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Dual monitor graphics question.

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  • 28-07-2019 4:21pm
    #1
    briany
    Registered Users Posts: 13,709 ✭✭✭✭


    My current setup (which I plan to upgrade soon) is a 1060 GTX, Asrock Extreme 3 Gen 3 and 2500K CPU. It is connected to a PC monitor in one corner of the living room for regular PC duties, and a TV screen in the other for HTPC duties.

    A problem I noticed a few years ago was that if I connected both monitors to the GPU, the GPU would never idle, and this was apparently caused by both screens having different refresh rates. This lead to greater generation of heat and consumption of power. I was using an AMD 5870 at the time of noticing this. My solution was to connect the TV screen to the onboard HDMI port and leverage the iGPU. This solved the issue. But what I also found I could do was to launch more graphically demanding games or applications on the TV screen if I wanted to play from the couch, but they were still using the power of the dedicated GPU, despite being connected to the onboard HDMI port. So that leads me to my question of if this sort of graphical passthrough is a standard feature of motherboards? And are more modern graphics cards like my current GTX 1060 better able to handle screens of different refresh rates such that they can idle when being used for non-graphically-demanding tasks?


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