Single monitor v.s Dual monitor v.s multi monitor gaming?

jbarrows

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Jul 20, 2012
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Hey guys, quick question. just wanted to see what your guys' opinons are on gaming on a single monitor versus playing on 2 or more than 2. And i also wanted to know if the benefits outweigh the risks and what he perfect size the monitors sould be if i was to buy more. Right now i have a samsung 23in lcd display with 2sec response tie and 100 million:1 contrast ratio
 
2 monitors are pretty usefull but not for gaming. there are a couple of games that will allow you to play on 1 screen while allowing your game menues to sit on the other but for the most part the idea is useless.
3 screens on the other hand is perfectly reasonable in some respects.
it can give a much wider fov in flight sims and fps games. its utterly useless in most ofther game types as the game action will more often than not be focused on the main center screen. ive seen guys playig racers and rts games on multi monitor setups and basically the 2 side screens are displaying the bare minimum to say they are being used.
i would say multimonitor is great for productivity but its still of very limited use in gaming. them that have it like it. them that want it think its magical them that understand it know its pointless and pretty much very specific.

as for the gfx your never really gonna have about gfx horsepower to run 3 or more screens for gaming on a typical card as there designed for 1 main screen and maybe 1 info monitor. typically you need x2 or x3 the base ram version of the card to tun dual or tripple monitors without a mem shortage forcing you to reduce settings.
typically a card has 1-2 gigs. 3 gigs is the minimum you will need to play games on 3 1080p screens and 6 gig if you want to play without reducing settings.
 
As Hexit said multi display gaming has it's nitch, but it all depends on what you are playing. I use 2 displays at work and could not function as efficiently as I do not. It's a great tool, I wish I could have a 3rd to monitor crap throughout the day. For gaming a single wide screen display should be perfectly fine for all games. For gaming you need 3 displays to make multiple displays actually work. Otherwise you center will be right in between 2 displays. The most common purpose is for sim games like racing and flight sims. It gives a better sense of realism and I believe these types of games have supported multiple displays for quite a while. Only within the last few years has the FPS games gotten attention of multiple games. You still need 3 for this. It enhances your field of view to give you an added experience. However, there is the caveat of GPU power. To run 3 displays you need a lot of GPU power and most times either the highest end single card or dual card setup. I still see it as a luxury because it is really not needed. If you had a sim game I could see it being necessary to display the controls and multiple views out the window or cockpit. For FPS you can see movement out the corner of your eye. You still have to center your target on the center screen.
 

velosteraptor

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Jul 20, 2012
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I myself have 3 20 inch HP monitors in an eyefinity setup. I find it extremely good for games that natively support it, and i think its great. paired with a good surround system it is very immersive. The only downside, as previously said, is gpu power. I run a radeon 5770 and 6770 in crossfire, and have to turn down some games to run smoothly on all 3 monitors. If i limit a game to just the main dispaly, i can turn the graphics way up.

I.E. Skyrim runs on medium with all 3, but ultra on only one.

See if your favorite games support it natively; widescreen gaming forum has a good list of them, and make the decision for yourself. ;)
 

gregaaron89

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Aug 20, 2012
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Watching videos of multi-monitor gaming, it looks amazing but after a while I found it to be disorienting and really distracting. I suppose it's an illusion that only really works if you're actually sitting in front of the screens so I guess I can't comment. But I've heard that the larger the screen, the better, but it also takes up an insane amount of real estate. I would love to get 3 screens someday, I've used 2 screens for productivity and loved it, but I wouldn't really know what to do with the third... it probably wouldn't get a lot of use. I wouldn't say it's a priority, but if you have extra money lying around, why the hell not.
 

fallen_glory

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Jun 3, 2012
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I like multi-monitors a bit but I prefer single screen... the only problem I have with single screen is that anything smaller than 32" is unusable to me.... I like my one large screen.... but I am forced to us a TV instead seeing as the largest monitor I can find is 30"