Adding a second monitor.

[tobben]

Hey, was wondering if any of you awesome people could help me out. I have a few questions regarding this.

 

for the most part i just want more space .. as i always have a whole bunch of minimzed stuff running in the background and im alt tabbing like a maniac, so i figred it would be cool to have more space. But also part of the reason is that i want to be able to do multiple things in the background while playing games without having to tab out, be it sorting out music .. looking at a web browser, chatting, sorting files, whatever.

Do any of you see any problems with this? should be doable to play games on one monitor and do random things on the other screen?

 

lastly im looking for advice on what monitor to get .. the current monitor i have is Benq 2220HDA, i play pretty much any game (alot of single player rpg/adventure games among others) .. so im not super hardcore on the twitch shooters, so i want a nice all purpose monitor with good colors, that isn't Super slow. Im planning on using the second monitor i buy as the main monitor for playing games and whatnot, i don't exactly need a UBER fast 120hz monitor that sacrefices everything for low latency, i want a good looking monitor for the viewing experience, but that doesn't mean i don't care about low latency.

 

my gpu is a 7950 and cpu is 3770k so i don't have the hardware to push very high resolutions or push above 100 fps on high settings anyway (highly dependant on the game ofcourse, among the games i play are many that hardly requires a dedicated gpu in the first place)

 

I don't have a particular budget, but i don't want to spend an aweful lot of money either, from my understanding the dell ultrasharp U2713HM and Asus PB278Q are very well regarded but have fairly high latency? and they are pretty darn expensive aswell, probably overkill for what im going to use it for considering im not going to be doing any video/photo editing.

[Coombzy]

I have to use windowed borderless when I want something on my other screens but there maybe a piece of software that fixes this.

[LogicalDrm]

Software like DisplayFusion and Actual Multiple Monitors offer option to leave game running full screen on background while checking 2nd monitor. So far I haven't really tested how this works with DF. My test didn't really work since games minimized when I activated programs on 2nd screen. 2nd monitor is totally worth it. Just try to get same resolotion/size as your primary. It looks and works better.

[Glenwing]

Putting stuff on the screen during games only lets you look at it, if you want to interact with programs on your second monitor you will still have to tab out of your game.  Otherwise your cursor will be locked in the game screen's area and you won't be able to move it over to your other monitor while the game is still open.

 

The Acer B6 B276HULymiidprz is another option similar to the U2713HM and PB278Q, but at a lower price (though still fairly expensive).  None of these monitors are particularly slow.

[LogicalDrm]

Putting stuff on the screen during games only lets you look at it, if you want to interact with programs on your second monitor you will still have to tab out of your game.  Otherwise your cursor will be locked in the game screen's area and you won't be able to move it over to your other monitor while the game is still open.

 

 

 

Actually cursor can move out of game screen, but activating programs on 2nd screen will make game tab out. Game has to be in menu or somewhere cursor movements is free.

[tobben]

Actually cursor can move out of game screen, but activating programs on 2nd screen will make game tab out. Game has to be in menu or somewhere cursor movements is free.

is there no software to work around this though?, and will it still happen if you run windowed borderless?

and is there anything slightly cheaper than the  Acer B6 B276HULymiidprz(funny thing from another website this is actually a tad bit more expensive than the other options)

 but still good quality that someone would recommend?

[Glenwing]

Actually cursor can move out of game screen, but activating programs on 2nd screen will make game tab out. Game has to be in menu or somewhere cursor movements is free.

 

I've never played a game which let the mouse travel off the game screen without alt-tabbing out first or hitting the windows key, unless it was in windowed mode.

 

I'm glad it does too, I can't imagine trying to play LoL if my mouse would move outside the game whenever I tried to pan sideways by hitting the edge of the game screen.  Or a first person shooter if the mouse went out of the game screen when I aim left or right.

[LogicalDrm]

@tobben, if you don't want game to tab out, make it be always on top. It will stay on screen but be out of focus.

 

@Glenwing, I remember only one game which did that and it was annoying. Usually they just go windowed mode (almost equally annoying).