Is it possible?

[Blitzkrieg469]

Just for the purpose of learning and not to do it.....is it possible to have a rig that can play a game on one monitor while watching video on another. Can it be done with one card?...2?....or not at all? Like I said...not wanting to do it...just curious if it is possible. Thanks

 

[rulejunior]

I don't see why not. I had my system hooked to my 32" tv on the wall next to me and my 24" monitor for a while and I had my game running on the monitor while I had winamp up on the tv keeping track of my music. Only thing about that setup is every time I wanted to change the song, I had to alt-tab out of my game. So, you should be able to. Open Media Player/VLC whatever you use on the side screen. Best way to do this is to extend the desktop in the resolution manager built into windows. Right click the home screen and hit resolution.

P.s: You should be able to do it with one card depending on what you have

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yeah, you can do it on one card too. (I personally do it a lot).

 

[bgunner]

It is possible but many times with out a High End CPU and a SLI or Crossfire setup the gaming performance will be poor. Example: youtube uses a lot of CPU to display the video. This in turn takes away from the gaming ability. The same is true when using graphics accelerated Videos. The videos will use the GPU reducing the performance it can use for gaming.

 

[TechyInAZ]

It is possible but many times with out a High End CPU and a SLI or Crossfire setup the gaming performance will be poor. Example: youtube uses a lot of CPU to display the video. This in turn takes away from the gaming ability. The same is true when using graphics accelerated Videos. The videos will use the GPU reducing the performance it can use for gaming.

+1. I have a gtx 750 ti and when I hook both monitors up to it and play one movie and one game on each screen then my fps decreases (by around 10fps or more). If I hook my 2nd monitor up to my HD4600 and let the game just run on my dGPU then it runs fine.

 

[Blitzkrieg469]

thanks...my son is running a GTX 760 and using the hdmi, dvi, and display ports to run 3 monitors. He said he tried to play a game on one and video on the other but he could'nt. I'll have to find out what he might be doing wrong

 

[TechyInAZ]

thanks...my son is running a GTX 760 and using the hdmi, dvi, and display ports to run 3 monitors. He said he tried to play a game on one and video on the other but he could'nt. I'll have to find out what he might be doing wrong

Weird, your gpu is more than powerful enough to run a video and a game simultaneously (not perfect but it is capable).

BTW...If he has three monitors then why is he not using Nvidia Surround? (just curious)

Try upgrading your NVidia drivers.

 

[Blitzkrieg469]

running multiple monitors is new to me and him so we are still in the learning phase. I knew when I built his pc I was getting good parts....just don't know their full potential yet...lol
and as far as NVidia Surround...I thought that was for one application on multiple monitors?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yes Nvidia surround only allows you to run one game on all three monitors. But it is really cool when you get that surround ability.

But if you don't want to do that then you don't need to, it's up to you.

What are your full specs? I recommend running your video monitor on the IGPU to get maximum performance.

 

[Blitzkrieg469]

AMD FX-6100 Bulldozer, ASRock 970 Extreme 4, 8gig ram, EVGA GTX 760

 

[TechyInAZ]

AMD FX-6100 Bulldozer, ASRock 970 Extreme 4, 8gig ram, EVGA GTX 760

Ditch the igpu plan.

Best option would be to pop another graphics card in to make everything run smooth.