Video artifacts with running 2 copies of WoW

[Frappuccino]

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to multiboxing - recently got 2x Hunters to 60 (mainly because I wanted one as my main) and fell in love with the concept of it and decided I'm going to buy a new i7 rig to quadbox ele shammys. Though before I go and spend 4-5k on this rig there's one thing I'm a tad worried about.

I'm currently running on fairly mediocre hardware, and when I run two + wow sessions (both running from same wow.exe) I tend to get strange artifacts, flashes and what not, usually on the non-active session.

I saw a couple of other posts about this and people were saying it's faulty hardware, but just for the benefit of the doubt I thought I'd confirm with you guys...

When running multiple wow sessions on one PC can I expect them all to look normal as if just one wow process was running?

[Akeldema]

Is it slight sort of bluring and slashes of one color appearing briefly?

[Frappuccino]

Kind of flashes of black shapes I guess.. like part of a 3d model randomly popping up quickly.

Perhaps like some video data in the ram is getting spit out kinda thing.

Not blurry at all, very sharp

[moog]

I get the same sort of thing on PC#2 which runs 4xWoWs on a 256MB nVidia 8600GT.
Doesn't affect play and, as I rarely look at that screen, it doesn't bug me too much.

Had hoped it was a problem with drivers (the 8600 seems to have been dropped from the most recent driver release) or even from just having such a low-spec card.

[Akeldema]

Im getting the same sorta problems,
But im running 9800gtx+ with latest drivers

[Frappuccino]

Thanks for the replies guys.
I'm running a 9600GT. I have tried some older drivers and also getting the newest ones as of 1-2 weeks ago.

Does this mean that if I buy 2x 280GTX's with 3 monitors (one for main, two slaves on each of others) that I should expect something similar?
Doesn't really paint a pretty picture :/

[SlayerX]

sounds like either a bad driver or your video card is possibly going or can't handle all the data at once.
I just helped a friend with this problem, replaced the video card and everything is fine.

In the rare case it could be the motherboard itself, but normally other stuff wouldnt work too, such as usb, mouse etc.

[Frappuccino]

I don't think it's the driver as I've tried a couple, though maybe not enough to say for sure. It's definitely not faulty hardware because it only happens when two instances of wow are running at the same time - never when it's just one or any other game.
It could just be too much for my card though...

Out of curiosity Slayer - what vid card was your friend using before and after, and how many instances of wow?

[pengwynman]

I don't think it's the driver as I've tried a couple, though maybe not enough to say for sure. It's definitely not faulty hardware because it only happens when two instances of wow are running at the same time - never when it's just one or any other game.
It could just be too much for my card though...

Out of curiosity Slayer - what vid card was your friend using before and after, and how many instances of wow?it's certainly possible that your card is having heat issues. any kind of artifact can be caused by excess heat, and this could explain why running 2 instances (= more stress on the system) causes artifacts when one doesn't.

[Heenan]

Hey Frappuccino,

I was having the same problems with my brand new builds. Both machines are running 9800GTs. I went through 5 different vid cards and every nVidia driver I could find, but nothing worked. I finally stumbled onto a post on the main WoW boards.

My fix was to delete all of my config.wtf files, and let the game rebuild the video information. Apparently the file had gotten corrupted, most likely due to the fact that I haven't performed a clean install of WoW in about 4 years. Every time I upgrade hardware, I simply move my WoW folder around until everything is set up. I was just about to the point of completely formatting my machines and reinstalling WoW from scratch, but luckily this fixed the issue.

Now I can open 2, 3 or 4 windows at a time on my alt machines without any popping or tearing.

So my questions:
When was the last time you purged your temp data? Cache, WTF, Interface folders?
Do you move your folders around like me when you upgrade your hardware?

I did loads of testing and it all came down to "how can all these brand new video cards and identically built machines be faulty?". My biggest problem was that I built my new machines right before I installed the Wrath updates, so I wasn't thinking it could be the game client until I had exhausted all other possibilities.

[Nitro]

When you see the tearing start check out the performance tab of your task manager. It could be that you have very low memory available. I had this same issue with several 9800 gtx's and gtx 280 and i thought all my cards were bad. installed more ram and had no more issues.

