Does Dual Monitor Affect Frames Per Second And Gaming Performance?

Once upon a time the idea of having two monitors on a task seemed almost absurd to most people, the preserve of hackers, business people or people living in an alternative cyberpunk existence.

However, in just 10 or 15 years, dual monitor setups have now become incredibly popular and many people are being made aware of the amazing benefits this can have on productivity, as well as just for being able to browse and watch videos while you game!

Many people don’t realise just how much your gaming performance and FPS can be affected by simply opening up other applications while you play, and this often leaves people confused about what impact having two monitors can have on gaming performance.

 While there are many things that can affect your performance, from out of date drivers to a bottleneck in some area of your system build, in this guide we’re going to look specifically at what impact dual monitor setups can have on your gaming experience, and what benefits there are for the potential trade off in performance.

Performance

The fact is, running two monitors on one PC will have an effect on performance, for a few different reasons.

The first is that by connecting a second monitor you’re forcing your processor and graphics card to render frames on a whole additional screen which is of course doubling the amount of work that needs to be done.

However, outside of gaming or the most demanding workstation tasks this performance is negligible and hardly noticeable at all to most people.

Of course, the problems start to arrive if you’re gaming on one monitor and doing tasks on a second monitor.

Even watching a video or talking to friends on an app like Discord can affect performance, and while it would affect performance even on a single monitor system, the performance hit would be very slightly bigger due to the fact you’re doing this on a second monitor.

So while opening applications on a single monitor setup would affect your gaming experience, doing so on a dual monitor experience will make the performance slightly worse – however for most things, including watching youtube or hanging out on discord this performance hit wouldn’t likely be higher than a few frames.

If however you were to stream using your second monitor, either on discord or a website like Twitch, you would certainly see a more drastic reduction in frame rates and performance.

Resolution

Another thing to consider is the resolution of the monitors being used.

Two 1080p monitors running at 60hz would be far less demanding than two 1440p monitors running at 60Hz and this can have a huge impact on performance.

Naturally, the higher the resolution of your monitors, the larger the strain this puts on your processor and GPU, which will in turn affect your frame rates in game.

Solutions

If you’re determined to use dual monitors but don’t want to see a reduction in your gaming performance, there are a few things you can do.

The first is to make sure you close as many background tasks as possible and are only running applications you really need.

So if you’re desperate to talk to your friends while you game, use discord and your game but maybe close down your browser or spotify to free up performance to make sure the two main apps can run as smoothly as possible. 

Another thing to consider is upgrading your components. While this is an expensive choice, upgrading your components to be able to handle the extra strain of a dual monitor, particularly for things like streaming, is the best way to ensure you get good performance at all times.

Upgrading your GPU and CPU and making sure you have at least 16GB of RAM is the best way to avoid performance issues, by making it so your system is never pushed to its limit and always has a reserve of performance in reserve.

Ultimately though, most people will see little to no reduction in gaming performance from a second monitor providing that you don’t massively increase the amount of strain you place on your processor and GPU by opening a bunch of other programs while you game.

A drop of 4 to 8 fps is very manageable and while some gamers may not be willing to sacrifice a single frame for the convenience of a second monitor, some people will love the freedom and flexibility dual monitors provide and will see a small frame rate reduction as a fair trade off for the ability to browse or watch videos while gaming at the same time.

It all comes down to your preference as a gamer, as well as how powerful your particular system actually is and the resolution of your monitors.

If you’re not sure you can always get a smaller, more basic second monitor with a lower resolution or a lower frame rate to limit how much performance your second monitor can drain and ensure that your primary monitor will be able to retain more processing power for itself.