Matrox MXO Article

[Jonathan Bowen]

So, the MXO can be placed on a second display card and FCP continues to operate properly with no RT rendering issues? If so, that’s interesting and terrific news.

Some background to my question:

I’m looking into purchasing the Matrox MXO as a low cost option for creating a broadcast quality external video monitor. I just started working at a facility that has a unit setup with dual graphics card – twin ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with dual DVI out (4 DVI outs total). Currently, the unit is driving three monitors – (2) 24″ Samsung SynMaster T240HD & (1) 32″ Vizio VO32L FHDTV10A. The Vizio is acting as an external monitor, but in reality it’s just a third desktop display.

So, as you can see, I have two problems to correct:

A) Upgrade the signal going to my external monitor to something closer to broadcast quality.
B) Remedy the FCP dual graphics card glitch currently plaguing this Mac Pro Tower.

From my research it appears I could do the following setup:

Keep one ATI graphics card installed (with dual DVI outs). Then drive my OSX desktop with a Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital off of first DVI output and drive my external video monitor with a Matrox MXO off of the second DVI output. (I’m still have hesitations that my graphics card can handle this, but Matrox states that my exact card is pretested and works with each device separately, but says nothing about them together, side by side, off of the same card. Seems like it should work, but I won’t know until I have all the parts in place.)

But…

Your post implies that I could possibly save some money by leaving my second graphics card installed. That I could use it to drive the MXO and FCP will work just fine. Am I comprehending your post correct? I’m crossing my fingers here. This means I don’t have to purchase a Matrox TripleHead2Go. 🙂

Thanks in advance for any light you may shine.