Will having 2 monitors plugged into the same video card cause the FPS to drop?

[SeriousGaming101]

If you have 1 video card.

1. On 1 monitor you get 100FPS
2. But if you plug 2 monitors into the same GPU, will the FPS drop on each because there is more strain on the video card? So I might get 80FPS rather than the 100FPS I got before from Monitor 1?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yes/yes sorta/no. (Sorry best way to describe it.)

If you have nothing open on that 2nd monitor, you'll loose around 1% of your FPS. (I've tested this in superposition, my scores were just a touch lower than normal with my 2nd monitor running.)

If you have youtube or a video player open on that 2nd monitor, expect around a 5% drop in FPS.

So unless you absolutely need every single FPS, having a 2nd monitor enabled and being used doesn't really lower your fps at all.

 

[WheatleyGAMING]

Probably yeah, shouldn't be noticable though.

 

[WildCard999]

It's very minimal and unlikely to have a major impact on your first monitor unless you will running two game clients with each monitor or something similar.

 

[Gadhar]

I run 3 monitors and the drop in fps is not really an issue. Of course gpu and resolution does play into individual results.

 

[Snipergod87]

Might drop from 100 FPS to 99 FPS

 

[geofelt]

Not a problem.
I once tried an experiment with using a cheap second graphics card to attach a side monitor,
I detected no difference.
Go ahead and attach your side monitor to your main graphics card.
I keep such things as email and performance monitors open on my side monitor.
Because the images are relatively static they do not seem to impact gaming.

That said, I am not a fast action gamer, I play civilization which runs at the game limited 60fps on a 4k monitor.
I never see anything less.