CPU Performance while using multiple monitors

staffan2 · Post by **staffan2** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:55 pm

I'm planning to buy three monitors that I'm going to run in 1600x1200 resolution (Samsung 213T), and I wonder if that will require much of the CPU capacity? I'm using the CPU for all my synths (ie. VSTis), and I'm not using any hardware synths. That's why I'm a little bit worried that driving the three monitors will use too much of the
CPU capacity.

I am thinking of having the CubaseSX workspace on one monitor, the VSTis on the second monitor and the Pulsar 2448 mixer on the third monitor (plus some CW synths). The reason that I'm planning to buy three monitors is that the 21" monitors are much cheaper than the 30" and therefore it seems to be a better deal to buy three 21" monitors than one 30".

Have anyone of you got some experience to share about CPU performance and multiple monitors?

Also, will a TV-card require much of the CPU performance? It is always nice to have the possibility to look at the TV meanwhile improvising some melodies.

The computer that I'm using is a P4-2.4HGz, 1 GB ram, Pulsar2. The gfx-card that I'm planning to buy is the Matrox Qid.

deejaysly · Post by **deejaysly** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:51 pm

I have 3 Samsung 193T's running off a Matrox P650 with triple head upgrade... 1xPulsar 2, 2xScope SRB.... it was a gradual upgrade but i didn't notice any great degradation in performance before and after upgrading so the answer to your question is probably that you would be okay... i don't expect the size of the monitors but the resolution... i'm running across 3 screens with 3840x1024 resolution effectively...

Have a little trouble with achieving a number of ASIO channels but i am not quite sure whether that is to do with apps that are running and whether my system is tweaked enuff....

Bear in mind i am not an expert on these things... just letting you know my experience in your similar shoes...

HTH.

EDIT: My system is also P4 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM, no TV card tho...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: deejaysly on 2005-03-17 15:53 ]</font>

time_chase · Post by **time_chase** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:53 am

running 3 monitors will not affect the CPU. All the 2D GUI display is accelerated by the video card these days.

if ya running a digital tv tuner, then yes it will consume cpu time. I run a digital HDTV tuner and it consumes about 5-10% on my AMD64 3200.

time_chase · Post by **time_chase** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:57 am

oh yeah. my setup is as follows:

19" philips crt on analog, 17" LCD on dvi, nvidia 6800GT, amd64 3200, hdtv tuner card, pulsar2+ with a sync plate & noah ex.

jdurbin · Post by **jdurbin** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:28 pm

I'm running 4 LCD monitors on a Matrox quad card. PCI-E. No problems. I used to run a dual AGP plus a dual PCI Matrox and had a few issues with the PCI bus load.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 12:42 am

On 2005-03-18 08:53, time_chase wrote:
...All the 2D GUI display is accelerated by the video card these days. ...

Scope GUI is based on the (crossplatform) wxwidgets framework and afaik it does not take advantage of hardware acceleration.
With lots of screen space and lots of 'moving' parts like meters and animations you should notice a significant CPU load.

Even Apple with it's huge developement resources only recently managed to direct 2D text to the graphcard.
In any version before tiger (10.4) the renderer was CPU based...

cheers, Tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-09-03 01:44 ]</font>