question on 2 monitors, and "game mode"

[berninicaco3]

First question--
Bought a new monitor for higher quality.
old one still works.
and you know, for papers for school, it always seemed like it would be great to have 2 monitors: essay on the right, research on the left.

Now, I use my desktop for a lot of gaming, and have a 7950 graphics card.
I don't want it working overtime just to support some web browsing-- unless that won't be an issue.
I'd rather that it be devoted to getting the most out of any game I'm running.

What I did then was plug the new monitor into the graphics card, and the old one into the motherboard. Does that mean the onboard graphics will be devoted to the old monitor, and the graphics card will be solely running the main monitor? or not necessarily?



Second question, and this is just curiosity.
Monitors --both of mine, old and new-- have a "game mode"
it looks awful.
turns out it's something that reduces the quality of the image for faster response time.
but here's where i'm confused.
in a given game, or at the graphics card, I can set all sorts of visual effects options-- anti aliasing, frames per second, resolution, reflections, draw distance, etc.
what does the MONITOR actually set? Surely, it doesn't reach into my game or graphics drivers and change those settings.
So if you're getting 60fps at max settings as it stands... does game mode improve fps? Or what does it do?

I don't feel my monitor refresh is my limiting factor, so i'm not gonna be using game mode... but i'm still very curious what it does.
googling for answers was not too helpful at pinning down a clear and educated explanation.

 

[alek]

Google .test monitor ghosting. Game mode is prolly best in those tests.

 

[Falkentyne]

Most "Game mode" settings have absolutely NOTHING to do with FPS. (the only exception to this is a non game mode"tweak" like LIghtboost, which will work with an AMD card, but requires an Nvidia card or laptop, at the moment, to initialize the timings and unlock lightboost "3d mode" before replugging the monitor back into the AMD card (without unplugging the monitor from the wall socket).

But anyway, game modes usually tweak brightness, contrast and gamma ratios (and sometimes overdrive/RTA settings) so that you can do things like see objects more clearly in "dark" places, have objects or colors pop out better, things to make motion blurring look less bad, and so on.

 

[Godmachine]

Most "Game mode" settings have absolutely NOTHING to do with FPS. (the only exception to this is a non game mode"tweak" like LIghtboost, which will work with an AMD card, but requires an Nvidia card or laptop, at the moment, to initialize the timings and unlock lightboost "3d mode" before replugging the monitor back into the AMD card (without unplugging the monitor from the wall socket).

But anyway, game modes usually tweak brightness, contrast and gamma ratios (and sometimes overdrive/RTA settings) so that you can do things like see objects more clearly in "dark" places, have objects or colors pop out better, things to make motion blurring look less bad, and so on.

Some game modes actually disable internal processing to decrease input latency which for some gamers (myself included) is critical for an enjoyable experience. Dell monitors do this for instance. For TV's this is almost always the case , decreasing input latency to enjoyable levels.

 

[berninicaco3]

Godmachine: that might be it.
The monitor that I just purchased is indeed a Dell: "Dell S2240L" for whatever it's worth.

"grainy" would be an excellent adjective for what gaming mode does.
I forget now what my 3yr old asus monitor did for gaming; 'night' mode was the only mode that worked for it-- but the dell's gaming mode definitely has less bold colors, and less smoothness.

what you're saying is that if I had a very, very fast-paced game where ghosting really did become a problem, gaming mode could be my solution? Something like gunz-- a game my roomate played a lot of.

How much internal processing goes on in the monitor? At what point, does a monitor become more of an issue than the graphics card-- would ghosting be the main sign? And so would a fancier monitor, have a faster internal processor? (forgive my ignorance if I'm completely misunderstanding).

 

[berninicaco3]

oh! and I am still wondering. Is there any difference if I hook my auxiliary web-browsing-only monitor to the motherboard dvi port, and the main monitor for gaming to the graphics card-- would that mean that the graphics card will be devoted to the game?
Or should I just hook both to the graphics card, and, the extra cycles going to run a webpage, even in HD, won't be too taxing or take away from a concurrently running computer game?

 

[suiken_2mieu]

oh! and I am still wondering. Is there any difference if I hook my auxiliary web-browsing-only monitor to the motherboard dvi port, and the main monitor for gaming to the graphics card-- would that mean that the graphics card will be devoted to the game?
Or should I just hook both to the graphics card, and, the extra cycles going to run a webpage, even in HD, won't be too taxing or take away from a concurrently running computer game?

Hooking up a monitor to the motherboard or the video card will use some of system RAM or the VRAM. the performance it will be negligible in either case. I personally would use the video card, as I like the drivers better.

 

[berninicaco3]

ok, so negligible between them? Might as well hook up both to the graphics card then.

question-- the only way I could see hooking them up, was to create one 3960x1080 monitor.
So is the graphics card doing all the processing work no matter what, and the motherboard ram will be used a little more with one monitor on the mobo? (is that good or bad)
Or does something fundamental happen if I click and drag a game screen onto the other monitor-- does it start using the mobo onboard drivers and ram when I drag it onto the old monitor, and the graphics card drivers and ram when I drag it back...?

 

[Godmachine]

Godmachine: that might be it.
The monitor that I just purchased is indeed a Dell: "Dell S2240L" for whatever it's worth.

"grainy" would be an excellent adjective for what gaming mode does.
I forget now what my 3yr old asus monitor did for gaming; 'night' mode was the only mode that worked for it-- but the dell's gaming mode definitely has less bold colors, and less smoothness.

what you're saying is that if I had a very, very fast-paced game where ghosting really did become a problem, gaming mode could be my solution? Something like gunz-- a game my roomate played a lot of.

