perf issues and client_settings.ini settings

I'm running four local instances of SWTOR and was having a lot of perf issues around framerate that weren't obvious when running only 2. While trying to track down the issue I would occasionally get everything right (high framerates on my active screen (~65 FPS) and non-active screens (~30 FPS) only to find it breakdown again later on. I noticed that every time I viewed a cut-scene the framerate would plummet to the teens on all accounts. Using Alt+Enter across all accounts would help, but it was frustrating none the less.

Eventually I made all my virtual client settings read-only after I got it working; the problem went away. I finally figured out what I think the problem is: When exporting from ISBoxer I would occasionally get the message "* Game is in Full Screen mode. ISBoxer requires the game to be in Windowed mode.". Allowing ISBoxer to fix this causes the following changes to the the INI setting:

Code:

[Renderer]
FullScreen = false

However I'm finding that this is incorrect for me and FullScreen=true is required for my perf to stay intact.

There is another setting in addition:

Code:

[Renderer]
D3DFullScreen = false

I think D3DFullScreen is the one that ISBoxer should actually be worried about - it's the true full screen setting. The other setting I think is the equivalent of "Windowed Fullscreen" vs. "Windowed" - for whatever reason I have issues with running just "Windowed".

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not (which is the right thing for ISBoxer to do) - but not allowing this change to happen definitely helped me out.

As an FYI:
-I'm running an I7 with 2 GTX 570s in SLI.
-My clients are running fullscreen stacked @1920x1200 on my main monitor, with a dxNothing window on a second monitor.
-I have all accounts running with graphics on high - with anti-aliasing and shadows disabled on all but my main character (they're set to low there).

Maybe this setting affects SLI users more than others as searching the forums doesn't result in many (any?) cases of people noticing the FPS impact.

[MiRai]

As an FYI:
-I'm running an I7 with 2 GTX 570s in SLI.

Maybe this setting affects SLI users more than others as searching the forums doesn't result in many (any?) cases of people noticing the FPS impact.

I don't play SW:ToR, but as a rule of thumb you shouldn't be multiboxing while using SLI. It tends to hurt performance more than it helps.

I'm not sure if it's because you're running it in Sli or not but do you sometimes run with just 1 client and change the ingame gfx settings ?

The settings for single player are separate from the virtualized character settings.

If it wasn't clear above, I'm no longer having problems - I'm just pointing out what I found and what might be the culprit - in case it helps someone else.

[lax]

It is clear to me, thank you I will need to review the behavior of the option you have pointed out