Extra Monitors DO Hurt Your Gaming Performance

[Plouffe]

We've wondered for years if adding multiple high-resolution displays to your battlestation could hurt gaming performance, so we asked the lab to take a look and the results might surprise you.

 

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Buy a Corsair XENEON FLEX 45" Bendable Monitor: https://geni.us/bYjt

 

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

 

 

[filpo]

I love how LMG links the new monitors as if I had the money to buy one

*Spends another 1000 pounds on a gpu*

[Spotty]

Can you please do something about Linus pointing to something on a screen and the camera operator zooming in just to show a blurry unfocused mess before zooming back out as they try to keep up with Linus?

To be clear I'm not blaming the camera operators, I understand it isn't easy trying to focus on to a screen or to keep up with Linus's fast pace as he moves around. I'm not sure what the solution would be whether it would be to plan the shots out in advance so the camera operators know what they're going to be focusing on so they can be better prepared, telling Linus to slow down with his presentation a few seconds when he points to things on screen to give his team the time they need for shots like that (which can be cut in editing), cutting in a separate shot from B roll/screen capture if the primary footage ends up being unusable, cutting those sections from the video if they're too blurry to be usable, or having the camera operator on the spot saying "Sorry Linus I didn't quite catch that can we run it back again so I can focus".

 

 

Linus: "And then look what happens"

 

Audience: ?????

[Nystemy]

Personally not really interested in the fairly uninformative "average FPS".
What about the 0.1% lows? (or how the worst frame times gets affected.)
 

That there is a performance impact isn't too surprising. Nor its size.

However, here comes the good old. "what about if one has two GPUs?"

Like one GPU for the primary monitor, and a second one for the ancillary ones.

This should logically offload at least the GPU side of the issue from one's games. And as long as one has a suitably good CPU and enough system memory bandwidth, then the CPU shouldn't noticeably be meaningfully burdened by the extra load either.

However, streaming video while playing online games likely has a measureable impact on network latency. After all, the network won't care what package contains what data, only that it should arrive at its destination at some point in time. Video or game data are simply equal in priority as far as latency goes, IP networking largely don't care that one technically has a much more relaxed latency budget than the other.

[ToboRobot]

4 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

Personally not really interested in the fairly uninformative "average FPS".
What about the 0.1% lows? (or how the worst frame times gets affected.)
 

 

You should look closely at the charts in the video and the labels for the different bars. 

[Nystemy]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

You should look closely at the charts in the video and the labels for the different bars. 

1% low is still fairly average.
At least they have stopped using the even more meaningless 10% low.

To be fair, even 0.1% or 0.01% is somewhat meaningless as well.
To a degree it is better to just provide the longest frame times.

Since if running at 100-200 FPS on average, then a 120 ms spike every 20 seconds won't meaningfully impact even the 0.1% average.
However, the spike in latency is a very noticeable stutter to everyone.

And having the system do more stuff in the background is a rather surefire way to ensure that the Kernel will schedule away aspects of the game engine at inopportune moments. Effectively ensuring that one will get a massive spike in frame delivery times. _{(A wonderfully common problem back when single threaded CPUs were effectively the only thing around.)}

[KGB ate my bread]

So.. I've noticed lately while having a YT video open on my 2nd monitor while playing Anno 1800 that YT is dropping down to 360P playback quality after a while (while still being set to auto).. Makes me wonder if this is because chrome isn't getting enough oomph from my old RTX 2070 (non-super) as my in game frames dip under 40 fps late game and my PC starts to struggle to keep things smooth..

 

 

To add.. Normally a video's playback is fine, but after a while of not looking at it is when I'll notice it's switched over to 360p. Audio quality remains the same, so I don't really hear that switch. Connection is symmetrical gigabit.

 

 

While this was meant to be a more generalized video, it does make me wonder if they had done this testing with lets say...  a Mid-tier system, or one that's a generation old hardware wise.. 

 

 

Edit: Also, maybe YT just hates me because I don't pay for their crap subscription they're pushing... (LOOKING AT YOU ENHANCED BITRATE 1080P OPTION.. ARE YOU THE ONE DOING THIS TO ME??)

[themrsbusta]

If you have your iGPU enabled and plug your second monitor on it, the performance drop is unexistent.

 

Also, this is the video description: 

[mad_hatter_md01]

Hmm, I wonder how this is working to my PC's detriment. I currently run 2 monitors on my system so that I can game on one and watch look at info on another. However, when I click off the game the frame rate drops incredibly on the gaming monitor. Would anyone able to help me maximize the performance of this pc?
CPU: Intel i7-11700KF 3.6GHz
Motherboard: Asustek G15CE
Memory: DDR4-3200 16GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
OS: Win 11
Monitors: 2x LG 27" 4K UHD UltraFine™ IPS Monitor with HDR10

[LMGcommunity]

37 minutes ago, themrsbusta said:

If you have your iGPU enabled and plug your second monitor on it, the performance drop is unexistent.