How much internal processing goes on in the monitor? At what point, does a monitor become more of an issue than the graphics card-- would ghosting be the main sign? And so would a fancier monitor, have a faster internal processor? (forgive my ignorance if I'm completely misunderstanding).

Game mode doesn't do anything for ghosting. All it does is turn off internal processing (to a degree) so that your input latency (so basically mouse movement or controller movement to the monitor to the computer responsiveness) so that if you are getting a strong delay in what you press or move and how fast its showing up on the monitor , this will help lower the latency and make it feel faster in most cases (depending on how well the manufacturer did setting it up).

For many monitors these days (one key way to spot them is if they have lots of connection options , as this requires an internal scaler which adds to the input latency on the monitor if however they only have one? Than its likely it has a very low latency scaler or none at all) input latency is a pretty big issue ..IF you are sensitive to it.

Let me put it this way , if you notice that there is a slight delay between playing on one monitor or TV to another than you are most likely sensitive enough to it that it would matter. If however you've NEVER noticed this before than you simply are not wired to notice it. That could entirely change down the line but if you feel satisfied that your gaming acclimation is without any change going from one display to another than don't worry about i honestly.

Dell monitors in general deal with input latency pretty well , not all of them but many do (the 29 inch monitors they just came out with are not very good for gaming due to input latency in my opinion but otherwise I think you'll be ok.

 

[suiken_2mieu]

ok, so negligible between them? Might as well hook up both to the graphics card then.

Yesh.

question-- the only way I could see hooking them up, was to create one 3960x1080 monitor.

For what reason? You'll have bezel in the middle of this giant screen and it will make it near impossible to play first person games. Or even 3rd person action games.

So is the graphics card doing all the processing work no matter what, and the motherboard ram will be used a little more with one monitor on the mobo? (is that good or bad)

No. If you hook up the monitor to the motherboard, the on board graphics will power the monitor. The on board graphics use system ram.

Good or bad really depends on whether you need more system ram or VRAM. Though really, the amount used is also negligible.

Or does something fundamental happen if I click and drag a game screen onto the other monitor-- does it start using the mobo onboard drivers and ram when I drag it onto the old monitor, and the graphics card drivers and ram when I drag it back...?

Well... Kinda... If you start a game on the monitor connected to the graphics card (meaning it's your main monitor), and then put it into windowed mode and grag it to a monitor using the onboard graphics, the game will still render using the graphics card, but the image will need to be sent to the onboard gpu. This will create a lot of lag and will degrade performance greatly.

If both monitors are connected to the same graphics card and in extended mode (2 desktops), the performance loss and lag will much less. But it may be noticeable.

If I were you I'd just have a main monitor I use for gaming, and have the other monitor be for browsing and other task.

 

[berninicaco3]

Very interesting!
So maybe I shouldn't bemoan that my monitor has only 2 (or 3?) connection options

So none of the other stats-- fps (some monitors can accurately render 120, most can't, so I've read-- 60 is just fine by me though), and even that number in milliseconds --5 or 7 usually-- would actually tell you about input lag, would they? You'd never, ever notice playing movies, whether the screen was a couple hundredths of a second behind what the computer sent out-- but you could certainly notice playing a "twitchy" game.
Where would I read about this input lag rating, to accurately compare gaming monitors? When I bought my monitor the other week, I wasn't even thinking about that/ didn't know about it.

Now that you've mentioned it, I'm going to be thinking about it and it'll now start to bug me, hahaha.
Also, now that you've mentioned it... there are times when I've clicked twice, or hit the key twice, because I feared it had not registered. Maybe input lag. Maybe just network lag (the only remotely twitchy games I play, are played online).

 

[berninicaco3]

by the way, exactly what kind of internal processing goes on in a monitor? This is still a little unclear-- what exactly are you sacrificing?
On my new dell monitor, between gaming and any other mode, I can tell a difference, but I don't know precisely what kind of difference I'm looking at, and I'm curious.

and would disabling some of the internal processing (game mode) shoot some of your fancy renderings in the foot, such that you might as well turn in-game graphics down to medium settings anyway?

 

[berninicaco3]

"If I were you I'd just have a main monitor I use for gaming, and have the other monitor be for browsing and other task."

suiken-- that is exactly what I'd want to do! I have absolutely no reason to want to click and drag a game onto my older and frankly inferior monitor. I asked, because I was interested about what would happen.
I'd prefer two separate desktops-- but of course, with the same start menu accessible on both. Open a game on one, open chrome and ms word on the other.
This is the first time I've ever had 2 monitors. Haven't even set up a projector. So I don't know what my options are, or how to set them up. When I went to display options, it showed monitors 1 and 2, and it either linked them into an extra-wide desktop, or turned one off. Where can I get more sophisticated options?

 

[berninicaco3]

hah, just one last quick curiosity question.
If I'm running a game, let us say civ5, and then a friend wants to play lol and I don't want to wait to save and quit out of civ5 so I minimize it...

...at that moment it is no longer displayed at all, so will it consume none of the graphics card's resources?
...and that moment, it is paused, so cpu demands should also be small?
...but at that moment, it still has all of its in-game objects taking RAM still, correct? Which would be an issue if I tried to have too many minimized games running, even if paused, in the background; I wouldn't tax the gpu or the cpu, but each game would still take its full amount of ram?