Microsoft is making Windows 11 greener for PC gaming's fancy monitors
Quite obviously, life with multiple monitors is better and high refresh rate monitors are the best kind of screen. So, by rights, you should be filling your desks with as many multiple high refresh rate screens as your bank account allows, right? But running a plethora of panels at a constant 240Hz sucks down a lot of power, so Microsoft is introducing a new feature into the Insider Preview Build 25915 of Windows 11 that brings those power demands way down.
The new feature (via Tom's Hardware Fr) allows Windows 11 to facilitate different refresh rates independently for different screens, and allows that to be dynamically selected based on the content that panel is displaying.
That means you can be playing a game on one screen at the full 144Hz, 240Hz, or 300Hz monty—or whatever your monitor is capable of—while running a video on the other at 30Hz. That will lower the power demands of one panel that doesn't need to be running at top speed, while still giving you the full performance of your primary display.
The Windows blog post on the new build states that: «We have improved refresh rate logic to allow different refresh rates on different monitors, depending on the refresh rate for each monitor and content shown on the screen. This will help most with refresh rate-dependent multitasking, like playing a game and watching a video at the same time.»
It's tough trying to be green and still live your life as a PC gamer. With the best will in the world, jamming a 300W graphics card into your system, or picking a slamming high refresh rate monitor just to play games with, ranks pretty low on the ecological front. But I certainly appreciate Microsoft is busy working away to make Windows 11 treat your high-end gaming hardware in
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