Poor performance in windowed mode

[Caliban]

I've started two-boxing a little over week ago (and so far having a blast, regardless of the issues below), and have been lurking the forums since, but haven't found anyone mention any of the issues I'm having.

I started doing this on my laptop, using maximizer to show one instance at a time, full screen (minus the task bar), alt-tabbing to my clone when needed. Not ideal, but it will have to do for now. It makes switching back and forth easier and faster that running wow full screen.

The main problem is when I tried to set it up the same way on my desktop. Starting even a single wow with maximizer, runs VERY poor. I get literally about 1 FPS. I can see the screen update every frame, even on the login screen. It runs Wow smoothly on full-screen, but with maximizer, it seems it forgets to switch on the hardware acceleration or something. Needless to say, this is unplayable. It has an older nvidia, 7600 series I believe, from the top of my head. Nothing top-notch, but should be able to handle WoW easily.

Another minor problem I have is latency. When I start moving my main, it takes a full 1-2 seconds before I see my clone start moving, and he's rubber banding like crazy, and after a few seconds, he looses follow. This is just plain annoying, and I can live with this, if that's what it takes, but maybe someone has an idea of how to minimize this issue.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

This may be a performance issue with your network adapter. Some systems share resources on laptops and depending on how they engineered the BIOS, it make use so many resources that it causes lag, rubber-banding and/or disconnects. I had this problem on one of my machines and had to drop the WoW priority to LOW before it went away. Have you tried running WoW windowed but without using maximizer?

[Caliban]

Thanks for the response. That would make sense if it happened only on my laptop. The same lag/rubberbanding occurs on my desktop though. It could of course have the same cause. I'll have to try dropping the priority!

And I haven't tried windowed mode without maximizer yet. Didn't even think of that :oops:

I'll update this thread when I know more!

[Caliban]

Well, turns out it's not maximizer's fault! (changed subject accordingly)
Having the same issues running normal windowed mode... Interesting thing though, if I check the windowed mode checkbox and then the one below it (full-screen?) it runs fine, but as soon as anything non-wow related pops up (whether it has focus or not) FPS drops to 1-2....

So, what could cause that? I do have the latest drivers available for that card, though it's over a year old... it just not being updated anymore.

Clues? Ideas? suggestions?