2nd monitor laggy?

[Bravo]

I have 2 monitors on an ATI x1650 with 512MB ram, if I play WoW on monitor 1 it runs fine, but on Monitor 2 it drops down to like 9 fps. this is windowed mode, I can't go full screen becuase it default to monitor 1...

I currently have
a intel quad core
4 gigs of ram
WD sata HDD

and I'm running Windows xp x64

any thoughts?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Many multiple monitor graphics cards will not run Direct3D surfaces on both primary and secondary monitors at the same time. So, you end up with a software renderer on the secondary. Thus, your FPS problems. :P

[jrox]

This has come up a few times on the boards.

The solution with an ATI card is to open up the catalyst control center, go to the "displays manager" and right click on your second monitor. Choose "Stretch Display onto second monitor"

This is equivalent to enabling Horizontal Span on an nvidia card.

Instead of 2 independent displays you will end up with effectively 1 display with a large resolution like 2560x1024. This will solve your fps drop on the second monitor problem

[Bravo]

Hey thanks for the help, it solved the problem. now I just need to set it to the correct resolution. Each monitor runs at 1440 x 900 but I can set it to 2880x 900, I've opened a ticket with AMD and have tried playing with powerstrip but haven't been able to find a proper solution

[Wilbur]

Try lowering the refresh rate of your monitors.

[Bravo]

my mistake! I meant to say I CAN'T get 2880 x 900... the only option I have is 2304x864 but every thing's blurry. ATI closed the ticket saying they can't offer every resolution under the sun. Is anyone out there a Powerstrip expert? I've tried making a custom resolution with that but can't seem to get the horizontal stretching to apply

[Mattx10x]

Does anyone use 2 monitors with WoW under Vista? If so how do you set it up? I don't think Vista supports horizontal span. New Vista dual monitoring is called "Dual View" but does this option take away from the 3D performace in WoW?

[mxracer050]

Does anyone use 2 monitors with WoW under Vista? If so how do you set it up? I don't think Vista supports horizontal span. New Vista dual monitoring is called "Dual View" but does this option take away from the 3D performace in WoW?

No. The goodie goodie about Vista, is the problem was actually solved. You are able to run Dual View in Vista without any FPS loss like XP.

[Djarid]

Is it solved for both ATI and Nvidia?

[mxracer050]

Is it solved for both ATI and Nvidia?

Honestly, I have no idea. I just heard it was fixed