low framerate with two monitors

[envane]

hello multi boxers,
i have some troubles while running 2 wow applications in windowed mode on 2 monitors. when i drag the second wow on my secondary monitor the framerate goes down. also when i run one copy and some win popup appairs in the main screen.

any advice to prevent this?
i run a core2duo with an 1950xtx card, 19" & 21" sony trinitron.
regards, envane

[chase]

you could always lower the graphics settings to see if that helps, i can run 2 copies of wow on seperate screens from the same graphichs card with a very good frame rate using a geforce 8800gts 640mb

what is the memory on that graphics card? perhaps that is where it is failing? and also how much ram do you have?

i also have the issue with fram rate droping if i drag a window into the secondary display but that is only because you are suddenly forcing the gfx card to render 2 applications at once seeing as when it was minimised it had nothing to render because it wasnt being displayed it was just loaded into the ram so you will always get this framerate drop the only way to reduce the drop is to get a higher spec card i think or run two in SLI if you have the money for it =s

[envane]

i have 2gb rams on system and 512mb on the graphic card. i can runs possibly 20 wow applications on one screen in small windows. i would really like to level one account and wait in pvp queue with the other on two screens :/. so is it even possible to render to applications with one graphic card on two screens?

[Steph]

The problem is that your graphics card does not support any fancy 3D functions on any display but the primary one. That explains why you can have many WoW clients run fine on one screen, but suffer when you use both displays.

[chase]

hmm thats interesting cus my old 128mb geforce 6600gt could run 1 copy of wow and a film in the other screen the frames were crap but it did work and was playable like that, i never tried it with 2 versions of wow though cus i didnt have 2 accounts at the time

[envane]

The problem is that your graphics card does not support any fancy 3D functions on any display but the primary one. That explains why you can have many WoW clients run fine on one screen, but suffer when you use both displays.

any chance to avoid this problem with some fancy drivers or settings with that hardware?

[Xzin]

30" screen.

[hapiguy314]

any chance to avoid this problem with some fancy drivers or settings with that hardware?

We discussed this issue somewhere in another thread and Xzin even did an extensive test on it.

Bottom line is if u split 2 wow clients in two monitors using one vid card - u'll get really crappy FPS.

The only way to avoid this is to run both clients in one monitor - AKA: run em in a 30" monitor :)

As far as im concerned 19 FPS is decent enough for me...so I still split them in 2 different 22" monitors.

[Scribbler]

any chance to avoid this problem with some fancy drivers or settings with that hardware?

We discussed this issue somewhere in another thread and Xzin even did an extensive test on it.

Bottom line is if u split 2 wow clients in two monitors using one vid card - u'll get really crappy FPS.

The only way to avoid this is to run both clients in one monitor - AKA: run em in a 30" monitor :)

As far as im concerned 19 FPS is decent enough for me...so I still split them in 2 different 22" monitors.

Or you could get a second graphics card.

[envane]

thanks for the advice

[simon021]

I have figured out how to run 2 clients on 2 monitors with no FPS loss. Although it's a bit annoying to use the system for tasks other than doing exactly that.

Using ATI control panel it is possible to stretch your desktop across both monitors, without each monitor using a separate resolution.

basicly with it set up as 2560x1024 across 2 monitors, i can drag 1 across to the other monitor with no problems whatsoever. But if i have it set up as 2 displays, 1280x1024 each display, as soon as i drag the 2nd client to the 2nd monitor, everything runs like shit.

Only problem is that now i can't maximize stuff to a single monitor, as the "desktop" spans both monitors, so all my applications open in the middle of the 2 and all kinds of other annoying problems. I seriously think the best option is just to use 2 pc's or a giant screen.

[hapiguy314]

I have figured out how to run 2 clients on 2 monitors with no FPS loss. Although it's a bit annoying to use the system for tasks other than doing exactly that.

Using ATI control panel it is possible to stretch your desktop across both monitors, without each monitor using a separate resolution.

basicly with it set up as 2560x1024 across 2 monitors, i can drag 1 across to the other monitor with no problems whatsoever. But if i have it set up as 2 displays, 1280x1024 each display, as soon as i drag the 2nd client to the 2nd monitor, everything runs like shit.

Only problem is that now i can't maximize stuff to a single monitor, as the "desktop" spans both monitors, so all my applications open in the middle of the 2 and all kinds of other annoying problems. I seriously think the best option is just to use 2 pc's or a giant screen.

Wow - this is a super discovery. To run two clients on a spanned resolution ... simple but ingenious! Thanks very much for this sharing sir, I am excited to go home and try this to see if there are any FPS loss :P

[Notes]

I use 2 monitors as well, but as soon as I move even one copy of WoW to my second monitor, everting becomes choppy. No problems running 5 wow's on 1 monitor but 2 versions on 2 screens is too much oO ..

Nothing we can do about I think, tried most options..

[Scribbler]

Change your graphics settings on the seconday monitor so that the multisampling as it 1x

doesn't give too much of a noticeable difference graphics wise, but for me it changed from 2fps to 40, with everything else maxed.

[Xzin]

This is partly a driver issue and partly a hardware framework issue. The BEST option is to span ONE screen, ONE port. In order to do that you need a BIG screen or small WoWs. Once you hit the other PORT of the same graphics card - fps start to go to crap.

You can try installing another video card although MOST motherboards only have 1x x16 electrical slot. Some have 2x x8 PCI-E ones, which may work with little loss until you go up to an 8800 GTX or so. Then the bandwidth limitation starts to kick in.

My $300 motherboard has 2x x16 electrical slots and a third x8 slot... but it still seems cheaper and easier to me to simply buy another computer rather than work it all out in software and use small WoWs, multiple video cards (which still has some non memory card bottlenecks) and / or huge 30" screens. You can get a computer that plays WoW at 30+ FPS all of the time for $400 - $500.

[simon021]

My problem is that I play EQ2 and not wow, much higher hardware requirements. And it's very CPU dependent, much more so than GPU dependent unfortunately.

I think that plays a HUGE part in wow's success story :)

[zanthor]

If you have an nVidia card set it to horizontal or vertical span and you don't lose any performance in my experience.

[Xzin]

If you have an nVidia card set it to horizontal or vertical span and you don't lose any performance in my experience.

I can confirm that too. It used to - but even with 30" 2560 x 1600 monitors.... no performance difference that I can tell.

[hapiguy314]

Just to update - I tested the Horizontal Span to run 2 wows and it worked beautifully. I didn't have 60 FPS like I would normally have when playing on just one window - but two clients both on 40-45 PFS is more than acceptible. Heck I was just hoping to see anything around 25 FPS and this is more than sufficient. Thanks again simon021!

[Xzin]

I have figured out how to run 2 clients on 2 monitors with no FPS loss. Although it's a bit annoying to use the system for tasks other than doing exactly that.

Using ATI control panel it is possible to stretch your desktop across both monitors, without each monitor using a separate resolution.

basicly with it set up as 2560x1024 across 2 monitors, i can drag 1 across to the other monitor with no problems whatsoever. But if i have it set up as 2 displays, 1280x1024 each display, as soon as i drag the 2nd client to the 2nd monitor, everything runs like shit.

Only problem is that now i can't maximize stuff to a single monitor, as the "desktop" spans both monitors, so all my applications open in the middle of the 2 and all kinds of other annoying problems. I seriously think the best option is just to use 2 pc's or a giant screen.

Very cool - somebody should test this with Nvidia as well. It makes sense that it would work - although it would be a bit annoying - you can setup desktop profiles that trigger when an application is run and switch back when the application closes (or crashes). Might be helpful for those who box multiple WoWs on one machine.