This has piqued my interest because I've often wondered the same, and have no idea how this side of gaming technology works.

If I'm running five WoWs, I would have *thought* that each instance of WoW would be loading textures and other video-graphicy-type gubbins (see, I know all the terminology...) into the video RAM independently.

Like Sam, I would have *thought* that more video memory means that the textures wouldn't get bumped out of video memory so often, meaning less system->video memory transfers.

Why is that wrong?

Is it that the video subsystem is clever enough to recognise that the textures are actually the same even though they come from different processes, so the video RAM demand doesn't increase as you run more WoWs?

Can somebody explain in simple terms how that works? Or point me at an article I can read to understand this a bit better.

Cheers,
Otlecs.