Moving to Windows 7 but have some questions - Thank you

[Altsoba]

Hello,

As the topic says, I intend to move to Windows 7 eager for better performance than what I have now with my poor Vista 32bit.

Before making the step I have some questions if some of you can please help me:

1 - I have the USB X-Keys, are drivers and software compatible with W7?

2 - I have two Nvidia 8800 GT but never used both because Vista had lots of trouble (as far as I've read) dealing with dual video cards. Does W7 still have this issue?

3 - I've also read that Vista dealt dual monitor really badly. Is it ok now with 7?

4 - A question that puts together both previous, is it ok now to use dual video card, each one sending to one monitor (or any other alternative with this comp )?

5 - I have a Sata and a Raid0. For best performance, where should I install the OS? Also, where should I run Wow (5 clients in same machine) from?

I have a Dell, quad core 6600 with 4 GB Ram, two Nvidia 8800 GT. Thinking on upgrading to 8Gb too.
I think I'll have more questions over time but there's enough now .

Thank you all in advance for your help.

[Ess]

1. dunno

2. dunno, but if you intend to use it for SLI it would not be needed for WoW as that doesn't really add much.

3. I have never had any trouble with my dual monitor setup with Vista. Is it possible this refers to a very specific problem/conditions?

4. If you are not going to use it for SLI, I think it will work fine. Although I have not tested this personally I have not read anything to the contrary. I think what is still the case (was always the case) is that a videocard is better at sending 3D to just one output on a big monitor then several small ones with multiple outputs. Even though the net. number of pixels is the same.

5. Raid 0 is usually significantly faster then a single sata disk. For the fastest loads of wow you could put windows on the single disk and wow on the raid disk. I am not sure how significant the difference is if you just put windows and wow on the same disk but I reckon it would matter. Do you use onboard raid? Or do you have some kind of raid card with dedicated processor en memory? if the later is the case you can put both windows and wow on the raid.

I hope this helps and I am sure other can add to this.

[Fizzler]

I am running the X-keys Pro with Win7 on problem. The good thing about the X-keys is you can always go hardware mode allowing you to use it where ever you want.

all the video issues should be no problem. I have not tried assigning a particular video card to an application though.

If it was me I would install everything on RAID 0. I am not sure what the performance gain or loss would be seperating the OS on the SATA and WoW on the Raid. I would like both applications to take advantage of RAID if I could.

either way Win7 is a great upgrade from Vista. The only isues I had were some problems with ACPI driver and power management in general but both were cleared up easily. If you have any issues they will most likley be related to drivers.

[Jafula]

No. 4

Lets pretend you are dual-boxing.

Say you have 2 gfx and a monitor hanging off each gfx. One monitor is always the primary monitor.

You put a WoW instance on the primary monitor and a WoW instance on the secondary monitor.

If you do this your WoW performance will be WORSE than if you only had one gfx card and 2 monitors. This is because WoW only renders to the primary gfx. The driver software has to copy the image from the primary gfx to the secondary gfx causing a lot of slowdown.

You have two options that I know of:

1) Run 1 gfx and 2 monitors.
2) Run 2 gfx and 2 monitors and use InnerSpace by Lax which makes WoW render on the correct gfx card. Disclaimer: I don't use InnerSpace and I only read that InnerSpace does this. Can someone confirm?

[alcattle]

On the RAM issue, you need a 64 bit OS for more than 4 gigs.

[lamf123]

3 - Windows 7 works fine on dual monitor with wow, I would go with just the 1 card as advised above. I use a Nvidia 9800 which is just an update to the 8800 and have no issues running 5 instances on two monitors. I have the 24" running the main at 1900x1200 and on the 22" I have the other 4 running in a 2x2 setup.

4 - Use 1 video card. The 8800 runs hot so I would recommend that if your manufacurer has a utility that allows you to control fan speeds on the card you install it and increase the fan speed so you don't take a fps hit because the card is overheating.

5 - Raid 0 but make sure you regularly backup whats important


Definately upgrade to 8Gb memory. Windows 7 takes a 1gb off the top not doing anything. Your wow instances will take 300-500mb each so you'll eat up that 4gb quick. Make sure you go x64 so you can support that much memory.

[Sajuuk]

I actually made a post regarding 3D applications across multiple graphics cards in Windows 7, although I only tested it in Crysis Warhead, not WoW. (I'll test in wow if someone wants to send a couple trial keys, I'm too cheap to reactivate just so I can test performance as I'm not playing/don't want to play.)

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=24255


Oh, and you want hot? I've got two 9800GX2s running Folding@home full tilt at 92/93/93/94C.

[cybernerv]

I do not know much about raids, but can't you make a raid0 for windows 7/wow and use a raid1 for backups? this way if something goes wrong you have your stuff backed up.

[Sethra]

1 - regarding the X-keys:

I haven't tried any sort of hardware mode, but on software mode like I used to use them on Win XP, it doesn't work exactly right.

Normal key-presses work fine, but control/shift/alt+key presses do not.

So if I bind control-F1 to a key and press it, nothing happens, but follow the exact same steps and bind just F1, and it works fine.

I suppose it's possible that it's Win7+Octopus+Xkeys that does this, not just Win7+Xkeys, but I need Octopus far more than I need to have control-F1 mapped to a key.

[Ess]

I do not know much about raids, but can't you make a raid0 for windows 7/wow and use a raid1 for backups? this way if something goes wrong you have your stuff backed up.

Yes that is a good idea. Intel even offers the ability to make both a raid 0 and raid 1 array on just two disks. The motherboards with an Intel southbridge support this it is called Matrix Raid. You can use the first part of both disks for your raid 0 (this is preffered because this part is faster to access.

And use the rest of the disk for the raid 1 array. I would then recommend to only read/write to the raid 1 array when you're not gaming so it doesn't decrease your raid 0 performance (as they are now on the same physical disk).