Dual monitors w/ SLI. Gaming only using one

[manwich]

I'm about to receive my second monitor with a second gtx 770 to add to my system. My monitors are an ASUS 23" IPS monitor and an ASUS 24" high refresh rate gaming monitor, both at 1080p.

So here's my question. Will it be possible for me to run my games using only the gaming monitor and then use my other monitor for normal desktop stuff simultaneously? (could I also have the game in fullscreen and not windowed mode?) I read somewhere that with SLI/xfire it is better to use all of your monitors for gaming.

Will the difference in refresh rate between monitors become an issue since the IPS is @ 60hz and the gaming monitor is @ 120 - 144hz?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[drklu]

I have a similar setup and although my secondary monitor will display my programs I have running (monitoring software, skype, ext) if you want to click on something you will have to alt tab. But yes you can run a game on your primary display while having other things on the secondary but you wont be able to control anything unless you alt tab to desktop.

 

[manwich]

I have a similar setup and although my secondary monitor will display my programs I have running (monitoring software, skype, ext) if you want to click on something you will have to alt tab. But yes you can run a game on your primary display while having other things on the secondary but you wont be able to control anything unless you alt tab to desktop.

So the gaming monitor will have to be set as my primary display?

 

[manwich]

So I installed the second card with the new monitor last night and noticed some things.

First off is the lag. I had read about this before with monitors and different refresh rates. I currently have a 60hz and 144hz monitor, and I notice that there is a bit of lag on each screen. So after doing some research I found out the problem is mainly Win7, specifically the Aero theme for the desktop. Once I disabled that and changed it to Win7 basic theme the lag decreased significantly. It is still somewhat noticeable and there is a little screen tearing if you move a window around really fast but overall I can live with that. Of course if I set both monitors to 60hz the lag is eliminated, and I only tested this with a single card. Still gonna do more testing with SLI enabled.

Games look buttery smooth on the new monitor which I have set as my primary. However I realized that if I have the game running in full screen and alt+tab out to the second monitor the game will minimize. So I guess I will still need to run games in windowed mode so that I have the game running on one monitor while I'm doing other things on the other monitor.

So far I'm very pleased with the new hardware, I still have to calibrate the displays more so that they match up better, right now one is a little brighter than the other. Games look great, the second card has added a nice bonus of performance without increasing the temps too much based on the benchmarks I ran. 3d mark showed about an 85% increase in FPS, still need to run a game in SLI so I'm sure the realworld performance will probably be lower than that.

 

[Terry Olaes]

Thankfully, more games include a "windowed fullscreen" or similar mode to allow you to do stuff on a 2nd monitor without alt+tab or otherwise minimizing the game screen.

 

[manwich]

Thankfully, more games include a "windowed fullscreen" or similar mode to allow you to do stuff on a 2nd monitor without alt+tab or otherwise minimizing the game screen.

Sweet! I'll have to check out what games have that feature. I was reading that there are 3rd party applications people have made, that will enable you to run in a windowed fullscreen mode but it doesn't work with all games and actually makes some of them crash.