[Ellusionist]

I don't think it's the driver as I've tried a couple, though maybe not enough to say for sure. It's definitely not faulty hardware because it only happens when two instances of wow are running at the same time - never when it's just one or any other game.
It could just be too much for my card though...

Out of curiosity Slayer - what vid card was your friend using before and after, and how many instances of wow?it's certainly possible that your card is having heat issues. any kind of artifact can be caused by excess heat, and this could explain why running 2 instances (= more stress on the system) causes artifacts when one doesn't.pengwyn hit the nail right on the head. I kept scrolling through the thread to see if anyone mentioned heat. :D

My very first guess was heat issues. Pre-Shattrath city multiboxing, I played 5 accounts on a Macbook Pro running Windows XP. When it got hot (or I went to an area neat Shattrath that was graphics-intensive), the graphics would start glitching.

The only other thing associated with the problems you're having, which I highly doubt is the case, is a bad DirectX install or unstable video drivers. 99.9999% of drivers and/or DirectX installs that successfully finish installing are just fine, but I guess you could have some weird software glitch going on.

[Frappuccino]

Thanks for the responses everyone - I'm quite convinced it's just heat as my card is nothing special being a 9600GT. This is something that probably wouldn't happen if I do get my super-rig with 2x 280GTX's and if it does i can always invest in some cooling measures.

Re the never reinstalling wow comment - I'm in the same boat as you, I don't think I've reinstalled the game for about 2 or 3 years.. I'll give it a shot deleting the files you mentioned - cheers.

Edit: to Nitro - I have 4gb ram (albeit cheap..) so I doubt that's a problem ! :)

[Frappuccino]

Hi all,

Just FYI on this - deleting the config.wtf file worked!

[Heenan]

Glad to hear :D

[dbick]

I had this same weird "spiky tearing" happen just yesterday on a nvidia 8600gt. I am about ready to move my team (3box) to Northrend so I was checking my video drivers and noticed that my current (fatality) drivers were a few builds behind current. I downloaded and installed the newest drivers and much to my dismay, this spiky tearing effect started as soon as I loaded the second client. I tried a few settings and things but nothing helped untill I found my orginal cd and reinstalled the drivers that came with the card. Now things are back to normal. So in my case at least, it seemed to be a driver issue.

*edit* Now I am wondering what would happen if I deleted that config.wtf file and then installed the newest drivers....hmmmm

[pengwynman]

I had this same weird "spiky tearing" happen just yesterday on a nvidia 8600gt. I am about ready to move my team (3box) to Northrend so I was checking my video drivers and noticed that my current (fatality) drivers were a few builds behind current. I downloaded and installed the newest drivers and much to my dismay, this spiky tearing effect started as soon as I loaded the second client. I tried a few settings and things but nothing helped untill I found my orginal cd and reinstalled the drivers that came with the card. Now things are back to normal. So in my case at least, it seemed to be a driver issue.

*edit* Now I am wondering what would happen if I deleted that config.wtf file and then installed the newest drivers....hmmmmi never install video drivers from the cd, they're always outdated and i've had blue screens with them before, even on a completely new un-tweaked install of windows :P

[welwyn]

are you stacking the clients on top of each other or are they spread over the screen? before i was having the same problem where the gfx card was overheating when trying to run 4 clients on top of each other causeing them to mix artifacts from 1 to the other causing some very groovy patterns! however when i used maximizer to spread the clients around the screen it stopped. that could be that maximizer was lowering the FPs wanted by each client lowering the load on the GPU and therefore lowering heat or it may have just stopped them from stacking. might be worth a go if your currently "stacking" the clients.

[vrill]

deleting config.wtf totally worked!!

I had upgraded my hardware to a 9800GT from a 7950GTO, and then installed WotLK.

Thanks so much!!!

[joedeath332]

Woot i am running and 8800 gts 512 and had the exact same problems , and yes you got it DELETING THE CONFIG.WTF worked for me :D :D btw running PIP , and prior to this had used the same wow folder over the peroid of a few yers , and all seemed fine full screeen , is only now i try multi boxing and play windowed this problem arose.