Second Monitor

[adt]

Hi guys,

I now have a second monitor and I need to set it up. I've connected it and it's working. I would like to use my primary monitor for gaming and the secondary for IM applications such as MSN. I've tried moving MSN into the secondary monitor and running a game on the primary. Everytime I pause the game, then click on MSN the game I have running on the primary monitor minimizes. Is there any way I can stop this from happening?

Looking forward to your suggestions

 

[Product FRED]

There's no way, unless you run the game in windowed-mode, maximized. Also, if you want your signature to show as a picture instead of a link, wrap [ sigpic ] [/ sigpic ] (no spaces) around the link.

 

[adt]

Thanks for the reply, Fred. I will have to run my games in windowed mode from now on.
And yeah I had the signature as an image but for some reason it got changed into a link.

 

[archie123]

short answer...........no mate there isnt , you still have only one desktop its just spanned over two monitors , just imagine you have the one monitor and wanted to send an IM , it doesnt work any differantly because you have 2

 

[Lordbob75]

I wish it was different, but as archie said, it must be windowed.

I have gotten quite used to this constraint with my dual setup, but its not too bad overall.

~Lordbob

 

[archie123]

and the problem with windowed mode is it affects your framerate , which is another pain in the rear , i remeber getting a second monotor a few years ago thinking i could game on one and do stuff on the other , i was in for a shock the wife bought a new laptop , i now have her old one sat next to me when im gaming Its usefull as we have out own gaming servers so i can run the admin software on the lappy and kick people as i see fit without leaving the comfort of my game , but thats an expensive solution unless you have an old steam powered laptop like this one

 

[Lordbob75]

and the problem with windowed mode is it affects your framerate , which is another pain in the rear

Never seen that... What do you mean?

~Lordbob

 

[Product FRED]

and the problem with windowed mode is it affects your framerate , which is another pain in the rear

Never seen that... What do you mean?

~Lordbob

Me neither. Aero (if activated) is still running in the background, as well as Explorer itself, whether or not the application is running in fullscreen.

 

[zzz2496]

Lordbob, ProductFRED, some games drops framerate when ran in Windowed mode, not all... I have a Korean MMORPG, an old game, still stutters and drops framerate when ran in windowed mode (average FPS in windowed mode is around 30-40fps with stutters every now and then) but ran butter smooth in fullscreen mode (this game was released in 2002 or something..).

zzz2496

 

[Lordbob75]

Lordbob, ProductFRED, some games drops framerate when ran in Windowed mode, not all... I have a Korean MMORPG, an old game, still stutters and drops framerate when ran in windowed mode (average FPS in windowed mode is around 30-40fps with stutters every now and then) but ran butter smooth in fullscreen mode (this game was released in 2002 or something..).

zzz2496

Odd indeed.

~Lordbob

 

[archie123]

and the problem with windowed mode is it affects your framerate , which is another pain in the rear

Never seen that... What do you mean?

~Lordbob

Me neither. Aero (if activated) is still running in the background, as well as Explorer itself, whether or not the application is running in fullscreen.

it shouldnt be , aero should be disabled by the game launcher , if i were you id check the "disable desktop composition" box in your launcher for better fps. every game i currently play (bad company 2 , crysis , warhed , far cry 2) all disable aero on launch

 

[zzz2496]

Never seen that... What do you mean?

~Lordbob

Me neither. Aero (if activated) is still running in the background, as well as Explorer itself, whether or not the application is running in fullscreen.

it shouldnt be , aero should be disabled by the game launcher , if i were you id check the "disable desktop composition" box in your launcher for better fps. every game i currently play (bad company 2 , crysis , warhed , far cry 2) all disable aero on launch

Some games disable Aero, some don't, but the end is the same... Some games loses some fps when running in windowed mode, that's the main point here.

zzz2496

 

[archie123]

Me neither. Aero (if activated) is still running in the background, as well as Explorer itself, whether or not the application is running in fullscreen.

it shouldnt be , aero should be disabled by the game launcher , if i were you id check the "disable desktop composition" box in your launcher for better fps. every game i currently play (bad company 2 , crysis , warhed , far cry 2) all disable aero on launch

Some games disable Aero, some don't, but the end is the same... Some games loses some fps when running in windowed mode, that's the main point here.

zzz2496

No my main point is ALL games suffer some loss of performance in windowed mode , your fps will suffer at points and disabling aero frees up ram , cpu cycles and gpu memory , so my main point there is if you disable aero your performance will increase. So if your game doesnt , you should force it too , unless your happy with your game performance.

 

[zzz2496]

it shouldnt be , aero should be disabled by the game launcher , if i were you id check the "disable desktop composition" box in your launcher for better fps. every game i currently play (bad company 2 , crysis , warhed , far cry 2) all disable aero on launch

Some games disable Aero, some don't, but the end is the same... Some games loses some fps when running in windowed mode, that's the main point here.

zzz2496

No my main point is ALL games suffer some loss of performance in windowed mode , your fps will suffer at points and disabling aero frees up ram , cpu cycles and gpu memory , so my main point there is if you disable aero your performance will increase. So if your game doesnt , you should force it too , unless your happy with your game performance.

I see... Well, anyway - if the display driver can't "lock" the "display surface", losing some performance is expected...

zzz2496

 

[Lordbob75]

it shouldnt be , aero should be disabled by the game launcher , if i were you id check the "disable desktop composition" box in your launcher for better fps. every game i currently play (bad company 2 , crysis , warhed , far cry 2) all disable aero on launch

Some games disable Aero, some don't, but the end is the same... Some games loses some fps when running in windowed mode, that's the main point here.

zzz2496

No my main point is ALL games suffer some loss of performance in windowed mode , your fps will suffer at points and disabling aero frees up ram , cpu cycles and gpu memory , so my main point there is if you disable aero your performance will increase. So if your game doesnt , you should force it too , unless your happy with your game performance.

Never once have I seen an issue, but I will test it later with Furmark on my desktop.

~Lordbob

 

[Lordbob75]

Now this is actually very interesting:


There is a 20 point score difference, with fullscreen scoring higher. There is also a temperature increase of 3 degrees between the 2, but that could have been because I did fullscreen first, so it was already warm.

~Lordbob

 

[adt]

Thanks for the replies guys. I have plugged out the 2nd monitor since it's not much use to me. I have also noticed when running 2 monitors my GPU temperature goes up by about 15C.