Does a monitor connected with a laptop by HDMI affect the performance of the laptop

Connecting an external monitor to a laptop should increase gaming performance in most cases, But some laptops dont boost the gaming performance by connecting an external monitor. Lets discuss why this is the case, and find out if your laptop can do the same or not?

Connecting an external monitor to a laptop should increase gaming performance in most cases, But some laptops dont boost the gaming performance by connecting an external monitor. Lets discuss why this is the case, and find out if your laptop can do the same or not?

Most laptops nowadays have Optimus which means that the integrated graphics within the processor are used to send signals to the laptop screen. This can help in improving the battery life of the laptop because the integrated graphics within the CPU requires less power to operate which results in bad gaming performance.

When you launch a game, the more powerful discrete graphics will be used to render the frames but in an Optimus based system, the discrete graphics [GPU] sends this output via the lower-powered integrated graphics which can also result in a bottleneck situation resulting in bad gaming performance. If your laptop doesnt have Optimus or has an option to disable Optimus then you wont see any performance boost using an external monitor since you already disabled Optimus. This goes the same for VR-Ready Laptops or the laptops which have G-Sync, as G-Sync and VR both require a direct connection between the screen and discrete GPU to work.

Many laptops that have HDMI or DisplayPort are wired directly to the discrete GPU which means that connecting an external monitor to one of these laptops should boost the gaming performance. There will be no difference in the performance If the port is connected to the lower-powered integrated graphics. However, there is still a possibility that using an external monitor will result in low FPS if the laptops screen is in use because the AMD Vega Graphics or Intel Graphics will still be active. To avoid this, either close the lid of the laptop or just disable the primary screen [laptops screen] through Windows settings. It can be useful as some laptops require the lid to be open to cool properly.

If you dont know which GPU is in use when the external monitor is connected, you can check the task manager performance tab to see which GPU is active during gaming. This way you can be sure if your laptop has Optimus or not.

So to conclude, if your laptop has Optimus and you cannot disable it, you can get a pretty decent performance increase in almost every game simply by connecting an external monitor.

In the end, it only depends on your laptop though, if the external display outputs are wired to the AMD Vega graphics or Intel graphics then youre out of luck.