Windows 10 Dual Monitor Stutter

swaaye

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I have two monitors running in extend mode with Windows 10. GTX 1080, Z68 mobo, 2500K. I've discovered that if there is an active window like a remote desktop window on the second monitor that the primary monitor will periodically drop frame rate. Maybe both drop frame rate at the same time. It's especially annoying in windowed games but even just smooth scrolling in a web browser gets choppy.

-One monitor 3840x2160, other 2560x1440.
-Both monitors are running 60 Hz. I also tried mixing 59 Hz and 60 Hz.
-I set both monitors to the same display settings (RGB, 8-bit, full range, 32-bit color depth). Tried altering this too.
-Main monitor is HDMI. Second monitor is DP, but I also tried DVI with it. GTX 1080 only has one HDMI.

I've read all sorts of manic forum threads about this. Pages upon pages of angry gamer dudes ready to burn Nvidia, MS, etc to the ground with wild speculation and mob mentality stuff. :) Apparently this problem goes back to Vista (related to wondrous 3D DWM). There's mad rage about >120 Hz monitors in this situation too. I think the problem is worse there though.

It seems to me like some kind of synchronization issue between refresh rates and DWM vsync? I was going to try using my Intel HD 3000 IGP to host the second monitor, but it doesn't support 2560x1440 at all. And the old GeForce 8600 GT that I have won't coexist with the GeForce 1080. Drivers aren't compatible.

Supposedly AMD GPUs are free of this behavior?

Anyone have experience with this issue?
 
I have two monitors running in extend mode with Windows 10. GTX 1080, Z68 mobo, 2500K. I've discovered that if there is an active window like a remote desktop window on the second monitor that the primary monitor will periodically drop frame rate. Maybe both drop frame rate at the same time. It's especially annoying in windowed games but even just smooth scrolling in a web browser gets choppy.

-One monitor 3840x2160, other 2560x1440.
-Both monitors are running 60 Hz. I also tried mixing 59 Hz and 60 Hz.
-I set both monitors to the same display settings (RGB, 8-bit, full range, 32-bit color depth). Tried altering this too.
-Main monitor is HDMI. Second monitor is DP, but I also tried DVI with it. GTX 1080 only has one HDMI.

I've read all sorts of manic forum threads about this. Pages upon pages of angry gamer dudes ready to burn Nvidia, MS, etc to the ground with wild speculation and mob mentality stuff. :) Apparently this problem goes back to Vista (related to wondrous 3D DWM). There's mad rage about >120 Hz monitors in this situation too. I think the problem is worse there though.

It seems to me like some kind of synchronization issue between refresh rates and DWM vsync? I was going to try using my Intel HD 3000 IGP to host the second monitor, but it doesn't support 2560x1440 at all. And the old GeForce 8600 GT that I have won't coexist with the GeForce 1080. Drivers aren't compatible.

Supposedly AMD GPUs are free of this behavior?

Anyone have experience with this issue?

Yeah, going back as far as Windows XP, AMD has done better with multiple displays and extended desktop than NV. NV have definitely GREATLY improved their extended display support and performance since then, but it's still not as generally smooth as AMD. Although I can't say if it's still good with Polaris and VEGA as R9 290 is the latest AMD card I own.

It's one of my numerous complaints about the 1070 compared to my 290.

The card is so frustrating. Some of my previous issues have been resolved or mitigated to some degree, but now new issues seem to have cropped up or gotten worse. I've avoided mentioning any on this forum as I'm sure people are tired of listening to me complain about the absolutely crap NV drivers. BTW - this isn't to say AMD drivers are a miracle of goodness. Just that in my usage scenarios (long uptime, high memory usage, high CPU usage, multiple apps running for days at a time, etc.) AMD has been significantly more stable.

