If you have 8800 and two monitors linked to it and then you fire up FEAR or whatever one monitor, I assume some of the processing power and memory of the 8800 will still be used on the second monitor. How much of a perfomance hit does a graphics card take when using dual monitors?
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GFX performance with dual monitors.
- Thread starter magick
- Start date
Less than a frame. The graphics card is only called if something is changed on a monitor, so if nothing is happening on the second screen, absolutely no power is being wasted on it - apart from the transfer of a few MB of framebuffer for the second monitor to the RAMDAC, when considering the framebuffer can transfer 40-50GB/sec depending on version every second, it means nothing.
I've been running 2-3 monitors for years now, and never had performance issues ever. Even if you've got something animated and moving around on the second monitor, I've still never seen more than a 1fps drop.
BTW, make sure to play Supreme Commander, it supports dual monitors and the result is really good.
I've been running 2-3 monitors for years now, and never had performance issues ever. Even if you've got something animated and moving around on the second monitor, I've still never seen more than a 1fps drop.
BTW, make sure to play Supreme Commander, it supports dual monitors and the result is really good.
Soldato
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i play games on my 22" (1680x1050), or on my 40" (1920x1080). always leave the other display on, never have problems
Oh add 1280x720 when I run through my projector. 4 monitors 
Same, no problems here at all.
Have two screens @ 1680x1050
On one monitor I run games (with full settings) and there's no visible performance drop. On the second monitor I have chat programs running, TV window for my nebula digi-TV, you name it - runs perfectly.
I have to alt-tab out of games to use those programs, and that minimises the game though.
Have two screens @ 1680x1050
On one monitor I run games (with full settings) and there's no visible performance drop. On the second monitor I have chat programs running, TV window for my nebula digi-TV, you name it - runs perfectly.
I have to alt-tab out of games to use those programs, and that minimises the game though.