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Does having 2 monitors affect FPS? If so, why, and how big is the difference in real world usage? Let’s talk about it!
Does Having 2 Monitors Affect FPS?
First, let’s answer the core question posed by the title of this article: does having 2 monitors affect FPS?
Surprisingly, this isn’t a solid “Yes” or “No” answer. There are actually a few other questions you have to take into consideration to determine the answer to this one.
For one: do your two monitors run at the same refresh rate? Pairing two 60 Hz monitors, for example, is unlikely to cause stuttering or severe FPS drops on your primary display. However, if you pair a high-refresh rate display with a different refresh rate— like 144 Hz and 60 Hz— you actually will experience increased stuttering and FPS drops due to the presence of a second monitor at a different refresh rate. This is especially applicable to FreeSync and G-Sync displays.
Now, what if your monitors match refresh rate? Does it affect your FPS on the gaming monitor if you have something running on the second monitor?
Well, it depends. Generally-speaking, the answer is “Not very much”. This is because if you’re running a dual monitor setup, you’re always going to be running the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) as well. This means while you may lose a very small amount of performance compared to running your game in Exclusive Fullscreen, your FPS generally won’t be affected by more than ~2-3%, at most.
Additionally, the other components in your system have to be looked at too. If you’re multitasking intensely on the second monitor and the game running on the primary display has high RAM requirements, for example, you may be more prone to running into FPS dips than you would otherwise. However, most multi-monitor testing shows that you aren’t going to have a majorly-impacted FPS average by multitasking on a second monitor, within reason.
However, there is a catch I think is worth discussing, since your average FPS doesn’t necessarily tell the full story there.
Should You Unplug Your 2nd Monitor When Gaming?
I’m a major proponent of using Exclusive Fullscreen in games whenever possible, especially competitive titles. “Exclusive Fullscreen” means that your fullscreened game is the only application taking up time on your graphics card, not sharing any resources with the DWM…unless you’re running a multi-monitor setup, at which point you are no longer able to run Exclusive Fullscreen.
Exclusive Fullscreen is the ideal way to run any game, and not just for slightly higher performance. Exclusive Fullscreen also has the lowest latency. There are downsides to Exclusive Fullscreen, though: Alt+Tabbing to the desktop is slower because the DWM has to re-sync with the GPU, and the triple-buffered V-Sync automatically applied to all active windows does not apply in Exclusive Fullscreen, potentially resulting in screen tearing.
These days, modern versions of Windows (10 and newer) automatically apply “Fullscreen Optimizations” to any fullscreen application. Unless you explicitly disable FSO in your application properties, you won’t actually be using Exclusive Fullscreen when in fullscreen. I’m a stubborn purist about this, but truthfully whether or not to disable FSO will vary depending on the game. I recommend doing so with DirectX 9 and OpenGL titles, at least.
At any rate, a multi-monitor setup makes a true Exclusive Fullscreen experience impossible. Thus, I prefer to game on a single monitor. But realistically speaking, your actual FPS and user experience shouldn’t be that negatively impacted by a dual monitor setup…but if you’re really stubborn, go ahead and unplug that second monitor when you’re playing games.