Think something is getting in way of performance.

I've currently upgraded my system but seem to have some issues when I swtiched from one monitor to two.

Part of what I'm unsure of is what my system should be able to do in terms of graphics settings and frame rates.

I've read/searched a bit, and seen some tips, but also some tips seem to indicate do one thing, other ones indicate do the opposite.

My system: Nothing is currently overclocked.

i-7 980X
GTX 580 (gigabyte)
Asus rampage III extreme
12 GB (3x4) 1600 memory
2x Crucial SSD drives one is setup for windows system, the other for games. Running them as Sata II as the controller on my motherboard sucks for Sata III (:(), may look into getting a controller card.

Game setup:
2 monitors 1920x1080

4 slaves on 1, main on the other.

Graphics settings.
Main most everything highest setting except: Shadows turned down one notch to good, water down one notch

Slaves:
All on highest except:
Shadows lowest:
Water Lowest:
Ground clutter/view distance down one notch
4x anti-aliasing (instead of 16x)


Symptoms:
Main seems to hover around 40fps, slaves 20ish.
Get periodic stutter or sometimes hang for several second mostly in areas like the Tournament grounds, Dalaran, approaching the air ship in ice crown etc..
Also noticed my latency was sometimes in the yellow,(> 300 ms) but interestingly enough not consistent on all toons.

When logging on I don't have instant loading, The loading bar seems to go to max quickly then will take a few seconds to come up (I'm guessing is I load all the static items quickly, but then takes a bit while loading in all the dynamic items (chars etc.)

I didn't seem to have the low frame rate or the freeze/hangs when running everything on one monitor (at least not in Dalaran which is where I did my test).


Questions:
1) What settings should I be able to run with the system I have.
2) What are some areas I can look into for trouble shooting.

It doesn't seem like my CPU(cores) are horribly taxed when checking out performance monitor while playing.
I did read of others having issues with SSD drives, so I suppose I might to to set them up differently, turn things off...

Not that it really means anything but my windows experience rating was 7.8 and 7.9 across all systems.

Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone with similar system that has some tips or ideas?

Thanks for any help.

My system is similar to yours, except your processor is better, you have more ram, and an extra monitor.

Honestly, I'd just turn down the graphics on the slaves until you get the performance you want.

In my setup, I have the slaves graphics turned down to the lowest settings except for view distance. I also have projected textures turned on.

Viagra

Well turns out one issue was I had some of the settings from my old computer (as I had copied my ISBoxer files).

So I wasn't using all my cores.

I've read posts on picking the core for each toon, and also just letting the OS, I guess I'll give each a try and see how things go.

Also I guess I was being kind of insane with my slave settings, really now realy to have everything on high hehe.

I went through and lowered most settings to the middle one (shadows /water to lowest).

That seemed to help a lot.

Only one issue left that I'm unsure of.

I have periodically had an issue where one slave screen would start to flicker widly and draw pieces of polygons over the top of the image , at first I thought I was in the middle of a couple of gryphons, I was able to reset it by changing the resolution of my window, then setting it back. Happend about 3 times in 4 hours.

Also had one solid freeze of one toon with mostly a blank screen. I was able to fix this by alt -tabbing out into another app then coming back.

These last two seem more like video/card driver issues. But I'm hoping with less insane settings on my slaves I have removed this one as well.

T

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tyval

I have periodically had an issue where one slave screen would start to flicker widly and draw pieces of polygons over the top of the image , at first I thought I was in the middle of a couple of gryphons, I was able to reset it by changing the resolution of my window, then setting it back. Happend about 3 times in 4 hours.
T

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I have a very similar system to yours, more ram though but I did update my video drivers and that worked for me to solve this issue.

Performance is fine last night playing with the masses in Hyjal :).

I did have the issue with one of my chars views getting all messed up again (fixable with an alt-tab to the desk top).

It only seems to occur with my char in the upper right of my secondary monitor. I'm hoping it is simply a driver issue and not an issue with some bad memory on my video card.

I've got the latest drivers for my 580GTX but will keep a look out for updates.


The only other issue I'm struggling with is getting use to looking over at the second monitor to see how the boys are doing. End up leaving my mage behind a few times last night. I'm almost pondering whether getting a bigger monitor with a higher resolution and going back to one screen.

Though as it has only been a couple days maybe I should give it a bit of time to adjust.

If anyone else has an ATI card and wonders why they seem to have poor performance on an adequate computer: I have an ATI 5770 card which was doing much worse than an old Nvidia 8800GT card. Disabling the Catalyst Control Center software and killing its processes in task manager fixed the problem.