Two Video Cards driving 3 Monitors

[crowdx]

So as I slowly fall down the rabbit hole of hardware hell, here is my question for anyone who maybe doing this. I have two video cards, one I want to run the primary account on and then the second card running the slaves across two seperate monitors, so total of 3 monitors running. Will this get me any performance gain? Or will it run similar to my current single card running 3 monitors.
I would need a new PSU to run the two cards and so I am asking before I blow some more money :)
Thanks for any insight that can be provided

[MiRai]

I don't know how well this works outside of World of Warcraft since I haven't tested it on any other game. If you set your window layout so that there is no cross monitor swapping (in the sense that the clients that are attached to a certain monitor/video card don't swap onto another monitor that is attached to a different video card), then Inner Space is supposed to handle splitting the load between the GPUs. The only way to see if this is working is by using some sort of GPU monitoring tool so you can see if your other video cards are actually doing something besides sitting idle.

As for getting a performance gain out of it, that is dependent on whether the rest of your system, as a whole, can handle more load.

[crowdx]

So does this mean that the windows cannot be switched between monitors? i.e. my slaves cannot flip to the main screen? More like when using two machines?

[MiRai]

They can physically switch across screens if you want them to, sure; but, the minute a game client leaves the monitor that its video card is attached to it's no longer being rendered by that video card and you're going to see a drop in performance on that client. If your 6xxx AMD card is not attached to your 30" monitor, it can't render games that are being displayed on it.

[crowdx]

So ISBoxer will not move the clients between cards it will only assign to whichever card you initially set them on?

[MiRai]

So ISBoxer will not move the clients between cards it will only assign to whichever card you initially set them on?
ISBoxer will move your clients however you have them set up to move in your Window Layout. Your situation is a little different than just having 2 monitors each hooked up to a video card. You'll typically want to set a swap group for each video card and, probably in your case, one of these swap groups will need to cover 2 monitors. I don't think the Window Layout Wizard can do what you're looking for out of the box and you'll need to start with something like this (http://i.imgur.com/pmnSy.png) and then manually edit the Window Layout yourself. Lax may be able to give a better answer.

[crowdx]

It is all making more sense now :) , thank you so much

[crowdx]

Quick update, I got a new PSU, hooked up both cards, no crossfire as we established initially but it is allowing switching between the two cards for slaves to primary etc. I have not done much testing to see if any of the load is being taken by the second card yet. I will check that tomorrow.

[crowdx]

So I did more testing this morning and it seems the card driving the primary display is doing 98% of the work. I see spikes of 3 - 4% GPU usage on the 6970 card vs, 60% on the 7970.560

[Sajuuk]

So I did more testing this morning and it seems the card driving the primary display is doing 98% of the work. I see spikes of 3 - 4% GPU usage on the 6970 card vs, 60% on the 7970.560

ISBoxer will move your clients however you have them set up to move in your Window Layout. Your situation is a little different than just having 2 monitors each hooked up to a video card. You'll typically want to set a swap group for each video card and, probably in your case, one of these swap groups will need to cover 2 monitors. I don't think the Window Layout Wizard can do what you're looking for out of the box and you'll need to start with something like this (http://i.imgur.com/pmnSy.png) and then manually edit the Window Layout yourself. Lax may be able to give a better answer.
You did set ISBoxer correctly to have the clients you want use the second gpu, right?

[crowdx]

Well attached is the layout I used. Is there somewhere in ISBxoer that allows assignment of GPU? I used the window layout wizard, the center screen (1) is the primary display which is plugged into the 7970 and the other dislays are plugged into the 6970 (2,3,4,5)
561

[Sajuuk]

I am going to assume you have innerspace. When you create a setup for a client you can choose a display for them. The options are primary, secondary, tertiary and a 4th one (I don't remember what it is called). Set your main as primary and the others as secondary.

Here is the quote I got from Lax ->

The GPU is selected per Game Profile in the IS configuration (right click on IS, select Cofniguration, and it's in the Game Configuration tab). By default it is Application Defined (application being the game, i.e. WoW)

So, what you would do is create additional Game Profiles depending on the number of GPUs (one easy way of doing so is with Add Game, then just modify the new profile through the configuration window).

Assuming you're using ISBoxer, you would then update your Characters in the ISBoxer interface to use the appropriate Game Profile

I hope this helps.

Drommon

There you go.

[MiRai]

I am going to assume you have innerspace. When you create a setup for a client you can choose a display for them. The options are primary, secondary, tertiary and a 4th one (I don't remember what it is called). Set your main as primary and the others as secondary.

Here is the quote I got from Lax ->

The GPU is selected per Game Profile in the IS configuration (right click on IS, select Cofniguration, and it's in the Game Configuration tab). By default it is Application Defined (application being the game, i.e. WoW)

So, what you would do is create additional Game Profiles depending on the number of GPUs (one easy way of doing so is with Add Game, then just modify the new profile through the configuration window).

Assuming you're using ISBoxer, you would then update your Characters in the ISBoxer interface to use the appropriate Game Profile

I hope this helps.

Drommon

There you go.
The other week I was told by Lax that these settings in the game profile are overridden by any ISBoxer Window Layout options.

[Sajuuk]

The other week I was told by Lax that these settings in the game profile are overridden by any ISBoxer Window Layout options.
If it is true then the information is invalid. I don't know, haven't had innerspace installed in years.