As the title says, I’ve encountered a problem with having multiple monitors at different resolutions while in windowed (fullscreen) and using g-sync.
Problem:
When alt-tabbing or clicking another window on my side monitor, which is 1080p, and having WoW open on my 1440p monitor in windowed (fullscreen) the main monitor will briefly (less than a second) flash black one time. Interestingly, when I add a third monitor, another 1080p monitor, that monitor turns black for 1 to 2 seconds as well, triggered by the same action as above.
The primary display (1440p) will always flash black when clicking “out” of the game, clicking back into the game, launching the game, and closing the game. The third monitor only goes black when clicking “out” of the game or closing the game.
Investigation:
I decided to do some investigating to try to figure out the problem. Here is what I have discovered…
- This only happens with WoW. I tried DIablo 3 and a few other non-Blizzard games and did not see this issue.
- If I change the game to windowed, the problem goes away.
- If I change the in game resolution to 1920x1080p the problem goes away.
- If I change the monitor setting in “Graphics” to one of my other monitors (re: a 1080p monitor) the problem goes away.
- If I disable g-sync, the problem goes away.
I initially had thought it was a g-sync issue once I discovered that disabling it solved the problem, but, then when I tested other games and didn’t see the same issue it lead me back to WoW.
This is an issue with WoW: Classic as well.
Looking for advice on how to resolve this issue.
EDIT
Further investigation: I was thinking it was strange that only one of my side monitors was flashing black, so I decided to do some experimenting.
I noticed I had one hooked up via Display Port which was the side monitor that didn’t flash black, and the other hooked up via HDMI, which was the side monitor which goes black for 1-2 seconds. I switched the one connected via Display Port to HDMI and the problem seems to be gone.
Unfortunately I can’t test them both being hooked up to Display Port as my graphics card only has two Display Ports. It does have a usb-c (nVIDIA VirtualLink) so I may order a usb-c to Display Port cable to test that out because HDMI doesn’t support Freesync, which my two side monitors are.
I suspect that the 1440p monitor may still briefly flash black in the last scenario, as when I only have two monitors connected, 1x1440p and 1x1080p , both hooked up via DisplayP Port, the 1440p still flashes black once very quickly. This isn’t a problem in other games I have tested, so still might be worth looking into a solution for WoW.
