VideoFX in dxnothing causes second vid card framerate drop

Hey was hoping for some guidance...

First my GFX/screen setup:
Screen #1(main stacked windows + some dxnothing windows) nVidia 670
Screen #2(dxnothing window only) nVidia 670
Screen #3(Non-isboxer stuff) nVidia 670
Screen #4(Non-isboxer stuff) nVidia 740

I have a 10-box setup with 10 stacked windows on Screen #1 with three dxnothing windows, two on screen #1 and one on screen #2. These are both driven by the same graphics card.

Everything works perfectly on screens #1-3.

With VideoFX enabled, however, screen #4 has a massive framerate drop and is completely unusable even for web browsing or the like.

If I run the dxnothing windows with all videoFX windows disabled, that monitor returns to a usable state. In any scenario, the first three screens are 100% fine, it's only ever the fourth monitor, which is on an entirely separate graphics card, that has issues.

The GPU load for this second card sits at 0% typically, but when I drag a window (anything; chrome, pidgin) onto this monitor it instantly spikes to 99% load until the window stops moving.

This started happening awhile back and I simply disabled the second graphics card, but now I'm running a 10th account and would like to get it back up and running.

It''s possible this started happening when I updated to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8.0. I have the very latest graphics drivers installed.

I at first suspected that it was a cross-GPU swapping issue, but all of my accoutns are stacked on the main screen, and the only thing leaving that screen (not even GPU) is videoFX through dxnothing windows.

Any ideas? I've tried setting up a new WIndow layout from scratch (needed to add 10th account anyway) but I have the same symptoms.

[lax]

Share your configuration and we'll go from there. http://isboxer.com/wiki/Configuration_Sharing

Also, with all your game windows and dxNothing up, open the in-game ISBoxer Control Panel and click the debug tab, then click the "Capture State" button (if you do not have it, then update ISBoxer via Help->About ISBoxer). After clicking, it will Copy data for you to Paste back to me.

So 1. your ISBoxer configuration and 2. the Capture State output

Config:

http://privatepaste.com/40052d52d3

Debug:

http://privatepaste.com/a9d125910b


Edit:

From the debug dump I see Rendering on \\.\DISPLAY1, Bound to \\.\DISPLAY4 in several places. Looking into why this is happening (ISBoxer window layout shows my 4th problematic monitor as DISPLAY1

[MiRai]

From the debug dump I see Rendering on \\.\DISPLAY1, Bound to \\.\DISPLAY4 in several places. Looking into why this is happening (ISBoxer window layout shows my 4th problematic monitor as DISPLAY1

I probably can't offer much assistance with this, but in EVE's in-game options you have the ability to set which display adapter the game launches on. If that setting is set incorrectly, then it could easily be the problem.

From the debug dump I see Rendering on \\.\DISPLAY1, Bound to \\.\DISPLAY4 in several places. Looking into why this is happening (ISBoxer window layout shows my 4th problematic monitor as DISPLAY1

I probably can't offer much assistance with this, but in EVE's in-game options you have the ability to set which display adapter the game launches on. If that setting is set incorrectly, then it could easily be the problem.

I checked that actually, they all seem to render on the main card as they should. If I close all of my dxnothing windows, the problem goes away so I don't think it's that.

Its like the dxnothing windows are rendered on the second card?

So if I uncheck 'VideoFX Viewers stay when in background (Blocks Video FX Sources!); the problem goes away. I set up my window layout and dxnothing/videoFX from scratch and discovered this by accident. As soon as I turn it on again and reload, the problem re-occurs.

None of my dxnothing windows have sources, they are simple full-screen viewers (on 2/3 of them) or partial screen (third one) videoFX viewers.

e: To be clear, I do actually use background videoFX in my dxnothing windows on purpose

[MiRai]

Honestly, all the behavior you're describing sounds exactly like you're rendering VideoFX across multiple GPUs and your debug report from earlier seems to reflect just that (rendering on 1 and bound to 4). I'm assuming Display1 in your Window Layout is hooked up your 740? If so, is that monitor set to be the primary monitor in Windows? Technically, that setting shouldn't affect anything at all, but I'd change it to one of the other monitors controlled by the 670 just to test it out.

When your Character Set is launching you can watch which monitors the game clients (and dxNothing) start on before they're moved into place as per your Window Layout. If anything is launching/starting on the monitor attached to the 740 then that's where it's rendering and that's why you're taking such a performance hit.

DISPLAY1 is on my 670, the more powerful card. The 740 should just be sitting off on its own driving a single monitor.

I loaded everything again and noted where each dxnothing window opened in, as you mentioned. They all launch on DISPLAY1 as expected. I did try playing with the primary monitor toggle in windows, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I also moved non-game monitors to the 740 to try that...the problem then just occured on both monitors, as I'd have expected.

I believe the performance hit of rendering across GPUs only occurs when you're swapping windows across GPUs, not simply through videoFX streams (could be wrong, but that's my understanding) In any case, there shouldn't be anything at all on the 740 card. In my setup, all 10 clients are on the main stream - the only thing that moves off the main display is a single fullscreen dxnothing window which is on the same card. Closing this dxnothing instance (or anything less than all of them) doesn't fix the problem.

I set everything up again and checked the debug logs, I don't see the 740 display anywhere other than the window layout XML structure.

After setting up window layout again, I notice that there is no problem if I clear all videoFX content. IE. blank windows don't have the problem.

[MiRai]

I believe the performance hit of rendering across GPUs only occurs when you're swapping windows across GPUs, not simply through videoFX streams (could be wrong, but that's my understanding)

Anything that needs to be rendered (including VideoFX) will incur a performance hit when crossing between GPUs.

In any case, there shouldn't be anything at all on the 740 card.

Then I guess the next steps I'd take are:

1) Look to see what your hardware is doing - http://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Tweak_you ... ottlenecks

2) If your hardware isn't pegged at 100% anywhere, then pull the 740 out of the system to remove it entirely from the mix. You will most likely need to recreate your Window Layout after doing so.

3) As a last resort, and if #2 changes nothing, then you might try pulling the third display off of the 670 so that you're only using two DVI connections.

1) Yeah I've been using that too, very nice. The only thing that hits 100% is the 740 when anything moves on it. Ex: drag an explorer window to it and it jumps 0% to 100% and fps drops. Or video.

2) With the 740 disabled in device manager everything is 100% fine. That has been my workaround up until now. Also the 740 is actually a new card. I upgraded it from a really really low end nVidia card. (I had the same problem on both cards)

3) I tried moving the third monitor to the second card (two monitors per card, isboxer only on the main one, windows/general apps on the other card) As long as the second card is enabled the problem is there, regardless of monitors.



I'm going to blow away my OS installation tonight and set everything up from scratch. I suspect the update from Win8.0 to 8.1 broke something. Starting fresh might help.

If that doesn't work I'll start looking for tall buildings.