Will this dual monitor setup work (single taskbar/desktop but single monitor for gaming)?

Citizen Snips

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 6, 2009
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I will be getting my first dual monitor setup soon and want to make sure the parts I have chosen will work as intended. Here are my planned purchases:

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC GAMING ACX 3.0
2x Dell S2716DG
Windows 10 Pro

Using the above, can I have one desktop/taskbar that spans across both monitors, but then when I play a full screen game, have it only take up 1 screen?
 
That is the default behavior and is how my setup works.

27" and 24" LCDs, extended desktop between monitors.

When i run a game, it runs on the Primary monitor only.
 
Doc Doc said:
That is the default behavior and is how my setup works.

27" and 24" LCDs, extended desktop between monitors.

When i run a game, it runs on the Primary monitor only.

Are you able to switch focus to the second monitor and launch other programs, etc. while the game is still running?
 
Are you able to switch focus to the second monitor and launch other programs, etc. while the game is still running?

Fullscreen windowed/borderless windowed works the best if you want to do that, alt-tab to swap programs generally works like a charm. I generally do that for any single screen game with my multi setup.
 
Yes this is how my setup runs. About 2-3 years ago you had to run in windowed mode or alt-tab out to interact with the second screen. But Windows has become much better on this. Now 98% of the games I play I can just move the mouse over to the second screen. Usually though you have to bring up a menu in the game though.

But some games are coded very poorly and you will still have to alt-tab or run in windowed mode. An even smaller subset of games allow you to run in windowed full screen mode. Wish more games and apps would allow this.
 
Yes this is how my setup runs. About 2-3 years ago you had to run in windowed mode or alt-tab out to interact with the second screen. But Windows has become much better on this. Now 98% of the games I play I can just move the mouse over to the second screen. Usually though you have to bring up a menu in the game though.

But some games are coded very poorly and you will still have to alt-tab or run in windowed mode. An even smaller subset of games allow you to run in windowed full screen mode. Wish more games and apps would allow this.

Forgot to mention about the cursor stuff, a few games even have options to restrict the cursor to the game screen or not (starcraft 2 and diablo 3). Another select few will let you keep playing with a gamepad while the keyboard/mouse focus is on another window/application - most recent i can remember was metal gear solid 5 i think.
 
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