Need video card advice

[fcorrao]

I recently upgraded my system to a core i7 920, 6gig or ram, intel ssd running windows 7 64-bit but kept my existing video card, nvidia 9800gt w/ 512mb ram. I also added a second 24" dell lcd. I'm trying to run 2 wows, 1 on each monitor at high resolution. When doing so I get good fps (40-50fps in dalaran on the master, 25-30fps on the slave) for about 2-3 minutes then all of a sudden fps drops to 2-3fps for each session. If I go into the nvidia control panel and enable then disable physx the card firmware seems to be reset and I get good fps again for another 2-3 minutes. I'm running the latest nvidia drivers. I saw the sticky note about enabling the high performance power scheme on vista and win7, but this didn't seem to have much effect. I checked the fan on the video card - no dust buildup - running normally. Does anyone have any suggestions?

If I were to decide to throw more money at the problem, would I be best served by:

1) replacing the 9800gt with a newer/faster/better nvidia card? which one?
2) keeping the 9800gt and adding a second nvidia card in the 2nd 16x pci-e slot on my motherboard?
3) ??

[burningforce]

before you start throwing money around, did you check the Wow video settings? I would check to make sure shadows are turned completely off on each client, and that the second client is running settings on low and your main can be low-medium or whatever works for you.

also whatever program you use, check to see if you put a fps limit on it. this will help keep the second window at a certain fps so it does not boggle down your computer. I think the settings for main would be 60FPS and for slaves would be 15FPS-20FPS.

[Jafula]

1) replacing the 9800gt with a newer/faster/better nvidia card? which one?
2) keeping the 9800gt and adding a second nvidia card in the 2nd 16x pci-e slot on my motherboard?
3) ??

1) Nvidia GTX 2xx series.
2) Only if you run Innerspace or another program that can force WoW to render to a specific graphics adapter.
3) Something is not right with your os/configuration, you should not be getting those fps drops. I have 2 machines with Win 7 64bit, one with an 8800GT and the other with a GTX260 and I do not get FPS drops like you are describing.