Stacked windows + VideoFX or Single Monitor Layout + Instant Swapping?

[Damons]

For a 2560x1600 monitor, which setup would you recommend? The single monitor layout looks easier to setup with 1 big window and 4 along the bottom, and I suppose I could add heal bars, bags, etc with VideoFX.

Or should I go right into a setup like Alge's? http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/34559-Video-Feed-and-Cursor-Feed-Tutorial

[MiRai]

The setup that I always recommend is the setup that works best for you and your multiboxing needs.

/words of wisdom

[rfarris]

I ended up turning down the resolution to 1920x1200 and moving the videoFx windows onto a second monitor. I have a 4-core pentium and a 4GB GTX 670.

I'm in the process of building a new computer with 6 cores and a faster GPU, but I still think a two-monitor setup will work best for me.

[Damons]

Yeah, you're right. 2500x1600 with 5 toons doesn't work for my setup. The video card crashed my system, something about a memory clock error. At 1920x1200, I get 50% GPU memory usage, 70% GPU core and 25% CPU usage. GTX 770 4gb, i7 @ 4.8 2700k, 16gb ram.

Did go with 1 on the big screen, 4 on a 27" 1080p screen.

[Damons]

In the end, had to go with full stacked screen with taskbar, then use VideoFX to make 4 small windows on a 2nd monitor. Just large enough to make sure they're still following me. Otherwise, the healing bar setup on my tank gets blurred. Maybe this will help someone out.

[Alge]

These days (well, when I can drag myself away from Minecraft), on my 2560x1440 monitor I have 5 (or whatever) stacked windows @ 1920x1200 and then dxNothing windows (which weren't available when I made that tutorial) along the left (maps), right (full screen feeds) and bottom (other junk- could also put your full screen feeds here) for various Video FX.

[Ualaa]

If you want to use Video Feeds, you'll want to be using full screen stacked.
With a windowed layout, the slave/follower screens are scaled down, which is going to make the video sources scaled differently and look rather off.

[rfarris]

Ualaa and Alge said two different things -- Alge said "stacked" windows but NOT full screen. Ualaa said FULL SCREEN stacked. With a large, high resolution monitor would Alge's solution have the scaling problems that Ualaa mentioned?

[Damons]

I think they're saying the same thing. I have to run all windows at 1920x1200, stacked. Otherwise, my VideoFX heal bars look like a ball of fuzz.

[rfarris]

I definitely agree with that part. But what I do is run full screen stacked (because that's what I've been told) at 1920x1200 and then added another monitor on which to run the videoFX slave screens.

I'm curious about which one puts a heavier load on your graphics system -- one monitor running 2560x1600 with 1920x1200 char windows stacked and videoFX windows around the edges, or having two monitors running at 1920x1200 with the main monitor running full screen stacked and the videoFX windows on the other monitor. I suspect that the two monitor scheme would look like a 3840x1200 display (total of 4.608M pixels) as opposed to the 2560x1600 display (4.096M pixels). I don't know if that's the only consideration, though. For instance, on the second monitor I only used a 600x1200 videoFX window. Does that matter, or is it the total available image size that matters?

[MiRai]

It doesn't matter if you're using the full resolution of your monitor or not. In my Multiboxing with MiRai videos I use a 1920x720 resolution and all that matters is that the game clients are the same resolution -- Which normally means they'll have to be stacked. It's just usually referred to as "fullscreen stacked" because the preset in the ISBoxer Window Layout Wizard defaults to stacking all of the clients at the full resolution of the user's monitor.


I'm curious about which one puts a heavier load on your graphics system -- one monitor running 2560x1600 with 1920x1200 char windows stacked and videoFX windows around the edges, or having two monitors running at 1920x1200 with the main monitor running full screen stacked and the videoFX windows on the other monitor. I suspect that the two monitor scheme would look like a 3840x1200 display (total of 4.608M pixels) as opposed to the 2560x1600 display (4.096M pixels). I don't know if that's the only consideration, though. For instance, on the second monitor I only used a 600x1200 videoFX window. Does that matter, or is it the total available image size that matters?
I can't imagine that the total size of the desktop has much bearing on whether or not there will be extra load put on the GPU. Load is determined by the amount of pixels you're using in each client's resolution, and if all clients are using 1900x1200, then they're going to put the same load on the GPU (+/- 10%) regardless of monitor size. The only time this most likely won't hold true is if your desktop is using nVidia Surround (I've no idea about Eyefinity) because for some reason, Surround seems to put more load on game clients for no reason at all.