Need some help 2 dual-screen mode + vista 64 problems...

[Xar]

Hi Everyone,

Got my new hardware this past week: evga 780i MB, Q6660 cpu, 8gb 1066mhz memory, 2 8800GTS 512mb (G92 cores), Vista 64 Ultimate.

Had problems installing Vista, found some info that had to install with only 2gb in the system, so I did that. Installed the MS patch then put the 8gb back in. Kept crashing, freezing, etc. Called evga, their bios currently only supports 800mhz memory (despite marketing info saying up to 1200mhz), scaled them back to 800mhz and appropriate timings and the system has been stable since yesterday afternoon.

So I pop in my second video card (non SLI) set up the video settings to extend my desktop in dual mode, fire up 2 wows in windowed mode and am having issues.

My two screens:

(2) 1600x1200 (secondary) --- (1) 24" 1920x1200

on (1) I run my main window that I'm actively focused in, on (2) I want to run the other copies of wow on.

I went with Vista because of the reports that dual screen mode was fixed on Vista compared to XP where you had to use one large desktop and maximizer to position WoW on the that one large desktop.

So fire up two windowed wows and drag the second one over to the other screen. I set the second account to use max 40, maxbk 20.

Problem: When running on two monitors WoW is extremely choppy, they maintain somewhat decent framerates (though about 10-20 fps lower on main screen) but it seems like the internal geometry and such getting to the cards are being delayed and so as I move around it might as well be 10 fps. As soon as I slide the second window back to the main screen (so that they are all on the same screen) the choppy problem goes away and they gain 10-15 fps).

Has anyone running Vista experienced this and what have you done to fix it? I did searching and curse MS for eliminating span desktop in Vista. I like Vista's features overall but this is kinda sucking and I'm wishing now I went with XP 64-bit. *sigh*

(I've tried multiple configurations, using keyclone to maximize 3 windows, 2 on second screen, 1 on my main screen and having same problem).

Oh and THANK YOU everyone for recommending Intel, this is my first Intel and this quad core is awesome. I'm totally happy I went with it and when evga gets their bios problems worked out I'll be speeding up my memory too.

[Dezeral]

What do you have your video settings at? Things like Anistropic Filtering, Anti-Aliasing and so on will really reduce your frame rates. I'm currently running 4 shaman on a Q6600 with 8g of RAM, two 8800GTs driving four 19" monitors running 1440x960 resolution. This is on Vista Home Premium x64.I have my FPS capped at 30 foreground and 20 back ground. Shattrath is the only place that gives me any issues, but it usually smooths out after a minute or two after I fly in or hearth in. It still doesn't hit the FPS caps though in Shattrath. Everywhere else I'm usually at the FPS caps. For reference, my video settings are: 2x Anistropic Filtering, 2x Anti-Aliasing, and AA transparency off. I have not experimented much with raising the settings until I reach a point where my FPS drop. So it might be possible to raise them some and still maintain acceptable frame rates. I suspect that you will find pretty poor performance if you raise AA any higher than 4x.

[Xar]

That's the thing, I have almost everything turned down and even scaled my wow windows down as small widescreen settings ( 1280x768 and even experimented with just 2 wow windows ).

If I turn off the second monitor (after moving the windows to the main display) it all works smooth as silk. Turn on the second monitor again (by checking the extend desktop) and start moving wow windows there and it goes back to being highly annoying. Bongo's stats bar shows it's getting more than decent FPS but the actual geometry changing in the window is more like 10 fps when second monitor is turned on and 1 or more wow windows are on that monitor.

If I have just the second monitor turned on but all wow windows on my first display it's still noticeable but not as bad, I'd say the geometry updates around 20fps but as soon as I turn off that second monitor the wow windows get very smooth again and gain more fps.

So...1 monitor=smooth foreground wow...more than 1 monitor and it starts having choppy effects on my foreground window. My 4 cores almost never hit 100% either, lol.

I found some updates through searches at MS so I'm going to try those and see what happens. I'm really considering going to xp pro 64 bit...

[Sarduci]

Most likely you have some overlap between the two monitors with one of the WoW windows. That will do what you say is happening.

[Chorizotarian]

I have the same problem, and it's definitely not an overlap issue in my case.

[Thedonsquad]

Are you gentlemen running dual video cards or just one?

With dual video cards this is easily solved by taking them out of sli and running one monitor on each. The video issues should not be directly related to your system memory issues, the can very easily be related to settings in game however.

Any of the following can cause problems with running multiple D3D clients:
- Vertical Sync (Should be off on all HAL outputs)
- Full Screen Glow effects (again, off)
- Polygon Reduction (should be on, helps reduce stress)
- Texture settings (low as possible on minions, your preferance on main)

Go through Vista and make sure you have full hardware acceleration on.

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Another thing you should know about Vista is that the memory management program is completely revamped, it randomizes the memory addresses for security purposes. This has some positive effects as it spreads a programs memory over all of the available memory sticks, however, this also makes it very touchy to any memory problems. The first thing you should do if you have any more stability issues is open the start menu and type memory in the search field and run the program, let it reboot and run through the extended memory test (you have to set the options once you are in the test program). It runs very slow and is very thorough, once it is complete and you reboot you should have a popup in the taskbar with the information thats recieved, any errors and you will want to replace the dimm.

The randomizing of the system memory causes core windows to run in any address, if theres a problem with that address you WILL crash. I had bought DDR2 1066 sticks timed at 5-5-5-18 for my board, which is capable of 1066, the bios however, does not recognize SPD on the and took force fed settings to get them to run semistable. I have since RMA'd them and bought sticks off the compatibility list, interestingly they are DDR2 1066 but have clock timings of 5-5-5-15.

It really sucks that higher end systems are this touchy these days, but this is the realm of what it means to be on the leading edge; compatibility is limited, the right parts work great and the wrong ones break it.

[Shigan5]

Its possible that vista fixed the issue by software rendering direct3d instead of hardware. this will cause alot of overhead on your cpu. as it will then have to go through your cpu, then your gpu, then to your monitor. instead of straight to the hardware.

And it is impossible to run dual monitors on SLI. it wont let you so i doubt hes got them in SLI. as soon as you turn off sli you can use dual monitors again.

[Chorizotarian]

I'm running 2 cards in non-SLI. I have all on the video settings on my clones dialed down as low as possible, at least the ones that you can set through the game UI. I still want to grovel through the Config.wtf to see if there is something else I can lower.

- Vertical Sync (Should be off on all HAL outputs)

I turned v-sync off in the game but enabled it for WoW through the nVidia control panel. This seemed to give the best results for me. Is that what you mean?

[Thedonsquad]

you got it. HAL = Hardward Abstraction Layer, all it means to windows is that if you have multiple up it creates a thread for each one

the problem comes in when you have windows calling for just that part of the screen to be updated at the same time when the hardware is allready updating the whole screen, so it tries to do a double (or more depending on how many HAL's are open) refresh at exactly the same time.

[Xar]

Thanks Thedonsquad,

I was able to have an acceptable session on two monitors. I was running with 2 cards (Non-sli) but tonight I switched to just 1 card, 2 monitors. The Vertical Sync seems to have been a major part of it, all my settings were turned down except for distance. It's still not what I expect from my setup but it was definitely playable and enjoyable.

I'm fairly certain I'm going to get XP pro 64 bit and make one big span mode for WoW, then Vista will become my mail/browsing/tools environment.

Tomorrow I'll try test on two different cards (both the same) and see what happens.

Thanks again for the help.