System not able to handle 5 windows? Hardware questions

I currently run an i5-2500k for a processor and then 2 MSI gtx 580 lightning extreme editions and when i try and run 5 windows it doesn't seem to give me very good framerates at all and I notice that one of the cards is idling? Does the sli have to be disabled or can it run with the newest drivers? Any advice on how i should be setting them up for optimal performance would be appreciated

[lax]

The GPU Management article on our wiki talks about multi-GPU configuration and addresses your questions.

HOWTO: Tweak your framerate also gives related information

what do you recommend lax a single powerful card or dual cards for boxing?

[MiRai]

what do you recommend lax a single powerful card or dual cards for boxing?

Single card.

that is always what I thought as well, but I wanted to check with you guys who have played with ISBOXER for a longer time.

FYI, I use a GTX295 (dual GPU) card which works well and both GPUs are active. I've previously used a 4870x2, but could never get the second GPU to work when multiboxing.

[MiRai]

FYI, I use a GTX295 (dual GPU) card which works well and both GPUs are active. I've previously used a 4870x2, but could never get the second GPU to work when multiboxing.

Dual GPU cards are generally frowned upon because of any SLI/CF incompatibilities. While dual GPU nVIdia cards might work fine for a game like World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings Online, they might not work good for a future game where as a single GPU card will continue to work just fine. Like you stated, if you run an ATi/AMD card with CF built into it and you run into an issue specific to CF, you cannot disable it on the card itself (at least not in this point in time) and are completely screwed.

Also, the GTX 590 and GTX 690 cards offer two GPUs that do not run as fast as their single GPU counterparts. The GTX 590 is two underclocked GTX 580s and the GTX 690 is two underclocked GTX 680s, so if you do need to disable SLI on those cards you're now 1) completely wasting the other GPU as it sits idle, and 2) using a gimped single GPU.

To avoid any weird issues when multiboxing a computer game, it is always recommended that a single GPU card (with a lot of horsepower) is used.

To avoid any weird issues when multiboxing a computer game, it is always recommended that a single GPU card (with a lot of horsepower) is used.

I agree, for most people, a single GPU card (or multiple cards in a non-SLI/non-CF configuration) is the correct solution. If you want to cram as many clients onto a single computer at a time, multiple dual GPU cards is your only choice, and AMD drivers will actively prevent you from using the second GPU. NVidia drivers seem to be smarter about load sharing, though you won't get the 2x the performance per slot (maybe 1.6x-1.8x)

[MiRai]

To avoid any weird issues when multiboxing a computer game, it is always recommended that a single GPU card (with a lot of horsepower) is used.

I agree, for most people, a single GPU card (or multiple cards in a non-SLI/non-CF configuration) is the correct solution. If you want to cram as many clients onto a single computer at a time, multiple dual GPU cards is your only choice, and AMD drivers will actively prevent you from using the second GPU. NVidia drivers seem to be smarter about load sharing, though you won't get the 2x the performance per slot (maybe 1.6x-1.8x)

I still must disagree on dual GPU cards because they're not necessary and can likely degrade performance when the game that someone is playing doesn't work well with with SLI or CF. I was able to run both 20 clients and 30 clients on my single system (2600K & GTX 580 3GB), at a resolution of 1920x1080 using instant swapping, and the only limiting factor was the RAM.

http://www.multiboxology.com/bin/images ... oxtest.png

In that screenshot I'm actually splitting the load between two video cards (15 clients each), but as you can see it's only about 1.7GB of total VRAM @ 30% load, so it would have worked fine on a single card. When I did my 20-box test, it was using a single GTX 580 3GB.