger desktop area. If you like to run applications in maximized or full screen modes, you’ll be able to fill one screen with each application. So if you want to have your email program maximized on one screen (if you have a lot of email), you can still use the other screen for your web brower, spreadsheet, word processor, or any other progrm. It makes copy/pasting easier because you can have the “Copy” window on one monitor and the “Paste” window on another so you can see exactly what you are doing.

It’s also possible to combine the multiple displays into one big display on the computer. Then you can watch a DVD and stretch it to fill all the monitor space.

Microsoft Flight Simulator supports multi-monitor gaming excellently, and a few other games do as well (many only work with Matrox Dualhead cards). It’s possible to get different views or even play head to head, depending on the game. Unfortunately, the displays other than the primary display do not have the full set of DirectX options and usually will only work in a software rendered mode.

In short, if you’re using just one monitor, you’re hurting your own productivity. If you can spare the desk space, you’ll definitely be able to do more with two.

Methods

So how do you go about setting up a dual monitor system? You’ll need two monitors and either 2 video cards or a video card that has mutiple monitor outputs. It’s even possible to mix and match multi-monitor video cards with single-monitor video cards for more monitors.

You can also use a laptop since most of the time the built-in LCD display can be seperate from the external VGA output. It’s even possible to have a third display on a laptop using a PCMCIA video card.

Matrox Graphics has long been a contender in the video card arena of PC computing. Despite this long-standing company, they have done little innovation as of recent. They have not had a major chipset revision since the G400. The G400 was a powerful chipset at the time of its release. While the company was well-known for its 2D power with the G200 chipset, they were not a real player in the multimedia and gaming market until the G400. The G400 hit the market and created a noticeable ripple effect with its powerful 3D rendering. They were also well-known for the powerful dual-head feature, allowing you to use two monitors using the same video card. Matrox later released the G450 and G550, but these were not groundbreaking releases. The G450 was a revision of the G400 that introduced 64-bit DDR memory. The G550 was, yet again, another revision of the same core architecture with the addition of some 3D pipelining.

The Parhelia chipset is rumored to be on par with the effect of the release of the G400 on the market. With the specs that are being spread out over the rumor lines, the Parhelia may very well have the ability to shove aside the GeForce4 Ti as the prime performance GPU. According to Matrox itself, this new GPU will contain 80 million transistors in a 0.15 micron design. It will have 20GB/sec of available bandwidth and up to 256 MB of on-board DDR RAM. But, what does all this mean and what will you be able to do with it?

Obviously, this card is shaping up to be one hell of a pixel pumper. But, to demonstrate one of the really cool features of this system, let’s look at the “Surround Gaming” feature. Matrox has long been known for their dual-head technology, which allows either two separate screens at two different resolutions (with proper OS and driver support) or two screens with the resolution spread out over the two screens. Well, Parhelia will, of course, still support this. DualHead-HF (High Fidelity) is the improved dual-head that Parhelia uses, allowing two fully-symmetric, 2048 x 1536 @ 32bpp analog outputs or dual 1920 x 1200 @ 32bpp digital outputs. But, they are taking it further - three screen gaming. Parhelia will be the first GPU to support three screens from a single chip. By using all three at a time, you get a truly panoramic view in your games. The game must have support for this feature, and Matrox is working with developers to ensure this is the case. Games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002, Jedi Knight II, Quake III Arena and many other games using the Quake 3 gaming engine already boast support for this. This three-screen setup can also work with standard desktop software, allowing maximum screen real estate for all of your software. While the cards will have two DVI outputs, a dongle will be supplied to allow for the third display.

Obviously, this GPU has not yet been released and nobody, to my knowledge, has yet seen any benchmarking scores for it. Matrox, being a privately held corporation, is not subject to the normal public leaking, except from inside sources who do it for strategic reasons, I’m sure. Until recently, everything that was known about Parhelia was from the rumor mill. Matrox has launched a section of its website flaunting the coming features of the chipset. Rather than me going through everything they have already addressed, you can check out their website.

• Matrox Parhelia-512 Homepage

Matrox has been out of the limelight since its G400 Max was outshined by the GeForce 256 DDR. From there, we saw other offerings from nVidia, ATI and 3dfx. Matrox stayed in the business-grade video arena, which it had always been good at. Now, there is not much doubt that ATI and nVidia are the dominant players in the 3D video market., with the RadeOn and GeForce4 GPUs respectively. In order to come back into this arena with authority, Matrox has to surpass these two GPUs with the Parhelia-512. It is possible that Matrox had not just lost its ability to compete in 3D, and instead has been concentrating on refining its strategy in this market. Is the Parhelia the result?

And with that, I’ll show you the Matrox press release announcing Parhelia…