2001fp: Doesn't look as smooth as other monitors...

[lchyi]

It seems like since I've played WoW, I've upgraded two things that I thought were really important. RAM and a new video card. Disappointingly speaking, I never really saw a major performance boost visually (things load a lot quicker, that's for sure).

For instance, I went to play on one of my computers that is a 2500+ 1024mb of Hyper-X 2700, and a GeForce3 video card on a 17" CRT monitor. Looks great, smooth as hell. Most like an old first person shooter like Half-Life running on some buff new video card. No jittery things anywhere.

Now I switch to my 2.6C @ 3.2ghz, 1024mb Geil PC4000, GeForce 6600GT with dual LCDs (2001fp and 17" Hitachi... both 16ms response). I'm thinking this would be my more ultimate gaming rig. Unfortunately, the frames are a slightly jittery. It's just wierd because it looked fine to me until I played on the other computer. Then when I switched back, it seemed like it was just lagging the whole time. So obviously, I thought it was the resolution, video settings, etc. I turned everything down: looked exactly the same.

So what's the problem? I dunno, maybe that's where you could help me. I thought it was my monitor at first, because comparing computer specs line by line, the second, visually-worse machine, has way better hardware. But then after messing with things, I put the resolution at 1024x768 and kept it in the original sized windowed mode (so it's like a small window in the middle of my 2001fp, not maximized). It runs just fine, looks just like it's supposed to, smooth and not jittery. When it gets maximized, it returns to it's original jittery state. So what's going on? I'll have to run in windowed mode everytime I play now?

BTW: Drivers are up to date, monitors run through dual-DVI. When I say jittery, I mean slightly, it's very, very playable and it is definitely not response time related (roommate has a 15" LCD probably running natively at 1024x768 and his looks fine at full screen.

(edited topic name, looked like a review, didn't want to mislead anyone)

 

[mwmorph]

cause yuo're using dual monitors. that means more pixels to process.(more than 2x probably if you run both 17"ers at same resolution and the lcd at native resolution )
system 1: 1024x764(1 monuitor)
system 2: full screen 2001fp(1600x1200 native)+17" lcd(1280x1024)
harder on even a beefy gpu.

 

[cbehnken]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
cause yuo're using dual monitors. that means more pixels to process.(more than 2x probably if you run both 17"crts at same resolution and the lcd at native resolution )
system 1: 1024x764(1 monuitor)
system 2: full screen 2001fp(1600x1200 native)+CRT(1024x768)
harder on even a beefy gpu.

He isn't running the games on both monitors at the same time. Not even possible with most of them...

 

[Matthias99]

So what's the problem? I dunno, maybe that's where you could help me. I thought it was my monitor at first, because comparing computer specs line by line, the second, visually-worse machine, has way better hardware. But then after messing with things, I put the resolution at 1024x768 and kept it in the original sized windowed mode (so it's like a small window in the middle of my 2001fp, not maximized). It runs just fine, looks just like it's supposed to, smooth and not jittery. When it gets maximized, it returns to it's original jittery state. So what's going on? I'll have to run in windowed mode everytime I play now?

That's bizarre.

A few things to try:

1) Do any other games/programs/benchmarks exhibit the same behavior? If it's just WoW, it could be a bug with the game.

2) What happens if you run it "windowed" at 1600x1200 (that is, a full-screen window)? Is it just running fullscreen that's wacky, or anything above a certain resolution?

3) Did you try disabling the second monitor? I've had a few games (KOTOR and Max Payne 2 to name a couple) that behaved very strangely if a second monitor was enabled.

 

[lchyi]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

That's bizarre.

A few things to try:

1) Do any other games/programs/benchmarks exhibit the same behavior? If it's just WoW, it could be a bug with the game.

2) What happens if you run it "windowed" at 1600x1200 (that is, a full-screen window)? Is it just running fullscreen that's wacky, or anything above a certain resolution?

3) Did you try disabling the second monitor? I've had a few games (KOTOR and Max Payne 2 to name a couple) that behaved very strangely if a second monitor was enabled.

1) I'll check, I primarily play WoW right now and when I got my 6600GT I tested all games of course. But this is before I realized that it was jittery (yes, I couldn't really tell at first, everything looked better relatively because I just got a new video card, it wasn't until I tried a different computer that I noticed).

2) I used to run it windowed 1600x1200 all the time. The problem is, I assume WoW boots up the windowed mode at exactly 1600x1200 right? Well it leaks over to the second monitor by like 10 pixels or so and the game lags horribly. Only when I hit the maximize button and it smooths out (but still slightly jittery like it usually is).

3) This is what I'm going to try next. I would hope not, because it was really, really handy to have AIM, IE, other stuff on one monitor and WoW on the other. That's exactly why I chose windowed mode versus other modes (no alt tabbing necesary!) and exactly why I plopped down the $500 for the 2001fp.

 

[Rage187]

Try using 1 monitor w/o the other hooked up?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: lchyi

Originally posted by: Matthias99

That's bizarre.

A few things to try:

1) Do any other games/programs/benchmarks exhibit the same behavior? If it's just WoW, it could be a bug with the game.

2) What happens if you run it "windowed" at 1600x1200 (that is, a full-screen window)? Is it just running fullscreen that's wacky, or anything above a certain resolution?

3) Did you try disabling the second monitor? I've had a few games (KOTOR and Max Payne 2 to name a couple) that behaved very strangely if a second monitor was enabled.

1) I'll check, I primarily play WoW right now and when I got my 6600GT I tested all games of course. But this is before I realized that it was jittery (yes, I couldn't really tell at first, everything looked better relatively because I just got a new video card, it wasn't until I tried a different computer that I noticed).

OK. Still good to look into.

2) I used to run it windowed 1600x1200 all the time. The problem is, I assume WoW boots up the windowed mode at exactly 1600x1200 right? Well it leaks over to the second monitor by like 10 pixels or so and the game lags horribly. Only when I hit the maximize button and it smooths out (but still slightly jittery like it usually is).

Ugh. That's crap coding; they didn't take into account the window border sizes (so it's creating a 1600x1200 rendering pane, which then has a window frame around it that makes it bigger than the display). If you can create custom resolutions in WoW, you could set it to like ~1580x1180 and get rid of the overlap.

3) This is what I'm going to try next. I would hope not, because it was really, really handy to have AIM, IE, other stuff on one monitor and WoW on the other. That's exactly why I chose windowed mode versus other modes (no alt tabbing necesary!) and exactly why I plopped down the $500 for the 2001fp.

Yeah... I know. Multi-monitor support (or at least playing nice with multiple displays enabled) has not exactly been a priority of game designers thus far. Hopefully that will change, since it seems multi-monitor setups are getting more common...