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Clanked
04-08-2009, 05:27 PM
Alright, so I have built my PC, it consists of three monitors and a single 4850x2 card.
The first (main) monitor is plugged into the first set of ports on the card.
The other two, are plugged into the last two ports. So basicly the "first" card is powering my main monitor, and my "second" card is powering the other two.

When I start a windowed wow, and drag it to one of my side monitors, the fps drops to like 30.
I assume this is due to it switching to software rendering.

I have spent the last half hour searching these forums, and all I can find are people referancing the problem, no solutions.

Does anyone know of a way to start a WoW instance on a second video/monitor, or move it over and keep it using hardware rendering?

Chranny
04-09-2009, 12:50 AM
There are no solutions to be found on this forum, likely caused by the fact that there is no solution to be found period.

EDIT: That is going by the assumption that you are using Windows XP, if you are not, look over my post and chuckle at my idioti.

confusedtx5
04-09-2009, 01:17 AM
I have so far been unable to prove this but supposedly Vista will render all screens due to its use of the Aero interface vs Xp which only renders the main screen. Likely something to do with DirectX 9 (XP) vs 10 (Vista)
Shouldnt need more than 30 fps anyway.

Clanked
04-09-2009, 02:21 AM
I am using vista.

What I have found out by doing even more digging is a rather dirty process of switching my left monitor to be the "primary." Then launch my 4 slaves.
Switch my main monitor back to the primary, and launch my main client.

I guess I won't be able to use PiP though :(

confusedtx5
04-09-2009, 02:53 AM
I am using vista.
As i said i have been unable to prove that theory (not mine). my fps goes weird multiscreen on both xp and vista. But using keyclone i can regulate it to levels that are playable.
2nd theory is its something to do with foreground/background.
BUT:
How big are your screens? I have played 2 wow windows at once with the Matrox Triplehead2go box. http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/ . The box basically tells windows that there is only 1 screen plugged in, so the screen gets rendered all at once, then the matrox box splits the 1 'screen' into 2 or 3 smaller 'screens' sending each piece to one of the physical monitors. Does that make sense? Basically you can use the same box to play 1 wow window maximised, stretched across up to 3 screens. The advantage is that you can still use Xfire/SLI on multiple cards and have the one output going to the box (previous to SLI becoming multiscreen capable this was the only way to have multiscreens on an SLI enabled rig). The reason I ask how big are your screens is because this box is limited by the bandwith in the graphics cards output to how large a resolution you can have. basically best res is 3840x1025 (3x 1280x1024). i have 3x 1680x1050 (1x5040x1050) screens but i run the matrox box at 3x 1440x900 (1x4320x900) because when the box outputs to 5040x1050 the refresh rate drops to 57 hertz which is not supported by my monitors (research before you buy people).