Videos On Second Monitor Drop Frames When Gaming On Primary Monitor

Omie · January 23, 2022

So I have this pretty weird issue where in some games (tested with Destiny 2 and FFXIV), whenever I play any video on my second monitor and then switch back to my primary monitor to game, I can tell the frames in the videos playing on my second monitor are dropping. I use Google Chrome as my web browser.

For example, YouTube and Twitch streams that are outputting in 60fps honestly feel like they’re 30fps on my second monitor whenever I’m gaming on my primary monitor. The frames in those videos/streams feel very inconsistent too, almost like they’re fluctuating up and down. But as soon as I click back into my second monitor the videos become smooth again. Then clicking back into my primary monitor the frames in the videos become choppy.

I play all my games in true fullscreen. But I noticed that in Destiny 2 at least, whenever I switch to borderless fullscreen, the frames in the videos are smooth when I’m gaming on my primary monitor. But the problem with borderless window is that my game feels very stuttery, and it feels like Gsync isn’t even working. The same thing happens in FFXIV regarding borderless window mode. My GPU utilization also reaches 95%+ when playing FFXIV.

The weird thing is that when playing League of Legends, I don’t experience any problems. Neither with frame drops on my second monitor or borderless fullscreen.

Could it just be FFXIV and Destiny 2 being weird? Maybe Steam since both of those games are installed through Steam? I’m not really sure.

Has anyone experienced this weird problem before?

Specs