Dual monitors affecting gaming performance?

[Eric]

Hello everyone! I figure since I had a question I'd share it and fill up this forum, maybe someone else had this question as well?

My card is the GIGABYTE ATI 5770 1GB GDDR5.

I have a 24" 1080p monitor I use for full screen applications like games and whatever else, but I also have a 22" 1680x1050 running at all times with it. Does having the extra monitor make an impact on the FPS/Performance of a game? I feel like this happens when I switch from my current setup (1920x1080+1680x1050) to my Sony TV (1920x1080) It feels as if games run a bit smoother. Is this just a placebo affect or could something else be affecting it?

I should mention both my monitors and my television run at 60Hz.

[LaPendulum]

You could use fraps to measure your fps of whatever game you're playing with both monitors and then unplug one and see the difference.

Depending on the card will probably make there being a difference to almost no difference.

[Boosted_i6]

I would say yes. You only have a 1GB card so you might run out of memory faster.

[sazr]

unless you're doing something "intensive" (like watching a youtube video or hd movie) on the other monitor, afaik the overhead should be minimum

[Dragon_Cannon]

Yes it will effect gaming. Having one card drive two monitors is more intensive than driving one monitor

If you are gaming at 1080p then the grpahics card is having to render 207360 pixels but when using two monitors it is having to render 3837600 pixels. Every pixel that you add is gonna slow that card down.

[Boosted_i6]

If you want to see your memory usage download GPU-Z

you can run it on your second monitor while you try running a game

[Torand]

I believe MSI Afterburner is the best monitoring option at present.

It's free and works with non-MSI cards.

I personally haven't used it (yet) but will be in the near certain for sure, it gets really god reviews all over the place and is alway talked about.

Correct me if im wrong :P

(link below)

[Tridanite]

There is also a razor game monitor that includes a video recorder and screen shot taker as well as an optimization for gaming mode it puts your computer in. I got it today and its work very well. You can find it here www.razerzone.com/gamebooster

[Boosted_i6]

I believe MSI Afterburner is the best monitoring option at present. It's free and works with non-MSI cards. I personally haven't used it (yet) but will be in the near certain for sure' date=' it gets really god reviews all over the place and is alway talked about. Correct me if im wrong :P (link below) [/quote']

I would agree but I wasn't sure if afterburner works with ATI

[pierrelucsav]

Maybe you have motion interpolation running on your TV which makes everything seem smoother. In any case, use Fraps and check your framerates.

[Dragon_Cannon]

TVs do a bunch or post processing to the image as well which could be causing that

[Lumi]

Yes it does make a difference because you are running a super high resolution off of one gpu correct me if i'm wrong.

[Dim]

It really does depend on the graphics card.

Some graphics cards unload the second monitor when the first is running a full-screen program.

Unloading looks like a black flicker on and off, and often the second monitor image will only show the right half of the screen.

My graphics card (7950) works fine in most games with something like Facebook open in the second screen.

The hit to my fps is very, very low with the 7950 (like 1-2 fps max) but there is one.

The hit to graphics cards with lower VRAM can be substantial.

It depends a lot on the VRAM of your card. Since your card is 1GB, I would say yes, yes you would have an issue.

[Metallurgico]

I don't think you have performances drop. When you use 1, 2 or 3 monitors the GPU usage is approx. 0% when doing nothing. When you play a game you have 100% GPU usage on first monitor and 0% usage for the other one.

[FloRolf]

I've got a 24" and a 42" Monitor/tv, both on 1080p. Due to i mostly use the 24" screen they are set to "double" so i think my gpu only displays 1080p. I haven't had any issues with that till now. Frames are still the same.

[RH00D]

Since your card is 1GB' date=' I would say yes, yes you would have an issue. [/quote']

I had a 1 GB 5770 in my rig two years ago and I would be playing a game on my main monitor then a second monitor used to display performance monitoring software or a web browser to display a webpage and having the second monitor never affected my FPS noticeably. Sure there would be a performance hit but it would be so miniscule that I don't really think it would warrant disabling the second monitor or anything like that.

[Money]

It is probably affecting it. Even if it is just a little bit. Think about it, there's a whole other monitor pulling video from your video card.

[Dragon_Cannon]

The second monitor will cause a performance hit because when the monitor refreshes the GPU has to do the calculation to see if anything has changed and then re render everything again and it has to do the 50-60 times a second.

[911^NEmeSis]

I essentially share teh same thing as you and I don't really see to notice much of a difference at all with my 5670.