DO MULTIPLE MONITORS HURT GAMING PERFORMANCE?
|Have you ever wondered whether having an extra display connected while gaming is hurting your performance? I know it can have an effect, but by just how much? Does it only affect low end cards? Why would it matter? Well, I’ve got a selection of cards ranging from a 2GB GTX 1050, to a 10GB RTX 3080 and I’m going to test it out.
Specifically, I’m testing with this tiny GTX 1050 2GB that doesn’t even need a PCIe power connector. I’ve also got this GTX 1660 with 6GB of VRAM, and this RTX 3080 with 10GB of VRAM. The reason I’m listing the amount of graphics memory here is my theory as to why running an extra display might hurt performance. The rendering itself generally isn’t too taxing when there isn’t much on the display, but it still uses some VRAM.
For context, my desk PC with two 1440p 165Hz displays, and a 1080p 60Hz portrait monitor, sits at 2-3% GPU utilisation with a 2080 Ti, but sits at over 4GB of VRAM with a few browsers and plex open but not playing. So, my assumption here is that on the lower end card with only 2GB of VRAM we might run into some issues. I’ll be testing with two 1080p monitors, seeing as the 1050 can’t really play many of the games I usually test even on lower settings overly well, so trying to run 1440p just wouldn’t work.
Right, game time! Starting with Watchdogs Legion you can see there is literally no difference in performance with the RTX 3080. This is to be expected, such a powerful card and with VRAM to spare – Watchdogs reckons at 1080p Ultra it used just shy of 8GB – it’s clearly not stressing too hard. The 1660 on Very High maxed out it’s VRAM usage, with the game reporting 6.5GB of usage meaning it dipped into system memory a little too, and yet it ran 2FPS SLOWER with a single monitor rather than with two. That’s what I’d call within the margin of error though, so let’s call it the same. The 1050… Well again it ran ever so slightly better with two monitors than it did with one. I know, insane.
Cyberpunk shows almost exactly 1FPS better with a single monitor across all the cards, and the 1050 actually picks up multiple FPS in the 1% lows, although it’s safe to say that even on low settings and low textures, running at just 20FPS average, you won’t be having a great time with it.
CSO shows next to no difference, except for the 1050 with a 3FPS advantage for the single monitor setup, and an 8FPS advantage in the 1% lows. Fortnite is back to as good as makes no difference, and finally in Microsoft Flight, the 1050 shows a decent 5FPS average improvement running just a single monitor.
So, it’s hardly killing your performance running a second monitor, but that’s with the monitor just connected, idle. What if you were watching a video – or at least playing a video while gaming? Well, since the 1050 is the only card to show any performance differences at all I’ll focus on using that.
In Watchdogs, playing a video dropped the average down to 27FPS, down from the best of 29FPS. That’s still not drastic. In Cyberpunk it’s the same performance as if you weren’t playing the video, CSGO is the same too, as is Fortnite. Only Microsoft Flight shows a difference, AND IT GOT BETTER. I can’t even.
So, even playing a video isn’t going to ruin your experience, even on a 1050 2GB. What will? I’m not sure, but since Essentialist on our Discord suggested I test this whole thing anyway, he said to try three monitors so sod it let’s try.
And in Watchdogs… ok I give up. It’s the best result I’ve had. 29FPS average, 23FPS 1%. How. HOW? Cyberpunk shows some more sanity, by just not caring. CSGO – finally! A 10FPS drop! A significant decrease! Amazing. Sadly I fear some of that hit comes from a full system hang when I press the key to start benchmarking which was significantly worse with three displays, and when you eliminate that the performance gap really isn’t as significant.
That’s shown in Fortnite where again it just doesn’t care what you do, although Microsoft Flight does revert to almost the worst performance at 18FPS average and 11FPS 1% low.
So, does running multiple monitors kill your gaming performance? Maybe if you have a really low end GPU, and like 5 monitors you might see an impact. But in the grand scheme of things, no it doesn’t matter. Your mileage may vary, your setup might show different results than mine, but I think it’s a fair conclusion to say it’s not a guaranteed problem.