One of the new ones I've run into is that now after Windows being up for an extended period of time, moving a Chrome window from one display to another will cause Chrome, Windows, or the NV driver to stop rendering the contents of the Chrome window until I stop moving it and then maximize it. Then it'll work normally again. It's a bizarre mostly harmless (I'm assuming) bug. Doesn't happen on a system I have using Intel integrated graphics.

Regards,
SB
 
How about plugging your gt 8500 and manually install its driver thru device manager?

Then use internal windows display options to extend the desktop
 
How about plugging your gt 8500 and manually install its driver thru device manager?

Then use internal windows display options to extend the desktop
Windows immediately tries to download and install the 342.xx driver for the 8600 and that driver doesn't work for a 1080. Neither card was working. I don't think the old and new drivers can coexist...
 
Windows immediately tries to download and install the 342.xx driver for the 8600 and that driver doesn't work for a 1080. Neither card was working. I don't think the old and new drivers can coexist...

Try to Disconnect from internet first. Then don't install the driver, just extract the driver and manually select the inf file from device manager
 
I notice stutters with games even in single monitor mode if I say bring up Firefox. I suppose with everything these days hitting the GPU that there's a lot of different forms of contention happening across various APIs.

I would still like to try an entirely separate GPU and see how that behaves. I need to get a NV board that will run on the same drivers as the 1080. So something Fermi or newer. Maybe I'll grab my old 970 from my work PC.
 
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When I last used Nvidia (which was GF 770), their GPUs multitasked really poorly. Like, if you ran compute on it, 3D rendering even in its most simple form would stutter like crazy, whereas the AMD 290X I switched to later on was barely affected even if you ran a game while compute was happening (as long as game was not pixel shader heavy.) It might be something similar here.
 
When I last used Nvidia (which was GF 770), their GPUs multitasked really poorly. Like, if you ran compute on it, 3D rendering even in its most simple form would stutter like crazy, whereas the AMD 290X I switched to later on was barely affected even if you ran a game while compute was happening (as long as game was not pixel shader heavy.) It might be something similar here.
Yeah seems like it could be NV multitasking related. At least the part where I'm on single screen and I have a windowed game start stuttering/pause when I load a known 3D program like Firefox.

However, I went and got the 970 and put it in alongside the 1080. With the second monitor active on a separate card, the other screen's Firefox still stutters occasionally with scrolling. I'm not sure if this is NV or something new with WIndows 10 Creator's Update. I suspect that it is Windows 10 related to some degree because of how much complaining is going around the web about the Creator's Update and game stuttering with dual monitors.

I think there is
- the 3D multitasking stutter issue
- the dual monitor program stutter problem
- the dual monitors with different refresh rate stutter problem

And I think it's hard to figure out what people are seeing.

But one thing is for sure - running a game in fullscreen mode is always best.

I don't have any AMD GPUs that can run a 4K HDMI screen to try unfortunately. They should launch something new and awesome so I can get that. :)
 
Yeah seems like it could be NV multitasking related. At least the part where I'm on single screen and I have a windowed game start stuttering/pause when I load a known 3D program like Firefox.

However, I went and got the 970 and put it in alongside the 1080. With the second monitor active on a separate card, the other screen's Firefox still stutters occasionally with scrolling. I'm not sure if this is NV or something new with WIndows 10 Creator's Update. I suspect that it is Windows 10 related to some degree because of how much complaining is going around the web about the Creator's Update and game stuttering with dual monitors.

I think there is
- the 3D multitasking stutter issue
- the dual monitor program stutter problem
- the dual monitors with different refresh rate stutter problem

And I think it's hard to figure out what people are seeing.

But one thing is for sure - running a game in fullscreen mode is always best.

I don't have any AMD GPUs that can run a 4K HDMI screen to try unfortunately. They should launch something new and awesome so I can get that. :)

I can try running your test on my Vega, but I only have 2xQHD Monitors. One is 60Hz and the other is 144Hz FreeSync screen.

EDIT:
Dirt Rally windowed + Firefox Twitch Video and Anandtech pages on 2nd screen - no stutter detected, fluid as always.
 
