Dual Video Cards: Definitive Answer is?

[aboron]

I'm using my old 8800 GTX and my new GTX 280 in this PC right now.

With IS, I have set up a second WoW profile that homes the followers on the screen they will mostly be living and the FPS is higher than when it's just set up with a single WoW profile. However, if you use PiP and swap them off this screen and onto the main screen their FPS is lower compared to the single profile method - since now they are trying to render cross-cards to get into that spot.

[Drommon]

I'm using my old 8800 GTX and my new GTX 280 in this PC right now.

With IS, I have set up a second WoW profile that homes the followers on the screen they will mostly be living and the FPS is higher than when it's just set up with a single WoW profile. However, if you use PiP and swap them off this screen and onto the main screen their FPS is lower compared to the single profile method - since now they are trying to render cross-cards to get into that spot.

^ what he said.

AFAIK you need InnerSpace to take advantage of 2 or more GPU cards with monitors attached to each of them. I have IS, 2 GPU cards and 2 monitors. I put the tank on one monitor and the four slaves on the other monitor. IS then has the slaves rendered on the second GPU.

There is a tool called GPUZ. This tool allows you to see the load of GPUs you have. Before IS I had one card doing all the work running at 66%. Now both cards run at 34%. The Tank is set in eyecandy mode ( meaning the highest settings possible), the slaves are all running minimum settings except for viewing distance which is set at maximum.

When I am in dalaran, thr tank gets 40 fps and th slaves get 20fps. Elsewhwere the tank gets 60 fps and the slaves get 30 fps ( i capped them 60/30).

I have 2 ATI 4850 cards. They are old I know, but they do more than I need.

Now when you PiP. all fps drops due to cross rendering. But I rarely PiP.

Drommon