Why can't I run a dual monitor setup without my games stuttering?

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33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
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Hi everyone! This is my first post on these forums, yay. :D I have a problem that maybe some of you could help me with. Firstly as the title says I can't run a dual monitor setup with my current PC configuration without every single one my games stuttering. I really don't know why because my PC is certainly powerful enough. Here are my specs:

Win 10 64 bit
EVGA GTX 960 FTW 2GB
Intel i5-3570S @3.1ghz
Biostar H61MGC Mobo
16GB DDR3 RAM @1333mhz
SanDisk 1TB SSD + Mushkin 60GB secondary SSD
EVGA 600 watt PSU

I play games like WoT's, Perfect Golf, Farm Expert 2016 and Colin McRae Rally etc. All I put on the second screen during gaming was GPU Tweak II, or sometimes a web browser, or nothing even. I even thought at first that my GTX 960 was having problems so I replaced it with an AMD R9 380 4GB and it was still the same. :( So I went back to my more favored GTX 960. At the time I was trying to fix this I had the latest drivers for both cards so no worries there. I had my main monitor hooked up via HDMI and the secondary one by DVI. I just dont know what's wrong, my late 2012 Mac Mini can run a dual monitor setup and all it has in the way of graphics is the intel HD 4000 integrated GPU!!! :kaola: I don't really use my Mac for gaming, it's more of a workstation for my job but it runs those 2 monitors flawlessly.

So in short if I have my second monitor plugged in while gaming every 2 seconds I get a noticeable stutter, and if I unplug the monitor everything runs perfect except for the fact that I'm sad I don't have a dual view hehe. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could fix this??? :??: If I change the second monitor to connect to my GPU using 1 of it's 3 DisplayPorts would that change anything? I've never used a DisplayPort for any of my screens so I don't know if there is any advantage.

Anyways I appreciate you reading this long post, and I want to thank you all in advance for any help you may provide. :wahoo:

 
Solution
It would still, in effect, be a DVI connection.

Here is what I would like you to do. You will run two scenarios. One with but a single display. And, a second with 2 displays.

I want you to run hwmonitor (linked below) in the background while running one of your more demanding games. I would like to compare the temperature differences between one and two display configs.

Are you up to that?

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
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Hi COLGeek! Thanks for replying. :) For the whole time I've owned my GTX 960 which has been over a year now I don't think it has ever gone over 68 degrees celsius when gaming. And that's in the hotter more humid months of the year. That's not too bad considering some cards I've had namely the R9 380 get much hotter under load. The thing is that even games that don't put my card under full load like Colin McRae Rally which isn't too demanding stutter right away when I get in a race even though I've only been in the game for 1 minute...

As for resolutions, my main display hooked up via HDMI is 1920x1080, and the secondary monitor hooked up via DVI is 1440x900.

Also my small secondary SSD has Steam and my rather large World of Tanks game installed on it along with some small Steam games. The reason for WoT's being on that drive is that I didn't always have that fast & shiny 1TB SanDisk SSD hehe. About a month and a half ago I cloned and upgraded from a Seagate 1TB SSHD to it. I just haven't gotten around to transferring My big game over, even though WoT's has always worked well on it with 1 monitor of course. But I have got around to putting some of my Steam games on my new big SSD like Perfect Golf, Farm Expert 2016 and Colin McRae Rally.

I hope I was clear enough and not too confusing for you. I don't think it's a drive issue because when I hook that second monitor up games on both drives immediately start stuttering. But I'm sure you and a lot of others are far more knowledgeable about these things than me. So thanks so much for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you! :)



 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
You should be able to run two displays with minimal fuss, especially since you are using digital connections (DVI and HDMI).

I asked about the small SSD because I wondered if you were running Windows from it and it was getting full. It sounds like that is not the situation.

Have you update the Intel chipset drivers for your motherboard (support.intel.com) or are you using the generic Windows 10 drivers?

 

33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
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Hey COLGeek! Do you mean bios for my motherboard? If yes then I have the latest ones that my board manufacturer supplies on their website. I updated them 4 months ago when I upgraded from an i3-2120 sandy bridge cpu to my current i5-3570S Ivy bridge one. But I was still running Windows 10 before I upgraded the cpu and bios. Please let me know and thanks again for your help. :)
 

33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
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For some reason that tool keeps failing to install. :( It says Setup Failed 0x80070643 - Fatal error during installation. I read that it could be a corrupt Microsoft.NET file, but I used the .NET verify tool on all the versions installed on my PC there were 10 of them I think, not sure if that's a good thing but they all passed. Do you have any thoughts on this COLGeek? Thanks for your time. :)
 

33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
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Thanks for the link COLGeek. :) The install went fine, but unfortunately my games are still stuttering... :( Not sure what to do about this. Can you think of anything else I could try? Please let me know, and thank you for all your effort. :)
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
It would still, in effect, be a DVI connection.

Here is what I would like you to do. You will run two scenarios. One with but a single display. And, a second with 2 displays.

I want you to run hwmonitor (linked below) in the background while running one of your more demanding games. I would like to compare the temperature differences between one and two display configs.

Are you up to that?

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
 
Solution

33miles-

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Jul 24, 2016
19
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Hi COLGeek. :) Yes I am up to it, but I will need to take a short brake at the moment. I will report back here after I run the 2 tests. Thanks for the continued help!
 
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