(It's Back)Two Graphics cards, Five displays, Low Framerates

[ZorbaTheGeek]

New user here, just paid for the subscription, very impressed so far.

Is there a limitation in the way IS handles multiple graphics cards that causes this?

If I run 4 sessions, set up as individual game profiles in IS, in different displays (windows extended) as the third and fourth sessions start all framerates drop into the low teens (generally 12-15 fps) on the login screen. They then stay that way when entering the game and even when closing some of the sessions down.

If I run three of my displays (connected to an ATI 5850) in eyefinity as a single huge desktop and create a window layout within that space I get framerates of 60 on main and 25-30 on the slaves.

If I try to run three sessions in eyefinity and one on the secondary adaptor (an ATI 4800), fps drops to sub 15 as soon as a session opens on the secondary adaptor.

I realise the setup attempts to push a lot of pixels around, but as I understand it, with instant swap turned on, the four sessions are effectively running at full resolution anyway.

Just as a point of reference, this is the same system I used two years ago to quad box, although at the time I used two displays connected to the 4800 with acceptable performance.

Running with IS instant swap off does not help, but keyclone is able to run four session spread across my displays with reasonable framerates (at the expense of ISBoxers functionality).

I've no plans to go back, I'm already using functions of ISBoxer that are not possible with keyclone, but since I have the displays it would be nice to have all four toons with their own display =D.

[ZorbaTheGeek]

Well...

I thought I fixed it. Everything was working great last night, but restarted the quad this afternoon and the sub 15 framerates were back...

I have, however, identified some kind of cause although I find it hard to believe from a techie standpoint:

The problem seems to be dependant on the order in which my sessions startup. WoW1,2&3 are primary adaptor displays and WoW4 is on the secondary. If I open them in numeric sequence 1-4 (i.e. the character order in ISBoxer matches the display order) the system works fine. If I decide I don't like the healer on display 4 and swap the game profiles with another toon the sessions open 1,2,4,3 and the whole system collapses in slideshow madness.

Playing with ISBoxer and the IS config while I type this post I seem to have found a workaround (solution?). If I ensure I add toons into party slots in the correct order, with the WoW game profiles in sequence, I can choose which display each toon loads into.

[lax]

Is there a limitation in the way IS handles multiple graphics cards that causes this?

It's not IS's handling, all IS can do is pretty much the same as the new (as of WoW 4.0) monitor selection option in WoW. The rest is up to Windows, DirectX, the video drivers, and the hardware.

If you haven't looked at the "How to use multiple video cards" guide, you should: http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/21-using-multiple-video-cards

So here's the thing. When the game sets up for rendering, it (or Inner Space) has to specify which "adapter" (output... monitor...) for DirectX to use.
If you move the window to another monitor, then you may incur a significant performance penalty:
* With Windows XP, you had to keep the game on the same monitor even if it was controlled by the same video card.
* Windows Vista (or later) allows you to move the game between monitors as long as they are controlled by the same video card.
* ANY time you move the game to a monitor controlled by another video card than it was launched FOR, you WILL see the performace penalty. (regardless of whether the window first appeared "on" a particular monitor; again, it is the "adapter" selection given to DirectX)
So the solution is indeed to make sure you stay within the limitations of the OS and your computer, as outlined above. Avoid any swapping that would violate these rules of thumb -- if needed, change the Swap option in your Window Layout to not use the "Always" option.

With keyclone (or with ISBoxer having Instant Swap disabled) you might not have noticed the performance penalty as much, because the game would be rendering at the actual size of the window instead of the size of the main window. Obviously, having the game render at 320x240 is much faster than rendering at, say, 1920x1200.

Hope this explains the behavior you're seeing

Most people who throw down for multiple video cards seem to do so thinking they will get a huge boost in performance, without realizing that SLI and Crossfire are generally bad for multiboxing, or that they might have to do some extra work (and even avoid some features) to take advantage of the additional performance. Personally I have a box that was using dual cards, and I pulled one of them out to keep as a backup when the first one dies. In fact, I use dual monitors but I keep all of my game windows on one of them so I can keep the other one for browsers, etc. I had enough of turning my head or rolling my chair to see other characters when I actually had to use multiple computers and multiple keyboards and mice back in the day

[ZorbaTheGeek]

Thanks for the info.

I run the extra graphics card, not for performance, but for the extra outputs. When I went to an eyefinity setup I needed to get two new widescreen displays, in order to get a close match to the one I already owned. That left me with a 20" 4:3 from this box, and a 15" 4:3 from a retired machine.

