Two Monitors on an R7 260X - My Experiences

[FairladyZ]

I recently purchased a second monitor, looking to also upgrade my GPU. However, I decided against upgrading the GPU when I found out that the performance numbers would be nearly unaffected by so long as I didn't try to game on both, and since they are different resolutions and refresh rates, isn't possible.

 

Setup

Setup was really easy, surprisingly. All I did was hook up the display via HDMI, and the card instantly recognized it and automatically optimized it to run with Windows. From there, I changed the resolution to the actual resolution of the monitor, and tweaked scaling, because the text was huge.

 

Performance

The performance of my machine in games was similar as it was before. Since I went up from a 1440x900 panel at 75Hz to a 1920x1080 panel at 60Hz, the performance was slightly different. I performed a few tests...

-Only the 1080p display                  47  Avg. FPS in BF4 @ High, 2x MSAA

-Only the 1440x900 display            51

-Both displays, mirrored                 47

-Both displays, merged                  44

*Sorry for no screenshots, I never took them.

 

Conclusion

Overall, yeah, it's possible. It does increase productivity, and it makes doing projects easier, because you can be researching on a Chrome tab on one display, then writing a document on the other. It has no difference whatsoever in games, unless you're running monitoring software or something on one display, and your game on the other. Two monitors is worth it, but at the same time it's not. It takes up a ton of space on your desk, unless you wall mount, it increases productivity, it adds another power brick to have to hide under your desk, it makes people look twice when they visit your house, and it is another silicon mouth for your graphics card to feed.

 

A bad quality picture, taken on an 8 year old camera:

 

[Guest]

I HAVE THE SAME EMPREX MONITOR. Sorry, it's just funny seeing somebody else who has that specific monitor (not common at all). I am pretty surpised by that performance. I too use 2 monitors but not for gaming, just one of them. 

[aom]

first of all, telly tubbies..............

second of all, why do u have a mobo hanging precariously on top of a case....

[AStateOfTrance]

first of all, telly tubbies..............

second of all, why do u have a mobo hanging precariously on top of a case....

yolo