Im running 5 5850 ATI cards and 3 screens.
Did I read this correctly? you have FIVE video cards, powering those 3 monitors? (note: I believe if crossfire is disabled, 2 of them are idling as they have no monitor to power)
I have SLI disabled and configured each slave to their respective screen via wow options.
You don't need to change the screen option in WoW, ISBoxer will
force it to the correct screen based on your Window Layout, overriding the WoW setting.
But, say no more, this is very likely due to your choice of Window Layout for these monitors.
Any time a Direct3D window moves from a monitor powered by one card, to a monitor powered by another card, you will experience a significant performance drop. I have no doubt that this is exactly what is happening when you switch to a slave and your FPS drops to 10.
From the [url=[url]http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/21-using-multiple-video-cards[/url]]Using Multiple Video Cards guide[/url]:
"The Quick Setup Wizard and the Window Layout Wizard in ISBoxer 38 both include a variety of new Window Layout styles and related options that are helpful for multiple video cards.
Most importantly, if your monitors are powered by different video cards, or you are using Windows XP or earlier,
you should disable the Cross-monitor swapping option when selecting a Window Layout; this will help you avoid the performance hit described in the above section."
One nice thing, though, is that
Video FX works perfectly across multiple video cards, and multiple monitors make it even more useful. (dual monitor video FX ideas:
http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1222)
With all of that said, here's what I would do with your 3 monitors. I would put your "main" on one monitor, and then I would put all of your "slaves" on a second monitor, probably with Full Screen Stacked. On the 3rd monitor I would put a dxNothing window (see that last link with dual monitor ideas) with interactive video feeds from each game window to show a team overview, possibly including small views of each window. So GPU 1 powers main, GPU 2 powers all of the slaves (Or you could split them as evenly as possible between 1 and 2), and GPU 3 powers the dxNothing window (which isnt a lot of power needed). You should get MASSIVE benefits from using that 3rd monitor for Video FX as compared to full windows -- there is a lot of wasted space and head turning required, when you've got 3 full windows side by side. Anyway, that's what I would do, if you don't want to try it that's fine... but seriously at least try it
Sun Jun 05, 2011 1:08 am 
