If you plan on expanding your gaming resolution to multiple displays, then it’s safe to assume that you own either an AMD or Nvidia graphics card. Both GPU manufacturers have their own tools to help set you up for multi-monitor gaming. Here we show you how to do it using both AMD and Nvidia’s software packages. Note: you’ll ideally want three monitors for your gaming setup. If you just have two screens and are playing a first- or third-person game, your crosshair will effectively be in the bezel between the two screens, which isn’t great. This won’t be so much of a problem for strategy and other “flat” games. Another thing that will really help is if your different displays are the same size and resolution, ensuring the image flows seamlessly between them. (Ideally, you’d have multiple models of the exact same monitor, which would also ensure the same color reproduction, refresh rates, and so on.)
Multi-Monitor Gaming with Nvidia
Assuming all your monitors are connected to the same PC, right-click the desktop, then “Nvidia Control Panel.” In the pane on the left, click “Set up multiple displays,” then check the box for all the displays you want to spread your resolution across. Note that in order for this to work with your games, you’ll need to have three monitors connected. Assuming you meet those criteria, scroll down, click “Surround spanning options,” then check the “Span displays with Surround” box. This will spread your resolution across three screens. Click “Configure” to tweak your displays and line them up properly.
Multi-Monitor Gaming with AMD
Open Radeon Software (you can right-click the desktop and find it there), then click the Settings cog at the top-right corner -> Display. Scroll to the bottom of the Display screen and find Eyefinity. Click “Quick Setup,” and just like that, your resolution will be expanded across multiple screens. If your two displays are different resolutions, then you may have an annoying crop on the higher-resolution one. To fix this, you’ll need to open the EyeFinity Pro tool (C:\Program Files\AMD\CNext\CNext). Once inside, select the cropped screen in the tool, then click the drop-down next to Layout Mode and select “Expand.” Once you’re ready, click “Create AMD Eyefinity Configuration.” If you go to Windows Display settings (right-click desktop -> Display settings), you’ll see in the Display resolution box that Windows is now treating your two monitors as one, joining both their resolutions into one. You can click the drop-down here to change the resolution to a lower dual-monitor one or back to a single-screen resolution.
Which Games Support Dual-Screen?
An important thing to remember is that not every game will instantly spread its resolution perfectly across your dual-monitor setup. Older games may not support those resolutions at all (though you can quite often find “widescreen fixes” and hacks for them). In more recent games, your dual-monitor resolution may just appear in the list of resolution options, or you may need to look for a “.txt” file in your game’s directory where you can tweak your resolution by opening it as a Notepad file. In “Skyrim: Special Edition,” for example, you need to right-click “skyrimprefs.ini” (C:\Users\username\Documents\my games\Skyrim Special Edition), open it with Notepad, then change the entries “iSize H” and “iSize W” to match your resolution. The name of the ini file and entry for changing the resolution will vary from game to game, but most games have one, so you can always do a Google search to find the name of the file for your particular game. For more game fine-tuning, see our guide on how to stress-test your GPU with FurMark as well as our list of fixes for a faulty graphics card. And if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to work on your Windows gaming performance.
