Product Reviews

Go on, guess what the Time Pluto Tri-View's big selling point is. If the name hasn't clued you in, the large photo should have. And, no, your eyes aren't deceiving you. It does come with not one, not two, but three TFT monitors.

Of course, you might ask why. Well, the monitors are attached via a splitter lead and DVI-to-VGA adaptor to a 128Mb Matrox Parhelia 128 graphics card. This provides all the benefits of dual-monitor support, but with one more display. You can open a heavyweight application like Photoshop, keep the working space in the centre monitor and move the various toolbars and docking palettes to the other screens. You could also load up an advanced 3D visualisation application and have different views on each screen.

The Parhelia boasts high fidelity - true 30-bit colour through its advanced 10-bit pipeline - so you can guarantee that the on-screen image is as close to perfection as your monitors allow.

However, the real reason for having three monitors is slightly less noble: games. The Parhelia allows you to run 3D games across all three screens for an effect that Matrox calls 'surround gaming'. This only works with certain games where you can hike the resolution up high enough, and even then you might need to alter configuration modes manually. However, when it works, the effect is magnificent, giving games a truly immersive, panoramic look and feel. Just watching Matrox's Reef undersea demo, with its awesome lighting effects and bump-mapped textures, is enough to make jaws drop.

This demands serious horsepower - the Parhelia is a fast 3D card, but it can't do it all on its own. Luckily, the Pluto Tri-View is based on some other cutting-edge kit. First up is a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 processor, sitting pretty in a SuperMicro P4SGA motherboard. However, this is based on Intel's 845G chipset, which will only clock the memory at a maximum of 266MHz, so the extra bandwidth from the 512Mb of Corsair PC2700 memory is somewhat wasted.

Nevertheless,

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the Pluto Tri-View can still manage a fairly impressive score of 7,834 in 3DMark2001 SE in 32-bit XGA. That's not nearly as high as you'd get with a GeForce4 Ti 4600 in the same specification, but it's more than enough to power even the latest 3D games on all three monitors.

Okay, it's a gimmick - but what a gimmick. The question is whether the Pluto Tri-View has anything else to impress us. Well, 2D performance is another strength, but it's hardly surprising that the PC Pro benchmark score of 1.40 is among the very best we've seen. Only a handful of other Pentium 4 systems have scored higher.

Sadly, in order to bundle three TFT monitors in a system that's still vaguely affordable, Time has had to compromise slightly on quality. The NFREN displays have a strong grasp of colour and a fairly crisp image, but they only accept an analog VGA signal and can't deliver the supernatural clarity of, for instance, the Philips Brilliance 150P3A (see Reviews, issue 94, p133).

There are similar signs of corner-cutting on the sound system. The ZXR-500 speakers are at the top of the cheap surround packages, but the sound comes from an on-board Avance AC97 device, meaning you don't get the high-quality output and extra features of our current favourite, the Sound Blaster Audigy. Still, if all you want is 5.1 sound for DVDs and surround sound for games, this combination produces the goods.

Other connections include a V.90 modem, 10/100BaseTX Ethernet and two USB 2 ports, but FireWire isn't included. Storage won't be a problem - a speedy 80Gb Seagate Barracuda ATA IV hard disk has plenty of room for files and applications, while a 16-speed LG DVD-ROM and matching 32x/10x/40x CD-RW take care of the removable side of things. If you need more, there's space for one 5.25in and one 3.5in drive on top of that.

Time can be commended for the excellent build quality inside. Forget flat cables - all the connections inside are handled by the more expensive round cables, with the individual wires bundled inside a woven aluminium shroud. This leaves easy access to the spare DIMM socket and three available PCI slots, plus plenty of room for air to circulate around the case.

Not that you'll need to upgrade soon, and in all likelihood you won't be able to afford to. If you want 'surround gaming', you'll need to set aside £1,599 to get it - fine if you're feeling rich and frivolous, but not otherwise. The central gimmick comes at a pretty steep price, and while the rest of the PC is good it's not good enough to justify the added expense.