Improving Frame Rate (ATI Card)

[Siaea]

Hey all.

Currently boxing with 5 toons, 2 monitors, and an ATI HD4850 (512ddr3 ram). It is cross-fireable, but I'm reading you can't run 2 monitors if it's in cross fire mode. My question is, if I go get another HD4850 tonight, will I be able to run the second monitor on the second card and get a noticeable improvement in FPS, or is it now possible to Crossfire and run 2 monitors? Currently I'm getting average of ~10 fps in Outland (I was averaging 30 or so in Azeroth). My spells or anything like that doesn't lag, but sometimes it'll drop to 7 fps and is really annoying.

Dual core pentium 2.4g, 4g ram (windows sees 3.25g) 2 SATA Hard drives with 1 wow on 1, the other 4 in seperate folders on the second.

Thanks

[Oswyn]

Two cards running two monitors (one monitor each) will perform better than one card running two monitors. I'm not sure how much of an improvement you would get though.

[Noids99]

I'm sure you've already checked this but are you running in Dual View or Span mode?

Reason I ask, is that I box from a lappy with a 7950GTX which can power my 1920X1200 screen and a second 1024x768 screen with 45fps on the main and 15fps on the non focus screens without a problem. The only time I have issues is in Shatt or AV, which is hard drive/processor rather than Video lag.

Anyway, do a search on Dual View and you will find that it kills fps for some reason. I think this is fixed in Vista, but if you are in XP and in Dual View, try Spanning the 2 screens before buying a new card.

Cheers

[wowphreak]

upgrading yer graphics card will not make a noticable difference in frame rate.

IF yer running Xp most likely a "Dual View vs Span mode" problem like Noids99 says.

If yer running vista try loading all games from one install. Having separate install really kills performance. Look into symlinking

have yeh setup maxfps and maxfpsbk ?



windows see 4 gigs you don't because its being used.