Hi,

Thought strictly not for poker, I'm looking at picking up one of these so I can hook two monitors up to my MacBook Pro (w/ display port).

Specs

Probably looking at the "digital edition", with the following cabling:

[DP2VGA on MBP ]-(VGA CABLE)-> [Matrox Box] -(2x DVI )-> [Monitors]

Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with these, has any cautionary tales, or knows of any better (cost effective or otherwise more useful) solutions.

I'm going to buy another monitor as well (same make/model as my current one), so sync and dimensions won't be an issue.

Any input/advice would be appreciated.

I do not have any personal experience with these mobile expansion units but I do have a lot of experience with Matrox hardware. The stuff they used to make wasn't as good as the stuff today. We use almost exclusively use Matrox cards now in all of our workstations and they're pretty good cards. Not for gaming but for your average home/business user they work fine.

They are reliable and do what they need to do. Again, however, I have no experience with this specific product. Just make sure your system is compatible with the hardware.

+1 on Matrox is gold.

I don't use this adapter, but also workstation cards and its one of these companies with support. They don't tell you to restart your pc and see if that solves it ...

Just be aware that depending on the GPU in your macbook, the max resolution of the 2 monitors is very limited.

lol@matrox. ppl doing graphics design kinda stuff were raving 'bout matrox maybe two decades ago. aorn, they're pretty much irrelevant. /thread

Yeah, they are very irrelevant for consumer purposes, but whenever you're in a hospital or at a doctor the next time and they make same scans and look at pictures, your health might depend on Matrox products.

The next time you're on a plane, the flight controller will see your plane as little dot, displayed by a Matrox solution.

They're industry leading for some applications ainec.

Absolutely, they were very popular in the audio production sector (and probably still are) for a long time. So many people I knew threw money away on 3D cards, and at the time they were one of the best ways to cripple a (windows) audio workstation.

Please ignore my previous post ITT (was drunk).

I recall some people having performance issues with these. They got noticeable input lag even in 2D scenarios (e.g., while playing poker).

Alternatives are usually superior to DualHead/TripleHead 2Go. These include laptops featuring multiple video outputs and external graphics cards that are connected via ExpressCard. The latter may not be an option on a MBP as I believe it might not have ExpressCard (not sure). Fairly soon, daisy-chaining DP monitors will be another option (actually, if you have a 2010 MBP, you might investigate if it's already supported--again, I'm not sure).

Also, OP, hooking up a DualHead2Go via a DP-to-VGA cable is a no-no: picture quality is gonna suck big time. It would be better to use hook up the Matrox digitally (as opposed to analog in the case of the DP-to-VGA cable).

Thanks for weighing in. I haven't found a viable alternative to 2Go yet.

- I don't have an ExpressCard slot (only the 17"s) nor multiple outputs.
- I'd consider the DP route, but it seems I'll have to wait a while to find a monitor that's reasonably priced -- most of them are pretty huge and expensive right now, negating the need for a dual head setup if I wanted to shell out that much.

I agree that going VGA -> Matrox isn't ideal, but for whatever reason, they only make the 2Go boxes with VGA or DP inputs (and not DVI):



Which would be fine as I could use the DP outs to my monitors via convertors, but Apple in their vision don't see the need for a mini-DP to DP adaptor (WTF?) From my searching, 3rd parties haven't jumped in to fill the gap.

I did find a $70 alternative (http://us.kensington.com/html/17534.html), it's a USB add-on video card, but this undeniably going to suck (they even mention it sucking for mac in their product specs).

Presently I'm leaning toward the VGA input version, but want to try to find it locally so I can return it when the picture inevitably sucks. At this point, it looks like it may be more cost effective to just buy a huge honking DVI monitor.

LOL, turns out Matrox did make a miniDP -> DP adaptor, but it seems to be discontinued an out of stock everywhere that did have it.

Matrox Mini DP-to-DP cable (CAB-MDP-DPF)

FML.

VGA wasn't designed to handle such high resolutions. Thus, the two editions with VGA in should be avoided.

imo, go for the DP edition (that is, IF you can live with the main limitation of DualHead2Go, namely input lag). Purchase a DP-to-mini DP cable from monoprice.com for $4.

great site, didn't know about it. that makes my cabling/adaptor woes much easier to solve. wish I had known about it sooner.

will a dualhead2go using the aforementioned:

[DP2VGA on MBP ]-(VGA CABLE)-> [Matrox Box] -(2x DVI )-> [Monitors]

run 2 x 24" screens at 1920x1200?


AND will a >late 2009 (latest model) Macbook run the above setup?