G450 Dualhead

[qball]

I am quite eagerly awaiting the G450 for it's advanced and improved Dualhead support. I am a programmer and being able to work on 2 seperate screens is a godsend. However I have a question as to what is known about the new version of Dualhead that is to be with the G450. Has Matrox released specific specs as to what the secondary display can put out? I want to be able to run 1600x1200x32 @ 85Hz on the primary and 1600x1200x32 @ 75Hz on the secondary. I was looking through the specs on the MAX and I found that it can't do 1600x1200 on the secondary. I heard that 1280x1024 was barely worth doing anyway because the secondary couldn't keep up with the high-res clarity that we've come to expect from Matrox.

Anyway, I have read mixed things about the G450, even Matrox's own press releases about the thing seem to contradict each other. One thing that I read was that the G450 is suposed to have a secondary RAMDAC so that the secondary display could not only run at a high resolution, but also with nearly the same level of clairity as the primary. Would anyone who may be more clued in to this like to comment on/correct any of this?

-Q

[Maggi]

Hi Qball,
www.sharkyextreme.com had a 'sort-of' preview which gave out some deatils about the 2nd head, but take it with a grain of salt, becasue it was released before Matrox officially announced the G450.

taken from http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...atrox_g450_fg/

Dual Head Heaven

Another improvement for the G450 is a faster secondary RAMDAC speed, increased to 200MHz or faster. This allows the secondary monitor port on the G450 to use a 1600x1200 display, up from 1280x1024 with the G400. So with one G450, a user can have 2056x1536x32bpp on their primary screen and 1600x1200x32bpp on their secondary screen. That comes to 5,078,016 pixels being pushed by a single video card. Not too shabby. That qualifies as a whole hell of a lot of spreadsheet space and, if performance of previous Matrox cards is a good indicator, the picture will be diamond sharp. The primary RAMDAC speed should remain at 360MHz, just like with the G400-Max.

Cheers,
Maggi

[Ant]

The pre G450 press release talk was that the secondary RAMDAC was hoped to be 200MHz allowing a secondary output of 1600x1200@32bpp. This has not yet been confirmed, but then again they still haven't answered my repeated question as to whether or not the G450 will support the rainbow Runner-G.