Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Testing shows Nvidia’s new video cards still go nuts with multiple high-refresh monitors

Kevin Parrish
By

nvidia drivers monitors gtx 1080 kv 1462594232 900x600
Nvidia
There may be something fishy going on with Nvidia’s drivers that is causing the company’s new GeForce GTX 1000 Series “Pascal” graphics chips to run at a higher idle clock speed than what the Windows desktop requires. While this issue won’t trigger the apocalypse, this “bug” means a hotter desktop and more overall larger power draw.

The problem, it seems, only happens when multiple displays set to a refresh rate of over 60Hz are connected to the DisplayPort output jacks on the GeForce cards. This problem actually reared its head at the beginning of the year, and was confirmed to exist in a test using Nvidia’s 364.47 driver set, a GeForce GTX 980 Ti card, and two monitors set above 60Hz. The result was that once the second monitor was added, the idle clock speed rose from 135Mhz to 925MHz, and then fell again when the second monitor was disconnected.

Recommended Videos

In a second test conducted this week by The Tech Report, the weird monitor bug still seems to exist. For this latest test, a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming card was inserted into a test bed and its associated Xtreme Gaming Engine software installed. The test also included the Eizo Foris FS2735 FreeSync display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and the Asus ROG Swift PG2790 G-Sync display with a 165Hz refresh rate. Both were connected to the card’s DisplayPort output jacks.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

At first, only the Asus monitor was connected in order to make sure the GTX 1080 card’s idle speed remained at 291MHz when the monitor was switched between 60Hz and 165Hz. The overall power draw from the system was even 65 watts to 75 watts.

However, once the monitor was set at 165Hz and the second Eizo monitor running at 60Hz was connected, the card’s idle clock speed jumped up to 1,304MHz. The system power consumption jumped up to an average of 107 watts as well.

The test also showed that changing the refresh rate of the second monitor had no effect on the card’s idle clock speed. The Eizo panel was cranked up to 144Hz and then back to 60Hz, but the change did not increase or decrease the clock speed or the power consumption of the GTX 1080 graphics card. Instead, the Asus monitor, still connected, was changed from 165Hz down to 60Hz, and suddenly the graphics card eased back down to an idle speed of 291MHz. Disabling the G-Sync feature on the Asus monitor had no effect on the idle clock speed.

Unfortunately, customers with two displays attached and running at high refresh rates may have to pay a higher electric bill until the issue is addressed in Nvidia’s drivers. That said, customers might want to keep them running at 60Hz each until Nvidia fixes the weird issue.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kevin Parrish
Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
The 5 best laptops for accountants in 2024
Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 top down tablet view with pen.

Accountants tend to have a lot on their shoulders, especially as a lot of folks can rely on them for financial health, which is very important in today's world where the economy isn't at its best. As such, it's important to have the right tools for the job, and while there are a ton of great laptops out there that might work well for accounting, some will excel at it more than others. As such, we've gone out and picked our favorite laptops that can easily handle everything from large and heavy-duty spreadsheets to accounting software. Also, if you haven't quite found what you're looking for here, be sure to check out some of or other favorite laptop deals as well.
The Best Laptops for Accountants in 2024

Buy the  if you want the best overall laptop for accountants
Buy the if you want the best MacBook laptop for accountants
Buy the  if you want the best portable laptop for accountants
Buy the if you want the best 14-inch laptop for accountants
Buy the  if you want the best budget laptop for accountants

Read more
It’s time to stop believing these PC building myths
Hyte's Thicc Q60 all-in-one liquid cooler.

As far as hobbies go, PC hardware is neither the cheapest nor the easiest one to get into. That's precisely why you may often run into various misconceptions and myths.

These myths have been circulating for so long now that many accept them as a universal truth, even though they're anything but. Below, I'll walk you through some PC beliefs that have been debunked over and over, and, yet, are still prevalent.
Liquid cooling is high-maintenance (and scary)

Read more
AMD’s next-gen CPUs are much closer than we thought
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D held between fingertips.

We already knew that AMD would launch its Zen 5 CPUs this year, but recent motherboard updates hint that a release is imminent. Both MSI and Asus have released updates for their 600-series motherboards that explicitly add support for "next-generation AMD Ryzen processors," setting the stage for AMD's next-gen CPUs.

This saga started a few days ago when hardware leaker 9550pro spotted an MSI BIOS update, which they shared on X (formerly Twitter). Since then, Asus has followed suit with BIOS updates of its own featuring a new AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture (AGESA) -- the firmware responsible for starting the CPU -- that brings support for next-gen CPUs (spotted by VideoCardz).

Read more