Matrox Dual Head 2Go Dual Analog

I'm using the Dual Head 2Go with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card and 2 x Sony SDM-S95AB monitors in 2560 x 1024 Mode and it works perfectly.

Just connect the monitors to the small Matrox box, power up the computer and install the software. I used the 'Auto adjust' once on each monitor to get the image displaying fully on each screen and haven't had to adjust anything since.

The software is easy to use, there are a number of easy setup options such as whether to have a 'main' screen and where you would like certain programs to open.

It's great for increasing the enjoyment and capability of the computer. You can use it for displaying large spreadsheets, having email on one screen and web browsing on the other, CAD work, music production and of course gaming!

It probably helps if you are using it with fairly new monitors which are able to reset themselves automatically, and both monitors have to run at the same resolution.

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• Ease of use
• Value for money

Using two screens is revolutionary. Once tried there is no way back. However it is not all plain sailing. When installing this product you must follow the instructions exactly to the letter otherwise installation will fail, as I found to my cost. I am using brand new Dell analogue 17 inch screens with a brand new Dell OptiPlex 745. In spite of this I am seeing vertical banding. However this is bearable and rarely gets in the way. Since installation of this product I have not been able to scan using a Hewlett-Packard HP 5550 flatbed scanner or a HP 5590 flatbed scanner. This has not been solved by changing the driver. The only solution is to disable the dual screen output. Naturally this is a big problem. Matrox have not been able to help me resolve this problem but tell me I am the only person who has reported it.

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• Ease of use
• Value for money

Mode 2560 X 1020 (2 x 1280 x 1024) only works at 60hz as is stated by matrox. However when tested with 2 x HP TFTs I found horizontal bars rippling up the screen. This was not a fault of the DualHead2Go unit but rather the TFTs and a poor signal from an nVidia 7300 GO based machine. Better cabling, helped slightly but not enough. These TFTs work fine at 75Hz but that is not supported.

I would recomend driving each of your existing displays at 60Hz from the machine you plan to use this device with before purchasing it. If the image quality is poor, then this device will only make it slightly worse.

I also tried two Samsung syncmaster 193T's with which work ok at 60Hz However once in 2 x 1280 x 1024, the image was shited right about 1cm into each panel. Moving the horizontal position as far as possible to the left on both the monitor and the display adaptor could not solve this problem. Again this issue was specific to the monitors I using but could happen to other users.

• Overall
• Ease of use
• Value for money