Rather than have the old GFX card on a shelf I threw it into the machine and hooked up the extra two monitors and I have to say, I'll probably never go back. Having dual displays is great, eyefinity gaming on triple displays is amazing, and well, having extra desktop space for browsing and research is a boon.

All of the above pales into insignificance when I see 4 WoW sessions running in a display each.... Now I have the 4 displays working (and there was my problem, I needed to direct sessions at the correct display AND in a certain order or it broke) I have no need to window swap at all and only keep the setting enabled for mouse broadcasting.

Great software BTW. Upgraded my trial already, I'll not go back =D.

* ANY time you move the game to a monitor controlled by another video card than it was launched FOR, you WILL see the performace penalty. (regardless of whether the window first appeared "on" a particular monitor; again, it is the "adapter" selection given to DirectX)

When you say performance penalty, what do you mean? I'm asking about Windows 7 x64 in this case.
Do we see less performance permanently, until we shut the game down? Until we switch back to the original monitor? Or is it only momentary?

And to be absolutely clear: To avoid this penalty, you're saying we should never swap windows across cards, correct?
I'm asking this because of the thread I started where I'm having issues involving multiple screens.

Also curious: if I make my slaves (the guys I won't run at full size often) render as a smaller size, what's the harm?

[lax]

When you say performance penalty, what do you mean? I'm asking about Windows 7 x64 in this case.
Do we see less performance permanently, until we shut the game down? Until we switch back to the original monitor? Or is it only momentary?

Rendering will perform much, much slower when the window is not on the video card (or for XP, the monitor rather than the card) that it was launched for. If the game is set up to be on the primary monitor, and then the window is moved to another card (or for XP, another monitor), there will be a huge performance penalty (i.e. significant FPS drop) until it is moved back and everything returns to normal.

And to be absolutely clear: To avoid this penalty, you're saying we should never swap windows across cards, correct?

Yes, in order to avoid this penalty, avoid swapping windows across cards.

On that note, for you or anyone else that might like some advanced hacks to get per-monitor swapping, here is a related thread with such instructions: http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=819

I thought I fixed it. Everything was working great last night, but restarted the quad this afternoon and the sub 15 framerates were back...

Dangit, that's the exact problem I'm having. When I started using ISBoxer, everything was perfect.
I could swap windows willy-nilly and there was just a rare case where swapping caused terribad performance.

Once I started reading the forums, and how it's evidently bad to swap between cards, I tried tweaking stuff.
Now, it's horribly broken - swapping at all caused terrible performance until I exit WoW.
Even clearing my config and starting over with the Quick Wizard doesn't fix it.

Incidentally, I'm using two ATI 4870s, so very similar hardware. I have Crossfire off and 1 monitor per card.
Currently I don't have a solution and a broken setup; I've got a thread over here.

Please let me know if you figure this out, sounds like we have very similar setups.
I would be happy just getting screens to "live" on their starting monitors without swapping if that's what it takes.
Though I would really like to be able to swap on occasion. Again, the frustrating part is that it worked fine for awhile...

I had the same problem.

The only way I was able to fix it was connect all 3 of my displays to the main video card and run in crossfire mode.

Now I get 60sp on all WoW windows.

Your 4870 should have 2 video outputs. Put both lcds on the single card and crossfire them up.

I tried a thousand different things and nothing worked.

I didnt have that problem with keyclone, but I love IsBoxer much better so I had to find a way.

[lax]

I would be happy just getting screens to "live" on their starting monitors without swapping if that's what it takes.
Though I would really like to be able to swap on occasion. Again, the frustrating part is that it worked fine for awhile...

.... if that's all you want, just disable swapping and select the Monitor for each client through WoW. The option is in the in-game video options, right above the multisampling option, to the right of the resolution. I'm not sure why you're still confused on that, I thought we had been discussing this for days

I had the same problem.

The only way I was able to fix it was connect all 3 of my displays to the main video card and run in crossfire mode.

Now I get 60sp on all WoW windows.

Your 4870 should have 2 video outputs. Put both lcds on the single card and crossfire them up.

I tried a thousand different things and nothing worked.

I didnt have that problem with keyclone, but I love IsBoxer much better so I had to find a way.

The ONLY difference with keyclone is that your smaller windows were actually rendering in the smaller resolution. Your FPS would still drop, but it would not be as significant. If you wanted the same baseline performance as with kc, all you had to do was disable Instant Swap: http://isboxer.com/wiki/WoW:Quick_Start_Guide#Performance_considerations