Red vs Green vs Blue V2 - Graphical Hardware

So let's look at the different solutions and how much they cost me.

Prices were correct at time of purchase in Feb 2012. Prices will change as time goes on and were indicative of the cost ratios only. These are to assess whether or not the cheapest setup is actually the best value. These results would change depending on how video card prices change and what your local market has to offer, and are to provoke thought about value only.

Australia

With my Eyefinity setup, the Sapphire HD6950 2GB cost me $350. I bought the Sapphire for its extra cooling abilities over the more budget cards as these suckers run hot. Now you can get these cards for around $320 here. For the active adapter, I had one from my previous Eyefinity build, which cost me $120 at the time. You can get them a bit cheaper now, although the Accell active adapter still costs $90 here. Our local market prices are ridiculous compared to the US. So together, the pair came to $470, although it would cost $410 here for the pair at the time of the other hardware purchases, which is the figure I will use.

A Triplehead2Go Digital Edition still costs $400 here, and I still had to purchase a GPU. The Triplehead2Go DP edition costs about the same as the Digital Edition. I was planning in testing the TH2G with the HD6950, but the Triplehead2Go does not support 5040x1050 on AMD cards. I couldn't afford to buy an independent Nvidia card to test this, so I used the 2 x GTX560 2GB SLI setup in the Nvidia rig to give me comparable graphical performance. That ends up as $890 worth of equipment.

On the Nvidia side, I assessed 2 x Palit GTX560 2GB cards as the best value setup that I could afford. They were $245 each, so the pair came in at $490.

Bear in mind the prices are in Australian dollars and based on our local market pricing, which is highway robbery.

USA

Based on newegg.com pricing, Americans would pay the following:
- Sapphire HD6950 2GB $280, Accell active adapter $46; Total $326
- Galaxy GTX560 2GB $220x2; Total $440 (newegg don't have the Palit price listed due to out-of-stock, so it's an equivelant alternative)
- Matrox Triplehead2Go $300, Galaxy GTX560 2GB $220x2: $440; Total $740

The total cost of hardware for me in Australia was $1300, while if I was in America it would cost me $1046 if I shopped through newegg.com. Bearing in mind that the Australian dollar is stronger than the US dollar at the moment, it's an outrage. But I move on...

So let me make one thing clear straight away. The Triplehead2Go setup is expensive, any way you look at it, and regardless of which edition you go for. Only half of the dollars you are putting are going towards GPU grunt. Do the features it offers make it worth the money? Does the DP Edition offer any new functionality over the Digital Edition?

The Nvidia Surround rig comes in second place cost-wise. It's simple and clean, no external adapters or boxes to worry about, and 100% of your dollars go towards GPU grunt.

In Australia, with the Eyefinity setup, you're still putting almost a quarter of your cash into non-GPU items (active adapter), though that ratio comes down somewhat in America. If you had DisplayPort monitors, this wouldn’t be an issue, but many of us don’t. Regardless, the Eyefinity setup is the most affordable to get into of this lot.

So how do they perform?