Video Cards - Someone clear this up?

[esoterik]

My confusion lies in the two ports on a video card, dual heads, and adding a second card non SLI.

So for having two monitors displaying games (windowed game on each screen) can someone explain what the differences in performance will be with the two options?

Would a second non SLI PCI-E card added to a system give it 2x the graphics processing power assuming it wasnt limited by ram/cpu speed?

I remember reading here about the different modes that you can setup the dual monitors within windows, perhaps thats where I'm confused.

[Bena]

one card:
- good performance on main monitor; if another wow on 2nd then crappy on both

two cards:
- same as above; you can connect 4 monitors and have a wow client on each but performance is bad (not playable)

SLI:
- both cards drive 1 display only; wow does not use SLI and the actual pefromance will probably go down (that's what happend in my case)

[esoterik]

but what about 2 cards, one monitor on each. decent performance on both?

[zanthor]

I can't testify to dual cards, however I can attest that the previous poster is making broad and over generalized statements.

System:
Athlon X2 6000 (Dual core 3000mhz processor)
2GB ram
Nvidia 7900gt
Single installation of WOW

Under Windows XP I only had an X2 4400 processor, but the rest of the hardware spec's matched. I could run 3 copies of wow seemlessly without any performance issues. I would set 2 of them to minimal settings and the main would be maxed. The second monitor does give lower performance and if you use windowed mode for the main copy of wow it will experience framerate drops if you cross the screen border onto the 2nd monitor.

This is a limitation in DirectX and the Video Driver as you will see...

Later, I enabled horizontal span, which tells your nVidia card to treat both monitors as a single wide aspect monitor - 2560x1024. This allowed me to play all three copies without a performance hit on the 2nd monitor, the problem was maximized now doesn't work because it drags it to the full 2560x1024 window and thats a pain in the ass.


So, I used wowmaximizer:


This gave me the performance I wanted, with the seamless interface I needed for it to work.

Another example:




This wasn't overly playable... but it was good enough to throw WSG matches during a holiday weekend, I figured out that losing fast was much more honor efficient than winning slowly... I could move individuals and interact with the world, if I knew now about Keyclone it would have been exponentially easier.

Now the interesting thing is that with dual monitors in Windows XP you lose performance on the 2nd monitor, however with the single span mode you do not. Obviously an issue with DirectX.

This was corrected in Windows Vista. I currently threebox on the system spec'd above and have perfectly smooth gameplay with max settings. I have engaged in very limited PVP since I'm on a O.o server. But I regularly run instances and AE grind in the world.

I am actually getting my 2nd video card back from an RMA next week, if no one else can answer the question before then I'll throw it in my main machine and see how it performs under Vista.

[esoterik]

perfect, exactly what I was wondering.

let me know how the 2nd card makes things go

[beyond-tec]

one card:
- good performance on main monitor; if another wow on 2nd then crappy on both

no chance to start WoW twice on one PC with two TFTs so I can see both toons?

damn..

*throws away his hardware-setup-plans*

ok... looks like I need 5 PCs instead of 3

[Kriwi]

@zanthor
do you changed something in the maximizer .ini ?
I also use horizontal span and want to play both wow clients maximized.

[Bena]

one card:
- good performance on main monitor; if another wow on 2nd then crappy on both

no chance to start WoW twice on one PC with two TFTs so I can see both toons?

damn..

*throws away his hardware-setup-plans*

ok... looks like I need 5 PCs instead of 3

You CAN run multiple wow instances on one pc without any problems.
I'm running 5 (1 maxmized on my main lcd and 4minimzed). The slowdowns occur when you have 1 window on main lcd and other windows on 2nd lcd. Though like the other poster said if you're running both lcds at same res and are in span mode not dual-view then the speed hit won't be so bad.

I test run 4 windows on my main 30" (1 minimized) and they were going around 20fps. Running all 5 is too much for my system (dual core fx60). Each instance windowed takes about 15-25% cpu usage; around 5% when minimized. So to run all 5 comfortable you probaly need a quad core. And as others have said running all the windows visible will impact fps as well.

[zanthor]

@zanthor
do you changed something in the maximizer .ini ?
I also use horizontal span and want to play both wow clients maximized.

Nope, command line options .

"F:\Program Files\WoWFrame\Maximizer.exe" -D 2 -R 1280x1024 --margin 0,512,0,640
"F:\Program Files\WoWFrame\Maximizer.exe" -D 2 -R 1280x1024 --margin 512,0,0,640

Thats my TopLeft and BottomLeft .25 scale screens for the right hand monitor on my system. I am in Vista so horizontal span is not necessary, so you would want to adjust and you wouldn't need the -D 2 commands. For the resolution use the full resolution of your horizontal span and then adjust margins appropriately.

So something like:
"F:\Program Files\WoWFrame\Maximizer.exe" -R 2560x1024 --margin 0,512,1280,640
"F:\Program Files\WoWFrame\Maximizer.exe" -R 2560x1024 --margin 512,0,1280,640

That should place two 4:3 windows on the right monitor.

One catch, there is some form of relation to the available video modes of the video card and what wow will start in... Under Vista I haven't been able to make 1280x1024 show up as an option in horizontal span... of course with no performance benefit it's not necessary.

[zanthor]

one card:
- good performance on main monitor; if another wow on 2nd then crappy on both

no chance to start WoW twice on one PC with two TFTs so I can see both toons?

damn..

*throws away his hardware-setup-plans*

ok... looks like I need 5 PCs instead of 3

Am I even posting here? Did you completely write off what I posted?

I currently run three on one box, two lcd's off a single dual head video card under vista and all three stay above 30FPS in the world.

If you want to build 3 PC's to 5 box on I'm assuming you want 2 on each PC and the main box dedicated for better performance there... that would be easily achievable with reasonably cheap hardware.

I was threeboxing yesterday on my spare video card (as I mentioned, the 7900gt is in for repairs at MSI). Running an X2 6000 with a 7600 GS I was still getting over 25fps in town and well over 30fps in the world/instances.

Keep in mind that the 7000 series cards are a generation behind, outside the mainboard/cpu my systems aren't bleeding edge, everythings been around and affordable for some time now.