Quick test: Performance impact of two monitors in games

Complementing another monitor is a great way to expand the screen space when working with multiple documents or software at the same time. In addition, it can also be a nice complement if you play and want to keep track of the chat on a separate screen when streaming. Or why not take a closer look at the latest episode of a TV series while it gates for hours in your favorite MMORPG.

Is in the choice and qualification to connect an extra monitor to the gaming computer, mainly to have an extra (two in total) screen when working / using outside gaming. However, have only intended to play on one screen. Is there anything you should think about? Is performance affected?
Does the game have to be run in windowed mode? Is it time to turn off the extra screen when playing for better performance? – Pierre

Last autumn, we received a question from Pierre for the Friday panel’s question box, which was about games in combination with several screens. Pierre wonders if there are any performance disadvantages to having two monitors connected to the graphics card at the same time and whether the games must be run in a specific window mode for everything to play properly. We thought this sounded like an interesting spread and with the hectic hardware autumn behind us, there is finally time to see what it is that applies.

For this test, we use the editors ‘usual test system for graphics cards together with a Geforce RTX 3080 and a Radeon RX 6800 XT, where the latter two give us the opportunity to investigate any differences in the two graphics card makers’ handling of several monitors. For current monitors, two Dell 2415Qs are used – also these from our standard graphics card tests.

A total of twelve games are tested at a resolution of 2,560 × 1,440 pixels with both one and two monitors connected. The games run in fullscreenmode unless otherwise indicated in the text below the charts while the secondary monitor is used in “extended” mode showing only the desktop.

We start with the Geforce RTX 3080, and in general it is a very frictionless experience to play with two screens connected. Ten of the twelve games tested start up correctly in full screen mode on the monitor which is marked as primary in the operating system while the performance is almost identical to the results from the single screen tests. It differs at most one or two frames per second, which in principle can be written off as being within the margin of error.

Of the two games that deviated slightly, we see, among other things, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, which partly chose to ignore the operating system’s settings and instead started up on the secondary monitor. After moving the game to the correct monitor via the settings menu, it also refused to run in pure full screen mode without crashing and therefore ran the tests in borderless fullscreen. The measured performance with two screens was here slightly lower than with a single monitor.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood showed a similar phenomenon to Ghost Recon where it started up on the wrong screen. After a change through the settings menu to the correct monitor, it was fine to run the game in pure full screen mode, although it should be mentioned that the game needed to be restarted once when the secondary monitor was run in the wrong resolution after the change. The performance was also slightly worse here with two monitors, but this is only a difference of just under 3 percent.

Further towards the Radeon RX 6800 XT and the experience is basically the same as the one we saw together with the Geforce RTX 3080. Ten of the games forge pixels excellently with several image viewers, where they start up directly against the primary monitor and perform similarly to the single screen solution with extremely marginal deviations which is within the margin of error for the measurements.

Again, it’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and Wolfenstein: Youngblood who choose to boot up against the wrong monitor, but it’s no wonder to switch to the correct image viewer in the settings. Interestingly, the AMD card had no problem running Ghost Recon in pure full screen mode when we moved it to the correct monitor – a scenario that crashed on the Geforce RTX 3080 card.

In terms of performance, we see, as with the Geforce card, a certain level of performance in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint when two monitors are used, where the single-screen configuration performs almost 4 percent better. Wolfenstein: Youngblood, along with the Radeon card, showed no loss of performance when two monitors were used.

Summary thoughts on gaming with two monitors

It’s gratifying to see how many of today’s games handle multi – monitor configurations completely seamlessly and without performance penalties. We encountered some discrepancies in a few titles, but in general it was about problems that could be solved with a few clicks in the settings menu for the game while the actual losses in performance can be considered very marginal.

With that said, there are certainly a number of games that are more problematic, especially if you look at older titles that were released when the multi-monitor phenomenon was not as common. In cases where any problems can not be remedied with a little trickery in configuration files, you may therefore need to turn off the secondary monitor temporarily during those game sessions.

Do you use a secondary monitor for bedding while playing? Share your experiences in the comment thread!