Does running in windowed mode affect the bandwidth requirements of high refresh rate?

Basically title. I’m looking at potentially grabbing the L1Techs dual monitor 4-displayport kvm which I’d pair with a 49" ‘dqhd’ ultrawide and a 4k monitor. I know that the kvm is rated for 4k60 and is confirmed working at 1440p144, but I have a feeling that 5120x1440@120 may be asking a bit much of it.
If I were to run a game in windowed mode at just 1440p120 on the ultrawide, the display would still need to refresh that often but would that be the same throughput as if I was just connected to a 1440p120 monitor from the kvm’s perspective? (obviously more, factoring in the extra pixels getting pushed regarldess)
Thinking about it, it should just be the same throughput either way and I’m probably just going to have to give up on the higher refresh rate, but I figure I’d see if y’all might save my day a bit.

You 100% wont be able to run 5120x1440 at 120hz Its only like 1million pixels lower(7.3 vs 8.3) then 4k so probably wont get much more then 60hz

+f
Yeah thats pretty much what I figured. Oh well. Not like I’m finding a better option anywhere near that price. Thanks for the confirm

If I needed that and the monitor can do that I would probably just have the monitor plugged directly into the computer on a 2nd display port in and just switch to that input on the panel when I was going to game.

So KVM for when not gaming then just toggle the input on the monitor when gaming

Also to answer the question in the title: No, Windowed mode does not affect the bandwidth requirements.

There is no partial refresh of the screen, it is always a complete refresh of the whole frame.

The only way to lower bandwidth requirement is reducing the desktop resolution.
Exclusive fullscreen with a lower resolution might also work, but I don’t know if Windows plays well with different refresh rates on Desktop and on exclusive fullscreen.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.