 

Also, this is the video description: 

Fixed it. Thank you!

[GodAtum]

This is the most stupid video I've ever seen. I have 3 monitors and when I game I turn off 2 of them!

[Red :)]

17 minutes ago, LMGcommunity said:

Fixed it. Thank you!

The 'Discuss' button seems to be gone, too:

[Ubersonic]

I have all my secondary monitors plugged into a GTX750ti in a spare PCI-E 1x slot, avoids choppy YouTube performance while gaming at high Hz.

[cmndr]

Can I request that we also run a test with secondary displays plugged into integrated graphics?

I don't have integrated graphics but I'd like to see if that does anything. I'll likely have an iGPU at SOME point. 

[Mytherals]

I really wish they mentioned applications like Wallpaper Engine where there is essentially always something moving on my other monitors.

[GhostRoadieBL]

is it the same for AMD? looked like Nvidia 4090 founders on the b-roll bench

can't you just use the Nvidia control panel to set browsers and non-games to run on the iGPU or turn off hardware acceleration in the browser so it's using the overhead available on your CPU? there are likely ways around this to help bring back fps lost to less optimized set-ups.

[Tealdragon204]

I actually did have in a niche scenario on my 2070 laptop, duplicating the screen hurt performance (ONLY WITH DIFFERENT RESOLUTIONS)

I was duplicating my laptops screen (4k) to a portable monitor (1080) for shared gaming (Champions of Norrath via PCSX2)

And it deeply affected the performance. But Champions of Norrath is infamously difficult to run and I was duplicating the screen between two drastically different resolutions while emulating a game.

 

 

I am wondering if such a scenario was ever tested. I know its incredibly niche

[Cl4mp]

Hey, can you give recommendations for monitors available in the UK and India?

[crism]

@ 9:03 in the video, Linus says you'd link the ShortCircuit review of the Sony monitor "down below" but it's not linked anywhere in the description...

[LMGcommunity]

36 minutes ago, crism said:

@ 9:03 in the video, Linus says you'd link the ShortCircuit review of the Sony monitor "down below" but it's not linked anywhere in the description...

Just added it in.

[Zodiark1593]

5 hours ago, themrsbusta said:

If you have your iGPU enabled and plug your second monitor on it, the performance drop is unexistent.

 

Also, this is the video description: 

Not necessarily, depending on the setup. When doing this on my own desktop, for example, the iGPU only acts as a pass through for the dGPU. You get full 3D performance regardless of monitor, but the dGPU is still handling both screens. 
 

Though my desktop is going on 8 years old, so I’m unsure of this has changed on recent platforms. 
 

The additional load for multi-display is most likely due to fill rate, and memory bandwidth. Redrawing multiple layers of windows at 4K is probably relatively expensive too, owing to overdraw. 
 

I wonder what the performance difference would be with 4 1080P screens, vs 1 4K screen split 4 ways. 

[simpsonfan409]

not a single mention of refresh rates...

mismatching your refresh rates can cause bad frame timings.

i had stutters when i still used a 60hz 2nd monitor and it went away when i replaced it with a 144hz monitor.

[Kikorusan]

I read somewhere that plugging your 2nd monitor to the MoBo will use your processor’s integrated graphics instead of the dedicated gpu which will then not affect performance of the gpu. Is this true? And if so is there a setting thing you have to do to enable it? Will the downside be more temps and possible cpu slowdown?

[crism]

4 hours ago, LMGcommunity said:

Just added it in.

thank you

[nlhans]

6 hours ago, simpsonfan409 said:

not a single mention of refresh rates...

mismatching your refresh rates can cause bad frame timings.

i had stutters when i still used a 60hz 2nd monitor and it went away when i replaced it with a 144hz monitor.

Yes came here to post about this. Hopefully they can test this in the future.

 

I think its very common for people to have mismatched refresh rates these days. You have a couple of old 1080p 60Hz monitors, but then decide to treat yourself to some 144Hz goodness and use those 60Hz monitors as side displays. Who on earth can afford to buy a similarily high-spec monitor as side monitors straight away?

 

Well I did a few years back. Bought 2x MSI 1440p 144Hz G-sync gaming monitors and moved all my old monitors out. It was great, albeit 144Hz as a side display was gross overkill lol. Unfortunately one monitor  broke after 1,5yr, so I switched back to a 1080p/60Hz display and since then 144Hz doesn't feel as smooth when I have the 2nd display running. When I play RL I usually disable this monitor in Windows to have the optimal 144Hz experience.

 

But lately I've been running it at 120Hz and that is giving me less issues. Presumably because 120 en 60Hz are integer divisible.

 

Now this does sound increasingly hard to test though. Because I think a main point of interest is to also consider laptops, where you're basically stuck with whatever internal display and a potential mix of GPU vendors (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA) and mix of GPU <=> display configurations (e.g. some displays run on iGPU, some on dGPU, some via mux others via PCIe image transfers). Gets complicated quickly! But would be really interested to see if there are any difference or gains to be had here..