Comparitive Performance and setup questions

I'm running a 7 box team in Everquest on a dual monitor setup i7 + Nvidia GTX670.

Right now I'm running the right screen as my main full sized window with the win7 task bar visable at the bottom. I have 7 25% scale windows 4 across the bottom and 3 up the left side in an L shape on the left screen with the remaining space left for web browser/text editor/Media player. I'm using the "standard" clicking to swap any of them over to the big screen.

If I were to switch to stacked main windows on the right monitor and use DX nothing window(s) on the left side but still wanted to maintain the layout...
1eee 8888
2eee 8888
3eee 8888
4567 8888
Left Right
(views 1-7+(e)mpty area + big main area 8 on right monitor)
... would I need to set up TWO dxnothing windows? One accross the bottom and one down the left side? I suspect that if I tried to do it with one big dxnothing that it would pop up over top of my video player/web brower/text editor area.

Would there be a performance benefit/cost of doing this rather than doing it how I am now?

[Alge]

would I need to set up TWO dxnothing windows? One accross the bottom and one down the left side? I suspect that if I tried to do it with one big dxnothing that it would pop up over top of my video player/web brower/text editor area.

Yes, for the reason you state.

Would there be a performance benefit/cost of doing this rather than doing it how I am now?

If you are already using Instant Swapping then there should be no performance hit as Instant Swapping renders those windows at full resolution anyway.

Thank you both. I've been wrestling with how to get my dxnothing window to stay in the background and behave in a particular way. And it hadn't occurred to me yet to adopt this approach. So simple and elegant. Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees...

With regards to performance, what I was wondering was whether there was a performance benefit for me to switch to running stacked+dxnothing vs using the instant swapping that I am using now.

I don't really have any complaints about my current setup other than that during startup, windows are coming up all over and not responsive until all slots are in game or at least to character-select.

[Alge]

I'm not sure where one would reasonably expect a performance improvement to come from in such a scenario. You still have the ability to instant swap and will still need to. If you are looking for a significant improvement in performance you will not obtain it this way.

The benefit to me from doing things this way is the ability to use Video FX without loss of resolution/blurriness/pixellation. One useful thing (among many) this allows me to do is to see cast bars of all characters right in my lead character's game UI.

Mmmmmm ok so if I get this correctly...

If I user instant swap, my non-focussed windows are scaled down (obviously) and because of this If I were to want to use videofx to set up views of for instance, my enchanter's extended target window on the screen of my main tank, it would be scaled down and hard to read.

If I were to use stacked main windows + dxnothing + videofx to present my main window + scaled views of non focused characters, then the real display of each character would not be scaled so then if I wanted to include an additional videofx view of the enchanter's extended target window it would be full scale and display properly.

In summary, then if I'm not using videofx to stick portions of a secondary character onto another character's display, there isn't really a compelling reason to use stacked main windows + dxnothing + videofx. However as soon as I start using videofx for anything, it makes sense to stop using instant-swap/scaled main windows.

Close enough?

[Alge]

Close enough and your conclusion stands despite what I am about to say.

You can have small Window Layout Regions with or without instant swap. You can use a stacked full screen layout with or without instant swap. The only thing that will affect your ability to have non-pixellated Video FX viewers is the size of the Window Layout Region containing the Video FX source. Hence most people using Video FX use a stacked full screen layout.