wiseboyjimbo

I have a 20" Dell 1680x1050 Widescreen 16:9 monitor with an 8800GT graphics card.

Other Specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Windows Vista Home Premium
600gb hard drive
3gb ram

What I am interested in, is buying a new monitor, of the same generation from dell - the E228WFP 22" monitor. What I want to do, is make this 22" monitor my primary monitor, and have my current 20" monitor as my secondary.

The question I want to know is not how this is done, as I'm fairly confident I know how to do this.

I would like to know how the performance of my graphics card, or even my entire pc, will be effected. I am a gamer, and play games for most of my PC time, however, the most strenuous game I currently play on it is probably Cod:WaW. Otherwise I simply play Warcraft III and what not.

So, if I had both of these monitors running, Cod on my primary screen, and say, MSN on my other, would I notice a major slowdown in performance from my graphics card?

PS. A question that arised during this post is whether I can move the mouse freely between each monitor regardless of what program is running on either one?

Many Thanks,

Wiseboyjimbo

emosun

It should be fine , the card's performance will not effected in any way since the monitor your getting is the same resolution as your current. Also the second monitor while gaming basically becomes useless and doesn't consume any of the cards resources.

As for your second question, while in windows or online ect , you can move the mouse between the monitors and any open window or program. However , during a full screen app like a game , clicking anywhere on the second monitor will minimize the game. This is because your unselecting the game and selecting another program. Only way to fix this is run in window mode.

wiseboyjimbo

Thank you very much, one last quick question that I'm slightly unsure of.

You said that the second monitor is ignored while running a game and doesnt affect performance. So if i was to run Cod in window mode on the the primary monitor, I could still then use the secondary monitor for other programs without affecting cod and without reducing performance?

Phædrus2401

Yup, I do that all the time with my setup. When playing a game, non-game graphics like the desktop will not use very many resources, at most a few megabytes of VRAM. Maybe if you had an HD video running on the other screen you might noticed a slight drop in performance, but in most cases it should be fine.

wiseboyjimbo

Thank you =]

I should be buying the monitor any time now, thanks for the detailed and helpful responses.

Look forward to posting here again =]

emosun

Well when you click away from cod it would probably pause the game assuming you minimized it like most other games.