5 WoWs, 2 Vid cards, 3 monitors - performance issues..

[Frappuccino]

Hi all, I just got around to buying my new crazy PC. I have 2x gtx280 (not sli'd) running 3 monitors, 2x 22" 1x 24" in an 'H' setup.

Everything's more or less set up but I've run into an issue with the 2nd video card. I can run 5 sessions of wow flawlessly with this PC, but as soon as I drag a window onto the monitor that is connected to the 2nd video card, performance on that window drops by about 50%. With the WoW FPS monitor on, I can see it drop from 50-60 on my main display, to about 30 on my 2nd vid card, with a second window on that monitor, about 15 each max.

Now if I put 4 sessions on one monitor, with a big full screen one on my main 24" then it runs fine. Keyclone lets the active window max out to 50-60 or what ever. It would appear that the main PCIe slot is running at x16, but the 2nd one isn't for some reason.

Now my motherboard is a Rampage 2 Extreme, and it should support running 2x video cards at x16 each. As quoted from the manual:


This motherboard has three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots that support PCI Express x16 2.0 graphic cards complying with the PCI Express specifications.
If you install a PCIe x16 graphics card on to the PCIe x16_1 slot, a PCIe device with a bandwidth faster than x8 link to the PCIe x16_2 slot, and a PCIe device with a bandwidth slower than x4 link to the PCIe x16_3 slot, the three PCIe x16 slots will work at x16, x16, x1 link as the default.


My PSU is 850w so power shouldn't be an issue.

Anyone have any ideas? :/
Thanks,
-Frapp

[daviddoran]

I have the same problem, but my second video card slot is only x4 electrical, and I thought that was the issue. I did read somewhere that the way the drivers are handled, when you run a 3d game on any monitor other than the primary, windows renders it in software, rather than on the hardware.

I'd love it if someone could find a fix for this, other than using 2 computers. I suppose something like the Matrox Dual Head to go adapter will work, because all it does is trick your video card into thinking it has a monitor with a double wide resolution, so as far as the software is concerned, you have less monitors than you actually do. BUT it requires both monitors to be exactly the same size, and they must be adjacent, so the H configuration won't work.

[Frappuccino]

Interesting. I think my problem is a little different though from what you're saying. If I run 1 session on my primary (24") and 4 sessions on my secondary 22" monitor (connected to the same vid card as the 24") then performance is fine.

So max resolution probably isn't an issue. It's the second video card that happens to just have a single monitor connected, that has the problem.

Cheers

[cryinsham]

no the problem he is explainign is exactly the problem,

the second video card is not rendering on the monitor connected to it, it is being software rendered ( you can not select which video card to start a selected application on as of yet) so when you start WOW x5 it all starts on your primary video card, whwen you move it to the secondary card it doesnt automatically start rendering it. there are a few crude work arounds that you can look up though.

[Frappuccino]

Ah right, any other than the primary CARD (thought he meant monitor)

That makes sense actually.. as frustrating as it is..
I don't suppose you could point me in the direction of some of these crude work arounds? ^^

Thanks either way though ~

[cryinsham]

the main one i found on these forums had you go into your hardware manager disable primary display adapter startup your wow's that go on the second card, re-enable the primary card make sure its primary again then start up those wow's. ill dig for link in a bit about ot have dinner wid da fam

[pinotnoir]

I wonder if thats why my performance suffers with a q6600, 8gig ram, and 2 3870 video cards. I did a test with starting all the wows on 1 monitor connected to my primary card and it still was slow in dalaran so it may not be that issue.

[cryinsham]

dalaran is just horrid period, q6600@3.4 8gb ddr2, mlc ssd with nothing but main wow+symlink folders, followers split on a 26" main on 24, all toons 5-10fps in dal

[Danash]

Dont know if this helps but I notice that when..

I set my left monitor as primary in disply settings then open up the two clients that go on that screen.

Then set right monitor to primary in display settings and open up the two clients that go on that screen

Then reset middle monitor to promary and open up the client for that screen.

It seems that whatever client I use gets far better FPS than if i was just to spam open all 5 clients with middle monitor set as primary while to others still get the preset 10 fps from keyclone like they should. Only problem I got from it is now when I use the hotkeys that I set in keyclone to swap windows from main display to sides nothing happens. So i get better FPS on active toon but I have to play 4 of them on smallers resolustions from side monitors. Still trying to figure out why my PIP hotkeys fail to be of use when I open my cleints while switching "main" displays. Any ideas?

[Frappuccino]

Thanks for all the input guys.

It looks like setting one to primary and moving to the next screen, setting it to primary and loading up those sessions is working.. I think theres a million windows in maximizer due to all the screen re-enabling and whatsoever so I'll try to clean out all the saved frames and give it a go properly. Thanks for the advice - you may have just made me not waste $500 ! :p

Re cryinsham, it looks like when ever i re-enable the card in device manager then what ever card is not set to primary loses the performance... not to mention maximizer doing the above mentioned :/

I have three settings in bios with regards to PCIe speeds - one is auto (should put x16 for both PCIe slots), 8x8, or 16x1. It's set to auto at the moment which i'm guessing is the best option - anyone got any ideas as to which the best one would be?

While my cards support HDMI, I don't actually have a HDMI - HDMI cable, I guess physically I could sli my two cards and connect the 2x dvi ports + 1x HDMI to my three monitors, but I'm thinking I might run into a resolution limiter.. can anyone confirm whether the above cable setup is possible?

Does anyone know whether this 'restriction' lies with microsoft? nvidia? or somewhere else? I'd love to get an official explanation of this..


Thanks heaps all.

[Frappuccino]

After some poking around with maximizer with manually setting stuff in the config file due to the display numbering changing when you swap primary monitors, I managed to get it working !

Thanks everyone!

(though if anyone knows about the hdmi thing I'm all ears !)

-frap

/edit .. ok i pulled the plastic thing off the 3rd port, its a hdtv connector not a hdmi port /slapsself

[Tsunami]

HDMI is what your t.v. uses, DVI is what a computer monitor uses. they are the same signal except HDMI also carries an audio signal. if your monitors don't have speakers or you want to use external speakers than you don't need HDMI, DVI is what you need. this is the reason monitors with speakers have HDMI connections and monitors without just have DVI. just get a connector to switch the plug from HDMI to DVI. they cost $5-$10.

[Frappuccino]

This is true. I was under the impression that it was an HDMI port at the back of the video card (it's not) until I pulled the plastic bit off the back of the port on the video card - it's an HDTV output cable.

The reason I brought it up is because windows doesn't let me use both video cards at full performance because the secondary one won't render using the hardware. The other reason is because the video card has only 2 dvi ports, not 3 :)

It doesn't matter now, I'm switching my primary monitor (as shown by danash) now so it's all good and working top notch. I had to manually change the conf file for maximizer since all 5 sessions have to be set to one display and I just set each monitor to primary when I open the sessions on those monitors. It's too bad I can't use PiP but it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

Cheers.