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I think there is
- the 3D multitasking stutter issue
- the dual monitor program stutter problem
- the dual monitors with different refresh rate stutter problem
It's kind of like the "start menu + "modern" apps stop working" bug in windows 10; seemingly multiple different causes that all give the same end result... So in essence, multiple bugs really, complicating matters.

Of course, MS doesn't seem to place much effort on fixing this/these bugs, as one or more of them have been around since the OS launched. :p
 
After more experimentation, it looks like only Firefox's smooth scrolling stutters. Opera and Chrome with smooth scrolling flag force-enabled doesn't stutter. Edge doesn't seem to have smooth scroll.

Also went into BIOS and disabled HPET (somebody suggested that) and also disabled Speedstep and C6 & C3 sleep states. No change with Firefox.
 
Though I suppose I should add that the real reason I started investigating this is I play Supreme Commander Forged Alliance in windowed mode and it runs especially bad in windowed mode if there is a program running on the second monitor. It seems to periodically drop to fractions of the refresh rate for a bit and then return to being smooth again. Like vsynced double buffering gone really bad. Which is what Firefox appears to do too. And now that I think about it more, this is not a problem I've always had with Windows 10. I want to say it started with the Creator's Update, but it could be NVidia drivers too. It's being happening for months, but I just recently noticed Firefox is choppy too.

I almost want to install Windows 7 and try that out. Time and effort.
 
Ok I spent some time installing Windows 7. I just tested Forged Alliance but it is definitely smoother in window mode here than in 10. No weird drops to 15/30 fps or whatever is happening in 10.

Happy times




My next question is whether it is some kind of hardware / software weirdness relating to the Z68 system and Windows 10. I might have to drag a monitor to another computer and see what happens on a different dual monitor setup.
 
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I brought a monitor out to my i5 7600K TVPC with a 1080 Ti and Firefox on the primary monitor has the same periodic stuttering with its smooth scrolling when a remote desktop window is on the second monitor. So it's not a problem caused by my vintage Z68 + 2500K system.
 
It turns out if you disable a windowed game's vsync, it will run considerably more smoothly. There is no tearing with the compositing Windows DWM. However your GPU may run much warmer because it's generating as many frames as possible with no care to any synchronization. The game also doesn't appear quite smooth. I imagine this is because Windows and the game are asynchronous with frame rate. But it is better than when running with the game's vsync.

Windowed graphics is such a complicated topic.
 
Windowed graphics is such a complicated topic.
What if you enable "smart" vsync in your driver control panel (whatever it's called in Nvidia sp33k)?

Sidenote: apparently AMD cards can crossfire in fullscreen windowed mode with adrenalin driver release - not that I noticed any difference in my case - due to 2nd GPU sitting idle for whatever reason - still investigating that one.
 
What if you enable "smart" vsync in your driver control panel (whatever it's called in Nvidia sp33k)?

Sidenote: apparently AMD cards can crossfire in fullscreen windowed mode with adrenalin driver release - not that I noticed any difference in my case - due to 2nd GPU sitting idle for whatever reason - still investigating that one.
The vsync options of the control panel don't appear to affect this windowed game. Maybe the video driver can't do anything with windowed vsync. Maybe "windowed vsync" is just nonsense anyway.

However, with NVidia Profile Inspector, there is a frame limiter you can enable. Setting that to 60 fps keeps the GPU from heating up unnecessarily and it seems as smooth as without it.
 
Windowed graphics is such a complicated topic.

It's hard, yes, but if AMD can do it, I see no reason why NV can't do it. It's extremely annoying when dragging a window from monitor to monitor that the window can exhibit weird behavior on NV cards (or at least on the 1070). Stuttering, contents disappearing for a few moments, etc. This is with Chrome, Explorer, Remote Desktop, Edge, etc. It's so bloody annoying.

