Do multiple displays lower performance?

[zedsdeath]

I use a second display to either watch stuff on social networks or monitor cpu/gpu usage. I noticed some stuttering in fornite a couple of weeks ago and I was wondering if could be related to this. 

[Bananasplit_00]

no it dosnt hurt it any more than doing the same things in the background

[WickedStarfish]

6 minutes ago, zedsdeath said:

I use a second display to either watch stuff on social networks or monitor cpu/gpu usage. I noticed some stuttering in fornite a couple of weeks ago and I was wondering if could be related to this. 

yeah it can, i don't think it would be as noticable with what you are doing, i notice it is a bit bad when i am using chrome and watching something on the second screen (but chrome is ram hungry). or when i am switching from one display to two (or two to one) the whole computer freezes up for probably 2 seconds. but it shouldn't be that noticable unless you are doing something performance hungry in the background

[zedsdeath]

playing a 1080p video is considered performance hungry? 

[WickedStarfish]

Just now, zedsdeath said:

playing a 1080p video is considered performance hungry? 

for me yeah, but the games i normally play are a bit more hungry than fortnite and when you get into games like just cause 4 every 5 - 20% cpu usage matters when on a 4th gen i5 and a 1060

[Constantin]

It all depends from the GPU you have.

Mid-low GPU's you will notice stuttering when playing on both a Youtube video, or something like that

High-top GPU's, you wont even notice any difference at all!

[WickedStarfish]

missed Gpu as well haha

[zedsdeath]

8 minutes ago, WickedStarfish said:

for me yeah, but the games i normally play are a bit more hungry than fortnite and when you get into games like just cause 4 every 5 - 20% cpu usage matters when on a 4th gen i5 and a 1060

 

 

7 minutes ago, Constantin said:

It all depends from the GPU you have.

Mid-low GPU's you will notice stuttering when playing on both a Youtube video, or something like that

High-top GPU's, you wont even notice any difference at all!

im on 3rd gen i7 3770  and rx 580. But I only look at videos(or music) on the second monitor while playing diablo 3, mobas, fornite( mostly for the loading screens, parties and death timers). When i play metro exodus or something like that I close everything else. 

 

edit: Is my gpu considered mid range?

[WickedStarfish]

3 minutes ago, zedsdeath said:

 

 

im on 3rd gen i7 3770  and rx 580. But I only look at videos(or music) on the second monitor while playing diablo 3, mobas, fornite( mostly for the loading screens, parties and death timers). When i play metro exodus or something like that I close everything else

what is the FPS max set at on fortnite and the other games you play?

[Settlerteo]

1 hour ago, zedsdeath said:

I use a second display to either watch stuff on social networks or monitor cpu/gpu usage. I noticed some stuttering in fornite a couple of weeks ago and I was wondering if could be related to this. 

As other members mentioned above it is almost the same as if you had all these running in the background. The exception is that when driving more than one displays you re using more VRAM to drive those extra pixels. So if you re running out of VRAM this might cause stuttering or even crashing.

[mariushm]

if hardware decoding is used for video playback, then performance loss is minimal. rx580 has hardware decoder for h264 and hevc (h265) but partial/hybrid decoding for VP9

if you watch h264 on youtube (right click on video, stats for nerds) cpu will only be used for decoding audio and downloading the actual stream, so practically no cpu usage

if playing vp9, a bit of cpu is used to also decode video

 

the hardware  decoder is a separate "block" in the gpu chip, separate from the part used in games so using it doesn't "load" the video card, won't reduce game fps.

* fineprint :

1. the decoder has to reserve some vram let's say 50-100 MB to put decoded frames there,but if video game uses so much ram it needs even the last 50 megs this tiny perf. drop is least of your worries.

2. also, there would be some "traffic" through pci-e bus to transfer decoded video back to browser but we're talking maybe 5-10 MB/s on a bus that can do 16x970MB/s ...

 

Some tiny performance loss will happen if there's a lot of transparency stuff on 2nd monitor, or a chat window loaded with smileys and crap because video card has to update big chunks of the screen.

video playback is practically free.

[zedsdeath]

21 hours ago, WickedStarfish said:

what is the FPS max set at on fortnite and the other games you play?

the problem is only at fornite, everything on max at 1080p, 120 fps max since my monitor is 75hz and the frame rate usually stays between 80-120 with those occasional dips to 30 fps . I just played three games and noticed a lot of stuttering on the first game but after that the problem was gone. I noticed on the first game that every time that the fps dropped the gpu fans ramped up and got loud but in like intervals up and down, after the first game the fans stayed loud all the time and the issue was gone. I will adjust the fan curve I guess