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It used to be that two monitors was only for business users. [music]

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But these days, whether you're a worker, a gamer, a streamer, multiple monitors

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have gone from being a luxury to being almost essential. I mean, you know who

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you are with [music] the stream playing during your Zoom meeting or the latest

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Mr. B shenanigans next to that boring tutorial that you're really watching.

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But what if I told you that there's a dark side to your harmless little habit?

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[laughter] That's right. Your extra monitors are

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costing you more than just desk space and power consumption. I am talking

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about performance. How much? Well, the general consensus is

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that that's not really enough to matter. But considering the lengths that gamers

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will go for another three frames per second, I disagree. So, we set the Labs

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team loose to settle this debate once and for all. [music] Is this why you're

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stuck at Silver 2? Is this why you can't

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get sponsored by Origin PC? This August, get up to $1,000 off Origin PC's 30

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series laptops, $200 off their desktops, and 100 bucks off their 40 series

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laptops. Learn more using the link below. That's a lot of discount. To

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cover all our bases, the Labs team needed a lot of gear. A high-end test

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bench, a variety of popular games, and four displays that we then ran at either

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1080p or 4K. They then set out to ensure

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that the physical displays were the only variable, which is how we ended up with

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a pretty unusual starting config. Three Edge browser Windows, each running the

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same 4K YouTube video in the background with our game out front. We recorded

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performance, shut down the system, plugged in a second monitor, dragged one

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of our background videos over to the secondary monitor, and reran the test.

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Then for you mega taskers out there, we did the same thing but with four

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displays. And right out of the gate, the

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results were pretty shocking. At 1080p,

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even with all four monitors in use, this

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only cost us 1% performance in Red Dead

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Redemption 2, which is fantastic. Case

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closed. Uh you should keep all your monitors. Maybe buy a few more. We're

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going to have some nice ones linked in the video description. But wait a

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second, that's a lot of bar left down there. Ah, okay. That's cuz the story is

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far from over. In that same scenario, we lost nearly 7% of our performance in

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Total Warhammer 3 with Cyberpunk 2077

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landing in the middle at just over 3%.

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Obviously, these aren't earthshattering numbers, and the impact is lower if you

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only run two displays rather than four. But I was still surprised by how

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significant the performance impact was. And this is on a top-of-the-line

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machine. And it gets worse. I mean,

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given that 4K is literally four times

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the pixel count of a 1080p display, it probably won't surprise you much that

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our performance loss was even more substantial. Total War Warhammer 3

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actually improved going down to 5%. [music] But Red Dead and Cyberpunk shot

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up to around 7% if we had video playback

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running on our three extra screens. The real story though is that this doesn't

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just apply to your average [music] frame rates where realistically in most of

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these games you can probably spare a few FPS. It also applies to your 1% lows,

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the situations where 8 to 9% difference

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could be noticeable as hitching or additional stutter in your gameplay.

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[music] Now, in fairness, this is an extreme example, and most people aren't

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going to be running three full screen video instances while they game. But on

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the other hand, I don't think it's entirely unrealistic either. A streamer,

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for example, could easily have their game running here, their OBS preview

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over here, their live Twitch feed over here, and maybe a let's play or a

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walkthrough running on a fourth display. And the lower the performance of your

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PC, the more you're going to feel [music] this difference. I mean, even a

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pro might struggle to notice 200 FPS

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versus 220 FPS. But 30 versus 33 when

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you're feeling those dips, that's something just about anyone could feel,

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even if they're not sure what's off about it, which is all interesting, but

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doesn't answer why this is happening. To find that out, we reran our tests in 4K,

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but this time without the video playback. And you might think, well,

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obviously outputting those 8.3 million

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pixels per display is going to cost us something. But as it turns out, that's

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just not the case. Our game benchmarks

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actually came back either the same as if we were on a single monitor or about 1

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FPS faster, which [music] is weird, but low enough to chalk it up to runto-run

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variance. So, what's the catch then?

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Pushing more pixels means our computer is working harder, doesn't it?

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Yes, but also no. When you have a static

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image that's just sitting on the screen in Windows, it gets stored in system

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memory. When a window gets dragged to a new position, it gets redrawn as needed.

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But if the contents of that screen need to be changing, all that optimization

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goes out the window. Watch this. I'm going to move around the signup sheet

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for our stubby screwdriver launch here. By the way, be the [music] first to

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know. Sign up and don't miss it. Got that linked in the video description. I

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shake it around and we see an immediate spike in 3D GPU usage. But then I stop

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and boop, it goes away. [music] Then if

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I want to kick things up a notch, rendering animations or decoding a video

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will put additional load on the GPU. Oh, like this. the LTT desk pad configurator

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where you can put in the size of your desk and what kind of deskpad. Oh, look

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at that usage. Yikes. Though again, in

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fairness, that's a little unrealistic. So, why don't we just go with something

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that's closer to our test and play back a video where 3D usage not so bad, but

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video decode starts to pop off. You're going to see this depending on the load,

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there will be some usage. It's not that

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much and it's mostly not on the parts of the GPU that your 3D games rely on, but

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it obviously is something. Of course,

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this isn't the first time we've learned this lesson. Years ago, if you wanted to

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stream to TW, excuse me, kick, the best

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option was to use a second computer to capture and encode your stream. But that

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all changed when NVIDIA introduced Envank and NVEC which offload encoding

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and decoding tasks to dedicated hardware on their GPUs. It was a gamecher [music]

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and it has enabled more than just streaming from a single PC. Remote play

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for example relies heavily on Envank and Nv. [music]

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However, their promise that with decoding and encoding offloaded, the

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graphics engine and the CPU are free for other operations wasn't entirely true.

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Envank has always come with a measurable hit to in-game performance. [music]

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And as we've seen here today, this is also true for decoding and for running

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extra displays. Even if it's as small as

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reallocating the power budget that's needed to fire up those other functional

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units on the GPU, it will cost you

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something. However, even as a one

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monitor guy, both at home and at work, I am not going to tell you to throw away

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your secondary display. For all but the most competitive gamers out there, the

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benefits of multimonitor probably far outweigh the drawbacks.

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However, as a one monitor guy, even if you're not

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worried about the performance loss you've seen here today, there are some

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reasons that I do prefer a single screen. There's less to troubleshoot

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when video issues arise. It requires less power and less cable management.

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And most importantly for me, for gaming, I find it more immersive. Not only can

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you dive right in without a second monitor stealing you away through your

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peripheral vision, but as someone who really needs a break when I take time to

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game, I appreciate that I never see

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notifications popping up on that other screen. Of course, none of that makes a

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difference for you if you need to have Twitch chat up or whatever else. [music]

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So, for those of you who are looking for a second monitor, it is true, by the

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way, we do have some displays linked down below. And I want to especially

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shout out Sony for providing the displays that the lab used for our

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testing. It's a super nice one. We did a full ShortCircuit video and we're going

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to have that one linked down below along with some other affordable and more

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[music] premium options. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out the

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one where we explored motherboard performance with 10 different

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motherboards and one CPU. Once again, I

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think the results [music] might surprise