Dual Monitors: 60hz + 120hz woes

After picking up a 120hz monitor and feeling the difference in FPS games with how fast I could twitch around and shoot someone in the face, I was hooked.

But now when I am at my desktop, moving around windows has quite a bit of lag to it. I have narrowed this down to having the monitor in 120hz mode along with my 2nd monitor running at 60hz. Run both monitors @ 60hz and the problem goes away.

Am I doomed to have to switch the hz setting in the control panel every time I game? That would be so annoying I'd probably just deal with a permanently laggy desktop. Definitely not going to buy a second 120hz monitor because I really need one of my screens to have a half decent resolution and 1080p is crap for everything but gaming.

What graphics card are you using? I use a Nvidia 570 gtx and I have no issues running a 120 Hz monitor and 60 Hz monitor simultaneously.

I am using SLI 580's. The 120hz monitor is Dual Link DVI and the 60hz is single link

I'm on two 6950's in crossfire and run my main monitor at 120hz and a second one at 60hz and had a similar issue when I was using an HDMI cable for the second monitor.

I tried a bunch of stuff trying to get rid of the lag, and while I'm not sure it was actually the solution or if it was a coincidence, getting my second monitor off HDMI and on another dual-link DVI cable seemed to fix it. I haven't seen the problem since.

YMMV though.

I was just having this problem as well, but my solution was simple. Today I bought a BenQ XL2410T and together with my LG I was running a 120Hz/60Hz setup as well. Running two 570 GTXs in SLI, I shouldn't be getting a problem with the displays on my end.

Of course ended up having a ton of problems. This is not a problem that is limited to only one screen either; its on both. Playing a video or a windowed game on either screen causes the video to lag up. It wasn't until I switched back to 60Hz on both screens did the problems disappear.

The fix for me was to go into the Nvidia Control Panel -> Adjust Desktop Size and Position -> and setting "Perform scaling on" to GPU instead of display.

Now I've got the computer running in a 120/60Hz setup. I can play a game in one screen and watching a show in the other with no problems.

Just to toss out some extra info: My BenQ is of course using a dual-link DVI cable, where as my LG is running on a single. Also, for some time at first, the Nvidia control panel kept saying my BenQ's max refresh was 60, even though in windows and on the monitor's information readout it was going at 120. This was fixed when I set the GPU to do scaling.

Hope this helps people with similar problems.

I have the same issue. Everything on the 120Hz monitor is great, but if I drag the windows to the old monitor its laggy. I will try some of those fixes and see if they work.

lockdown571 said:

What graphics card are you using? I use a Nvidia 570 gtx and I have no issues running a 120 Hz monitor and 60 Hz monitor simultaneously.

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What is your setup? I have an Asus GTX570 and was told that you can't run one monitor at 120 Hz and one at 60 Hz? The only way to run dual monitors is to run them at 60 Hz. Let me know if you know something different or you have this working.

My solution is to use the otherwise pointless Z68 integrated video for my secondary 60hz monitor

I considered this. I ordered the monitor, it will be here today. I'll post what I figure out.

I got the monitor today and connected it the display port and the second monitor to a DVI port. The new monitor is running at 120 Hz and the second at 60 Hz. I have to say it looks awesome. I have to play with some games now.

I'm getting the same problem. If I move my mouse off the video playing on the 120hz monitor to a 60hz monitor, the video starts getting laggy/choppy. Its very annoying.
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I don't have that

The fix for me was to go into the Nvidia Control Panel -> Adjust Desktop Size and Position -> and setting "Perform scaling on" to GPU instead of display.

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in my amd card's catalyst control center. I'll look around on it more to see what I can find though.

I turned the gpu scaling on , on every one of my monitors (I'm running 4 at the moment), and so far it looks like its not lagging. Hopefully it will stay smooth. Thanks for the help guys, I wouldn't have thought gpu scaling would have that effect.

Just switched to a gtx 680 and the problem came back. I guess it was always still there (Even when messing with the scaling options) it was just that scaling minimized the issue.

I was able to fix the entire thing by turning off aero (going into themes and choosing "windows classic". Now everything is smooth as butter especially if you rapidly swirl a window across both monitors.

It would appear from some googling that aero does not play nice with multiple displays running different refresh rates.

deactivating aero=screen tearing I have had the same issues as the OP, i don't watch movies on my 120hz display so i set it to 60hz but there is still some stutter and, but I can live with it over screen tearing.

screen stutter goes away for me as long as I enable gpu scaling on one of my "extra" side monitors. I don't have it enabled on my primary/gaming 120hz.

I have a similar problem. My secondary monitor will not stay set to GPU scaling, however. It constantly resets to Display. Any advice?