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Just pondering for a moment, and having never had two monitors at the same time (apart from when I had a Matrox G400 & Athlon 500@900, GFD's ftw!), I was wondering if there is a performance hit whilst using a second monitor?
E.g. Running a game full-screen on the primary monitor, and playing a full screen AVI on the secondary, would it be noticable with my system for example? Also I assume the hit would depend on the resolution of the second monitor and the particulars of the AVI?
Would it be second monitor not gaming at all? If so then a small hit, and avis are done by cpu usually, so wouldnt change if it was avi or desktop on second screen.
Aye, was thinking of watching a film whilst gaming for example.
So you either like dying a lot or don't pay attention to films, then? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteGiant
RTS single player, made for film watching! :)
I play eve and browse these forums or watch the slingbox at the same time.
Ive had multiple montitors for ages and I've never noticed any significant hit in performance... All the games are more than playable with both on at the same time.
I usually have MSN, Email, RSS feeds and somtimes even movies or TV shows up whilist playing games and even that doesnt hamper anything.
Some music players such as iTunes can make things a little sluggish although I've solved that by buying an ipod dock and remote for my ipod touch which links in with my PC speakers!
I haven't seen any performance hit running 2 monitors for ages but when gaming I can see the second monitor but if i want to use any application on it the game sometimes doesn't allow me without pausing it or minimazing the window. What i usually do in my second monitor when gaming is monitoring temps etc.
if you game and watch and movie at the same time obviously will be a performance hit but it depends of the rest of your components (how many cores you have, hard drives, memory etc)