Hi,

I've been dual-clienting on one machine for just over a month, on my desktop machine. The machine is:
Windows XP Pro
AMD 64 2500+
2GB RAM
Radeon x1950 Pro 512MB

I am able to run WoW at top settings with decent framesrates in single client mode, and I can continue to run it with two WoW clients open, although my framerates do drop quite low. Average around 20fps, but can vary up and down. It's playable, but not ideal.

Now comes my problem. I bought a new laptop, the Dell XPS 1530 and was obliged to get Vista with it (another topic). So the specs for the laptop are much better than the desktop:
Vista Home Premium
Intel Core2 Duo T9300 2.50GHz
3GB RAM
NVIDIA 8600M GT 256MB (driver NVIDIA 7.15.11.5663)

Now I was hoping this laptop would improve my dual client experience because the video card and CPU are apparently more powerful. In single client mode I definately get better performance, so I think the machine is powerful enough.

Now my problem. As *soon* as I open the second copy of WoW, both instances immediately become very very choppy and sluggish. It's not the framerate, this even happens on the login screen and my keypresses entering my username and password are even delayed. This isn't just a slight delay, it's very noticeable and makes it impossible to play WoW with two clients open. I start the clients in windowed mode.

I'm hoping this is a known issue with a solution. I have tried searching and read many posts here but didn't find anyone else reporting it. I wasn't too sure what keywords to search on because everyone seems to be complaining about FPS where this is just a general performance issue.

I'm tempted to create a second partition and install XP on the laptop to try it out because I'm sure it's not the hardware. Could be drivers of something or other, but I'm trying to keep the default Dell setup as long as I can. I'll change it obviously if that's where the problem lies.

Any help appreciated. Thanks.