Multiple Monitors and possible upgrade

[lupi]

Checking to see if anyone has any experience similar to mine before I go out and buy anything new.

I am currently running a pair of 24" displays with a 2700k intel gpu driving one and a 7970 doing the other. Generally I have the amd display running a game or two and tv or webpage running in the other. In order to watch TV in my current config I must play in windowed mode (which I think is a performance hit) otherwise the tv screen will freeze while the game is fullscreen.

I've been watching cpu performance and at max use it seems to only hit mid 40's. I've been thinking about 2 things, 1: should I just drive both monitors from the 7970? 2: would going crossfire help my fps on my gaming side, and if I do crossfire should I use only the discrete cards to drive both monitors?

 

[xthetenth]

I'd run them both from the 7970. I've always run all my screens from the discrete when available with no problems of the sort you describe. Plus it's not a big deal to try and see if it works.

 

[lupi]

True, reason I don't currently as the original secondary monitor I had was a small dirt cheap one with limited connection options so I had to use the intel output or get something to change signal type for an output to connect to it.

 

[KingFatty]

Just FYI running multiple monitors on the 7970 (whether a single card or crossfired cards) should cause the card to use higher memory clock speeds when you are idle on the desktop. It's not much, but will create extra heat and energy consumption. Currently I believe you avoid this situation because each video card connects to only one monitor. You can confirm by running GPU-Z and watching the performance metrics change according to usage and how the monitors are hooked up.

 

[xthetenth]

That is a good point. Also that is something I should take a serious look at when I get home because my desktop still outputs more heat than I'd like.

 

[lupi]

Hooked up the second monitor via hdmi then disabled the intel gpu. Didn't get much of a chance to do any performance testing though as I spent the rest of the night fixing the display. The second monitor is a samsung hdtv monitor and seems things get screwy when connecting a pc to it via hdmi. First thing I noticed was a blurriness. Managed to fix that by setting the hdmi input mode on the tv to subtype pc. Next I found the actual picture to be extremely washed out looking. Mostly corrected that by adjusting something under pixel type in the amd control center. The image is still off a bit (plain white looks too blue which seems to effect all colors when watching a video) but not sure how to alter that yet.

Found this to be a fairly common issue and got most of the corrections after a quick search, which doesn't mean it seems rather crappy to switch from a perfectly fine dvi connection to have the picture go to hell when using hdmi.

 

[nvgpu]

You don't want to run multiple monitors off AMD cards.

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_960_SSC_ACX_Cooler/images/power_multimon.gif

 

[lupi]

I always buy a power supply that will probably be decently more than I need, so that list is pointless to me.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I never noticed a "performance hit" by using WMC in "windowed" mode on my HDTV. WMC on my 2600/2700K systems uses between 3% and 5% of maximum CPU clock cycles, and about 13% of GPU usage on my GTX 780, while the second system uses what seems like < 1% GPU usage on both of the SLI'd 970's.

I'm sure that YMMV, but you don't need to compare to an SLI setup. A single good graphics card is sufficient.

It was my impression that the adjustments to this or that monitor were specific to that monitor: My HDTV @ 60 Hz runs with the desktop monitor @120 Hz. The color, brightness and other settings are specific to the monitor or connection (DVI versus HDMI or DisplayPort). This seems to be the case with both monitors hooked up to the same dGPU.

This outlook may depart from that of using AMD cards, but I wouldn't know. On a system with a single graphics card (GTX 780) connected to the HDTV and displaying a Live TV broadcast, I can play a game full-screen on the desktop monitor and I don't see any performance problems. Some games may push graphics cards to the limit; my racing and flight simulations don't quite reach that level.

I'm still experimenting with this, having installed games like TitanFall and Far Cry. So far with TitanFall, I haven't noticed any problems at all, but I'm still learning to use the game controller for that game. I'm in "titanFall kindergarten."

Keep in mind, though, my screen resolutions are full-HD across the board. I couldn't tell how this would work with 1440p or higher.

 

[lupi]

Haven't had a chance to do much on this recently other than order a hdmi to dvi cable that should eliminate the need to do all those tweaks to get the monitor to accept the hdmi signal as a pc signal.

 

[rc3ilynt]

I happen to have a similar setup that you're asking about(3770k, 2x 7970,2x24" 1080p monitors). If you have something you want me to test feel free to ask.

 

[blastingcap]

Just FYI running multiple monitors on the 7970 (whether a single card or crossfired cards) should cause the card to use higher memory clock speeds when you are idle on the desktop. It's not much, but will create extra heat and energy consumption. Currently I believe you avoid this situation because each video card connects to only one monitor. You can confirm by running GPU-Z and watching the performance metrics change according to usage and how the monitors are hooked up.

Yes and this is one of the reasons I went NV Maxwell for the time being. Look at the wattage requirements for multi-monitor and blu-ray or flash playback and you'll see a stark difference between GCN and Maxwell. So long as GCN doesn't fix this, I'll probably end up staying on Maxwell.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_750_Ti/23.html

 

[lupi]

Looks like I figured out the problems.

Found out that the fps issue was due to a usb3 turbo setting on my mobo sucking away some of the pci bandwidth. Disabled that and I can now see a 100% gpu use in testing vice the ~50% I was seeing before. FPS has also increased across the board.

Also got the new hdmi to dvi cable. Connected it and restored color config and such to default and second monitor looks great now that it isn't treating the hdmi connection as a TV instead of PC.