Huge FPS drop with multiple monitors

I run 3 monitors, if I have any applications opened on any of the monitors (other than the one POE is running on), what happens is my FPS decreases from 144 to whatever the refresh rate is of the other monitor. It seems to get triggered when something is being "drawn" or updated on any of the other monitors, such as opening a youtube video on another monitor.

This is a massive performance decrease that goes away when I minimize my applications on my other monitors.

Super annoying. Maybe it has to do with borderless window mode.

NOTHING OPEN ON OTHER MONITORS: 144 FPS


VIDEO PLAYING ON OTHER MONITOR: 48 FPS

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dime wrote:

I run 3 monitors, if I have any applications opened on any of the monitors (other than the one POE is running on), what happens is my FPS decreases from 144 to whatever the refresh rate is of the other monitor. It seems to get triggered when something is being "drawn" or updated on any of the other monitors, such as opening a youtube video on another monitor.

This is a massive performance decrease that goes away when I minimize my applications on my other monitors.

Super annoying. Maybe it has to do with borderless window mode.

NOTHING OPEN ON OTHER MONITORS: 144 FPS

VIDEO PLAYING ON OTHER MONITOR: 48 FPS

Yup, you're doing Windowed Fullscreen instead of Fullscreen mode and you have VSync enable. Usually you only want Vsync when you're in true Fullscreen mode. I'm not sure how PoE treats the Vsync option when in window mode. It'll either ignore it or use it as frame limiter instead of actual Vsync.

Are the 3 monitors identical? And how are they attached to your system? 1 or 2 video cards? Which monitors on which video cards? I ask because funny things can occur when you try to render DX on the same video card that's using the Windows DWM or GDI+ for other apps. And the same is true with multiple video cards, but when trying to render the same DX stuff on both when in non-SLI/CrossfireX mode. Heck, I even run into weird rendering problems with the Aero theme for Windows 7 on multiple monitors, specifically for Windows Media Player, Photo Viewer, etc., especially with SLI enabled and running monitors on only one video card.

If you play a video on the other monitor it's going to be using some sort of GPU acceleration, so expect a performance drop from your game. The only two ways to get around this that I know of, are...

1.) Run the monitor in which you play PoE on its own video card, then run the other two monitors on another video card.

2.) Go into your graphics settings (AMD crimson/catalyst or NVIDIA control panel) and force specific apps and games to use specific GPUs. For example, if you're playing videos on YouTube in Firefox, then force Firefox to use your integrated Intel graphics or another video card, and finally force PathOfExile.exe to use your primary AMD or NVIDIA video card.

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cipher_nemo wrote:

Are the 3 monitors identical? And how are they attached to your system? 1 or 2 video cards? Which monitors on which video cards?

3 different monitors (main is 144hz others are 60hz), all on the same GPU: 970 GTX.

I think you are right that the vsync setting is to blame in addition to borderless window.

I was using vsync as a frame cap before, I think I am going to disable it and just cap fps with nvidia inspector instead.

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dime wrote:

I think I am going to disable it and just cap fps with nvidia inspector instead.

That sounds like a good plan. :-)

Let us know if it helps.

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cipher_nemo wrote:

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dime wrote:

I think I am going to disable it and just cap fps with nvidia inspector instead.

That sounds like a good plan. :-)

Let us know if it helps.

I disabled vsync, downloaded Nvidia Inspector, and set frame cap value to 0xF0000090 (which is 144fps) and it no longer drops my FPS with windows open on other monitor.

I don't think most people would know to do that.

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dime wrote:

I disabled vsync, downloaded Nvidia Inspector, and set frame cap value to 0xF0000090 (which is 144fps) and it no longer drops my FPS with windows open on other monitor.

I don't think most people would know to do that.

Nice job! Glad it's working.

And correct, I'd have to research that if I ever wanted to limit frames with software. But I knew it was possible.

Unfortunately this is still a problem. For some reason the "frame rate limiter" keeps disabling itself. So I just realized POE was sitting there running at 400 fps for an hour while I had it open in the background.

Can vsync be fixed when using multiple monitors with different refresh rates? I'd prefer not to lose yet another graphics card to this game.

got no solution, just a comment.