I also hate that their driver updates seem to just randomly break and fix things. Recently I was playing The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Everything worked fine. Installed a newer driver to see if they resolved some things in Windows. End result? In the main base hub in the game background textures were flickering like crazy, but the rest of the game was fine. So I stopped playing the game. Just recently installed the newest driver and now the issue seems to be fixed.

Everytime I install a NV driver now, I'm sitting here wonder what games are now broken and what formerly broken games might now be fixed? This would happen occasionally with the 290 and driver updates, but not even remotely close to how frequently it happens with the 1070 and its driver updates. And the topper, I don't ever use their BETA drivers unless there is an absolutely critical fix that I need. I could understand if this was happening with BETA drivers, but OMG...ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I think part of the problem is I don't play the latest AAA releases (NV does a great job there) but mostly older titles or indie releases (NV does an absolutely SHITTY job there).

Regards,
SB
 
It's hard, yes, but if AMD can do it, I see no reason why NV can't do it. It's extremely annoying when dragging a window from monitor to monitor that the window can exhibit weird behavior on NV cards (or at least on the 1070). Stuttering, contents disappearing for a few moments, etc. This is with Chrome, Explorer, Remote Desktop, Edge, etc. It's so bloody annoying.

I also hate that their driver updates seem to just randomly break and fix things. Recently I was playing The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. Everything worked fine. Installed a newer driver to see if they resolved some things in Windows. End result? In the main base hub in the game background textures were flickering like crazy, but the rest of the game was fine. So I stopped playing the game. Just recently installed the newest driver and now the issue seems to be fixed.

Everytime I install a NV driver now, I'm sitting here wonder what games are now broken and what formerly broken games might now be fixed? This would happen occasionally with the 290 and driver updates, but not even remotely close to how frequently it happens with the 1070 and its driver updates. And the topper, I don't ever use their BETA drivers unless there is an absolutely critical fix that I need. I could understand if this was happening with BETA drivers, but OMG...ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I think part of the problem is I don't play the latest AAA releases (NV does a great job there) but mostly older titles or indie releases (NV does an absolutely SHITTY job there).

Regards,
SB


I haven't run into any bugs like that with the indie games I've played. I am into different genres than you though so we don't play the same titles.

The main game issue that comes to mind at the moment is with Wolfenstein 2. At 3840x2160, there is terrible tearing / flickering across part of the image. The remedy is a custom resolution of 3840x2159. That this strange issue has not been fixed in a game patch OR a driver is bizarre and makes me think there are politics involved. It is a Vulkan game...

The only multimonitor issue I have at the moment is with FIrefox smooth scrolling becoming choppy periodically when there is a 3D program of some sort on the second monitor. The windowed gaming stuttering issue seems solved by disabling the game's own vsync. Note that I've only been messing with Forged Alliance. That's all I play in a window.

I wouldn't mind trying AMD again, but it's just not an option with the stupid prices at the moment. And I'm not super excited to buy a card hotter and slower than my 1080 or 1080 Ti.
 
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I wouldn't mind trying AMD again, but it's just not an option with the stupid prices at the moment. And I'm not super excited to buy a card hotter and slower than my 1080 or 1080 Ti.

Agreed. I'd also like to give AMD another chance, but my GPU budget is generally 1 GPU every 2 years. Although in rare cases I may shorten it to one year. Also, at the moment an AMD card would be a side grade WRT to performance. Historically, that isn't something I would ever do. However, while overall happy with the 1070, at times it gets me so angry that I'd be willing to give the Vega a try and then hope that AMD's drivers for that are as solid as they were for the 290. No guarantee, but meh.

It would also mean losing some performance WRT video decode to go with AMD. Hopefully AMD will refocus on that in the future. Right now, it feels like I have to compromise in various areas no matter which vendor I choose. At the moment, however, I wouldn't mind trading GPU speed for general driver stability and less wonkiness in Windows.

Regards,
SB
 
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