Quote Originally Posted by 'Lax',index.php?page=Thread&postID=204309#post2043 09
Right, "span" mode with special software, just to get hardware rendering on both screens. I'm not sure what you mean about Vista's "crap of not having that mode" -- it is native in Vista.

Any time you use multiple video cards, the 3d game windows are owned by one of those video cards, and the game decides which one it is at launch time (or, since you're planning to use Inner Space, Inner Space can override it for you). It can only be hardware rendered on its host video card, if you drag it to a monitor handled by a different one, it's going to be software rendered, and yes, it will look like 5 fps. This is the same on any operating system, it's a limitation of the 3d rendering pipeline. It can be worked around by the game reloading the 3d data on the other video card (which will take a few seconds at best, for games like these), but most games do not bother with this as it is not an issue for the general population.

To summarize, if you have multiple video cards, you're going to have to tell the game which one you want it rendering on or it's going to be slow if it is moved to your desired monitor from the other video card. If you have one video card and 2 monitors, and have Vista or Windows 7, then the windows can be dragged between the two without any extra configuration. If you are running Windows XP, dragging between monitors requires additional software for spanning (which works only on the same video card).

Hope that clears it up for you I've explained this in a few different threads on the subject over the last few months.
I bought my system with two Nvidia 8800GT and since my initial setup (over one year ago) I've been using only one due to lack of performance as you mention. I never saw anyone explaining the why, only confirming the fact and I thank you for that.

You state at some point "you're going to have to tell the game which one you want it rendering". How do you do it? I use keyclone with its maximizer. If I plug card1 to monitor1 and card2 to monitor2 and launch applications with maximize, will it do the trick? I think that's the way I did it but not 100% sure.

Thank you.