Does driving multiple monitors affect fps even if i game on only one of them?

[phluxer]

Hi guys,

I'm not sure if this thread is placed correctly in the Graphics Cards section but i see no better place for it...

 

So here are some details to my situation:
I'm running a i7 6700k, 16 GB RAM and an MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X.

I run my games on a 1080p, 144hz g-sync monitor

But in addition to that i have another 1080p 120hz monitor without g-sync and a large 1080p TV on my system.

The two monitors are connected via displayport and the TV is running over hdmi.

 

I have the impression that if i turned of the additional monitor and tv in the windows settings, my games seem to run a little bit smoother.

But i'm not sure that isn't just self deception because i had the idea that multiple monitors could hit my performance.

 

So can anyone get me right on this?

Is there any relevant performance loss by driving these additional screens, even if they do nothing special?

I'll be thankful for any suggestions, and nice greetings from germany to all of you o/

[Slottr]

You'll be fine

[r4tch3t]

As long as there's no 3d rendering in the second screen, no. The gpu has separate 2d and 3d "pipelines" so it can display 2d things without impacting 3d performance.

At least I think it's still like that. 

[phluxer]

Wow that was a fast reasponse.

Thank you, i'm really glad reading this!

[Mira Yurizaki]

The only thing that would be an issue is the extra VRAM that the second screen needs. But these days if that's really a problem, you probably need to upgrade your system anyway.

 

In all seriousness though, you'll probably be losing about 15MB per 1080p screen.

[phluxer]

With 8GB VRAM and running all screens on 1080p, i've never come close to the limit.. except with the CoD VRAM blackhole engine..

[Mick Naughty]

I always have multiple monitors on but I don’t do any thing on them that required encode or decode. So I never get any performance hits. 

[Kc7vwc]

4 hours ago, phluxer said:

Hi guys,

I'm not sure if this thread is placed correctly in the Graphics Cards section but i see no better place for it...

 

So here are some details to my situation:
I'm running a i7 6700k, 16 GB RAM and an MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X.

I run my games on a 1080p, 144hz g-sync monitor

But in addition to that i have another 1080p 120hz monitor without g-sync and a large 1080p TV on my system.

The two monitors are connected via displayport and the TV is running over hdmi.

 

I have the impression that if i turned of the additional monitor and tv in the windows settings, my games seem to run a little bit smoother.

But i'm not sure that isn't just self deception because i had the idea that multiple monitors could hit my performance.

 

So can anyone get me right on this?

Is there any relevant performance loss by driving these additional screens, even if they do nothing special?

I'll be thankful for any suggestions, and nice greetings from germany to all of you o/

Just having the other monitors there shouldn't cause any issues.

What WILL cause issues is what's running on the others. I've got an i5 4690k slightly OC'd, and I've paired it with both a GTX 970 & an R9 390 on a 1080p 144Hz panel. 
Playing any video on the second screen, on either GPU, caused Frame rate (Not FPS) stuttering for me. Youtube would do it in both Chrome & Firefox. VLC playing local media would do it. Twitch playback would a little. Even the preview panels in OBS would do it. 

 

Playing Rocket League is where I could notice it the most, but Overwatch & World of Tanks were also affected.  Rocket League would stay at 120Fps (Im using FRTC) but it would feel like 40FPS. If I minimized the video, gameplay would go back to buttery smooth. I stopped streaming RL with OBS because of this. WoT had about a 5-10 FPS drop along with it, but RL & OW usually only felt slower instead of an actual drop. 

 

So if it feels like it's slower, it might be Frame Rate stuttering instead of Frames Per Second. But otherwise, just having those panels connected or just text windows open shouldn't do anything. (As an aside, I've stopped using multiple panels & now all my video is done on my phone now)