Single card dual monitors

[Lardacus]

Quick question, here is my current setup:

ASUS P8P67
i5 2500k OC'd 4.5ghz @ 1.33V
8 GB G. Skill 1600mhz DDR3 @ 9 9 9 24
GTX 460 1GB


Problem lies here, I have 2 monitors; main being a 23" 1920 x 1080p with the secondary a 22" 1680 x 1050.

I used to just have the single 1680 x 1050 but just recently got the 1080p and running dual display now. Ever since doing so I have noticed a large performance loss in pretty much every game. I know this is normal and it was expected before I got the new monitor, I want to know now which single GPUs are the strongest supporters of a dual display setup.

I don't have much interest in doing any overclocking or SLI/X-fire.

I know the common contenders are going to be 6950 flashed to 6970, 570, SOC 560 Ti.

I just want to know how important the 2 GB Vram on a GPU is for a dual display setup. Any tips are welcomed, thanks.

EDIT: Games I play are mainly World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Rift, L4D2, TF2, Far Cry 2.

 

[badb0y]

2 GB ram is not needed for 2 monitors.

 

[timma]

Gigabyte 5870 2GB(GV-R5876P-2GD-B)
have Eyefinity X6 output

 

[Qbah]

You shouldn't be getting lower performance in games just because you have two screens - you're gaming on one.

Are you running something else on the other screen? Browser with some flash content? Maybe the GPU is busy doing other things that require it? Also download MSI Afterburner and check if your GPU goes into 3D clocks when you enter a game, maybe there's a driver problem.

Also, are you playing fullscreen, windowed-fullscreen or windowed?

 

[Lardacus]

You shouldn't be getting lower performance in games just because you have two screens - you're gaming on one.

Are you running something else on the other screen? Browser with some flash content? Maybe the GPU is busy doing other things that require it? Also download MSI Afterburner and check if your GPU goes into 3D clocks when you enter a game, maybe there's a driver problem.

Also, are you playing fullscreen, windowed-fullscreen or windowed?

Whenever I'm gaming on the main I usually just have a tab or two of Firefox 4, Ventrilo, Digsby and maybe Pandora/Grooveshark open on the second monitor.

As for the performance loss, I thought it would be pretty standard to lose fps when upgrading to larger resolution monitors, more work for the video card to do. Like I said before, performance loss only started when I upgraded from 1680 x 1050 main with a 1280 x 800 secondary to a 1920 x 1080p main with the 1680 x 1050 as the secondary.

I'm playing windowed mode maximized, is fullscreen but doesn't take up the entire display, can still see taskbar, clock etc at bottom.

 

[happy medium]

Firefox 4,

That uses GPU acceleration.

 

[Qbah]

Whenever I'm gaming on the main I usually just have a tab or two of Firefox 4, Ventrilo, Digsby and maybe Pandora/Grooveshark open on the second monitor.

As for the performance loss, I thought it would be pretty standard to lose fps when upgrading to larger resolution monitors, more work for the video card to do. Like I said before, performance loss only started when I upgraded from 1680 x 1050 main with a 1280 x 800 secondary to a 1920 x 1080p main with the 1680 x 1050 as the secondary.

I'm playing windowed mode maximized, is fullscreen but doesn't take up the entire display, can still see taskbar, clock etc at bottom.

Well, going from 1680x1050 to 1920x1080 will of course lower the performance in games. But it shouldn't be anything drastic - 1.75M vs 2.07M pixels. Also running FireFox4 shouldn't affect your performance - I have FF4 open all the time and it has no impact on performance in games. I did have a Digsby compatibility issue though - it made all my games stutter (as crazy as it sounds) - try closing it. I stopped using Digsby as I couldn't play anything comfortably with it running in the background. The issue is known to the Digsby team but only impacts a small number of users.

I'd try downloading MSI Afterburner, open it on the second screen and check GPU usage graphs. Also, maybe for whatever reason you're forcing AA through your nVidia control panel? Check it out just in case (maybe it wasn't noticeable at 1680x1050).