Dual Video Cards: Definitive Answer is?

[Mosg2]

I'm going to be ordering a new computer this week and I need a definitive answer regarding Windows 7, dual monitors, and dual video cards.

I've heard some people say that one card for each monitor while multi-boxing under Windows 7 is fine. Others say it hasn't changed at all and will kill your FPS.

Definitive answer?

[zanthor]

I can tell you that without a doubt, an 8800gt and a 7600gt work fine together.

[mooglej]

I can tell you that without a doubt, an 8800gt and a 7600gt work fine together.

so I believe what he is asking is, can you have 1 wow client on say video card 1 and then 2-4 clients on the monitor powered by video card 2 without a performance hit on fps? I myself have wondered the same thing.

[daviddoran]

My video card took a tump last night, so I'm curious about this. I am about to buy an ATI 4770 and an active displayport adapter, so i can power 3 screens from one card.

[aboron]

I'm using my old 8800 GTX and my new GTX 280 in this PC right now.

With IS, I have set up a second WoW profile that homes the followers on the screen they will mostly be living and the FPS is higher than when it's just set up with a single WoW profile. However, if you use PiP and swap them off this screen and onto the main screen their FPS is lower compared to the single profile method - since now they are trying to render cross-cards to get into that spot.

[Drommon]

I'm using my old 8800 GTX and my new GTX 280 in this PC right now.

With IS, I have set up a second WoW profile that homes the followers on the screen they will mostly be living and the FPS is higher than when it's just set up with a single WoW profile. However, if you use PiP and swap them off this screen and onto the main screen their FPS is lower compared to the single profile method - since now they are trying to render cross-cards to get into that spot.

^ what he said.

AFAIK you need InnerSpace to take advantage of 2 or more GPU cards with monitors attached to each of them. I have IS, 2 GPU cards and 2 monitors. I put the tank on one monitor and the four slaves on the other monitor. IS then has the slaves rendered on the second GPU.

There is a tool called GPUZ. This tool allows you to see the load of GPUs you have. Before IS I had one card doing all the work running at 66%. Now both cards run at 34%. The Tank is set in eyecandy mode ( meaning the highest settings possible), the slaves are all running minimum settings except for viewing distance which is set at maximum.

When I am in dalaran, thr tank gets 40 fps and th slaves get 20fps. Elsewhwere the tank gets 60 fps and the slaves get 30 fps ( i capped them 60/30).

I have 2 ATI 4850 cards. They are old I know, but they do more than I need.

Now when you PiP. all fps drops due to cross rendering. But I rarely PiP.

Drommon

[mooglej]

So this functionality is solely found within IS? Could keyclone's maximizer also do this?

[Ualaa]

You can run more then one monitor off of a single card.
And with multiple cards, you can physically plug a monitor into each.

SLI/Crossfire doesn't seem to do much for warcraft.
And without IS, I don't know of a way to force each instance of wow to not just use the first card.

But you can certainly plug them in however you want.

[QuantumX]

I run a ATI5870 and 8800GTS in the same box, 3 monitors on the 5870 and 2 on the 8800 it works fine i can run main on full setting and other on lower setting i lock fps at 30 on main and 15 on others i could get more fps but you don't really need it in WoW.

I find the cards work well together, i'm using IS Boxer.


My system is i7 920 with 12gb Ram, and running wow on a intel SSD. I run 5 account at once each full screen on each of the 5 screens.

[Ualaa]

Out of curiosity, what are the resolutions of your monitors?