Question on setup

[xeperxi]

Hi everyone!

I am new to multi boxing and so far I am loving every minute of it. I tried doing some Google searches and looked on this sight but I wasn't able to find an answer to my question so I apologize in advance if this question has already been answered.

Would my FPS in WoW be better if I ran all 5 games on one monitor? I currently run my main on one monitor and my 4 others on my second monitor. I have the FPS limited to 60 on my main and 15 to my slaves, I have a single Nvidia 570 card, an i5 processor and 8 mb of RAM. My average FPS is around 45 - 50 fps in low pop areas, but does drop to around 25 in Org. I have the Wow settings all on low on my slaves and about medium on my main. I have tried tweaking the WoW settings on my main but seem to always stay at these FPS results.

[MiRai]

If both monitors are running off of the same video card, then it shouldn't matter at all (although you can give it a shot to see if anything changes).

Depending on which software solution you're using, you may be able to improve performance by choosing to have the slave windows render at a lower resolution than the main. Doing so would consequently distort your mouse broadcasting, but again, depending on the software you're using you may be able to "scale" the broadcasting to "fit".

[xeperxi]

If both monitors are running off of the same video card, then it shouldn't matter at all (although you can give it a shot to see if anything changes).

Depending on which software solution you're using, you may be able to improve performance by choosing to have the slave windows render at a lower resolution than the main. Doing so would consequently distort your mouse broadcasting, but again, depending on the software you're using you may be able to "scale" the broadcasting to "fit".


Hi:

Yes, I have both monitor running off of the same video card and am using ISBoxer. I will check the scale the braodcast to fit and see how that goes, thanks for the suggestion really appreciate it!

[MiRai]

Yes, I have both monitor running off of the same video card and am using ISBoxer.
In that case, you can disable Instant Swapping in your Window Layout and change your Repeater Profile to "Scaled to Fit" if you are really looking to save on performance. By doing so, you'll no longer have instant swapping (go figure) and there will be a slight delay when you swap between characters depending on how much of a difference there is in your larger resolution to your smaller resolution.

However, I would first try changing your graphics API from DX11 to DX9 or vice versa to see if that makes a difference in performance at all.

[JohnGabriel]

While we are on the subject I have a related question.

Does it matter if your main is using the HDMI or the DVI connector? Is one faster than the other?

For example on a 3 monitor 1 graphic card setup I have my main screen using HDMI out and the two other monitors using DVI out.

[MiRai]

Does it matter if your main is using the HDMI or the DVI connector? Is one faster than the other?
HDMI and DVI are essentially the exact same thing unless you plan on using audio or you're looking for 4K resolution.

[xeperxi]

Well just an update. I switch the view within ISBoxer to place all 5 games on one monitor instead of my former setup with the main on one monitor and the other 4 on my second monitor, and my FPS nearly doubled, I'm now seeing 80 FPS and in more populated areas like Org It is a steady 40. So I am not sure if I have something not setup correctly as far as how I have my monitors hooked up, but I can live with using just one monitor for now.

[Lax]

Unless you're on Windows XP I wouldn't expect a performance hit from multiple monitors on 1 video card... If you're on Windows XP, totally expected.

If you're NOT on Windows XP, then on your second monitor you can toss up a dxNothing (http://isboxer.com/wiki/DxNothing) box and set up Video FX (http://isboxer.com/wiki/Video_FX) views of your windows there :)

[Khatovar]

You can also take a performance hit if your games are not running on the monitor that you have assigned in the WoW settings. Under System > Graphics > Monitor, check if your slaves are assigned to the secondary monitor. I don't know if ISBoxer has somewhere else to check/adjust those settings.