Trying to find the bottle neck in my system

[warwizard]

OS: Vista 64 Ult
RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK x2 (8gb Total)33431371
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s x2 (OS on one wow installs on the second) NON RAID
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600
MB: ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
VIDEO: XFX PVT88GYDF4 GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail32656109 (N82E16814150261)
Power: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply

The issue i have is the main wow window on monitor 1 will crawl to a halt, my entire system will start to grind to a halt, the second i open up taskmanager and the system runs normal again.

I have tried different gfx settings for wow, cpu affinity settings (main on all 4 cores, slaves running on 2 cores) however nothing seems to make much of a difference. Its not a heat issue as the CPU stays under 130 under full load. Running with addons and without, could this be a video memory issue or what? All of the wow's are symlinked to their own harddrive with all of my other applications and games installed, the OS runs on its own drive.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

That is most likely a graphics problem. You mention "monitor 1" in your comments, so I take it you're running dual monitors? If so, have you tried running all wows on the same monitor? Alternatively, you can try changing the monitor configuration from "configured independently (dualview)" to "As one large horizontal desktop (horizontal span)" and see if that fixes it. I'd suspect a dual-monitor/SLI problem before anything else. It's not an application problem as it clears up as soon as you change focus to Task Manager.

Give those a shot and let us know what happens.

GL!

Ugh

[warwizard]

i am having a brain fart, where in the nvida control panel is that located?

Also i think single span is not going to be an option since the monitors are not identical

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Right-click the NVidia tray icon, select NVidia Control Panel, then go to "Setup Multiple Displays." In there, you oughta see the options for Dualview and Horizontal/Vertical span.

[warwizard]

Right-click the NVidia tray icon, select NVidia Control Panel, then go to "Setup Multiple Displays." In there, you oughta see the options for Dualview and Horizontal/Vertical span.

NOne of those options exist

[MiRai]

Not 100% sure this is the same for you.

Right click on your desktop and choose 'Screen Resolution'. You should see something called 'Advanced Settings' click on that. That will open another window that should have multiple tabs on it. One of those tabs should say GeForce blah blah and under that tab you will see something like "Start NVIDIA Control Panel".

If none of that works...

The NVIDIA control panel may be located under your computer's control panel. I know mine is but I'm running Windows 7.

Hope that helps.

[warwizard]

i can open the nvidia control panel, i have the multi screens option, however i only get the options to enable my 2 monitors and nothing else.

Currently i have my main screen running 1680x1050 native, while the second screen is 1440x900 native.

main wow client is set to 1680x1050 in maximizer while the slave sare 800x600 in maximizer with everything turned wayyy down.

I just installed the latest drivers as of june 18th from the Nvidia website, however i am still missing the options listed above.

[Otlecs]

you oughta see the options for Dualview and Horizontal/Vertical span

Is that true under Vista? I was under the impression these were XP-only options.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

you oughta see the options for Dualview and Horizontal/Vertical span

Is that true under Vista? I was under the impression these were XP-only options.

No idea. If that's the case, then again, try running all wows on one monitor or even disable the 2nd monitor completely and see if that fixes things. You're just trying to eliminate multi-monitor setups as a possible root cause of the problem.

[gitcho]

Have you tried running vista's performance and reliability monitor ? You should be able to tell pretty quick where the bottleneck is. Unless i missed something, I didn't see exactly how many slaves you were running ...