Two cards, dual display - second monitor eats my CPU

[taylorstrait]

The situation
Athlon XP 3200 @ 200Mhz
1GB DDR RAM @ 400Mhz
Asus nforce2 mobo
Radeon 9800 pro AGP DVI to Dell 2001FP
Radeon 7000 PCI DVI to Dell 1905FP
Windows XP SP2

The Problem
Moving windows onto the 1905FP send CPU usage to 100%. Scrolling is slow and ghosty. Flash animations plays choppy on the 1905FP as do old 2D games like Sam and Max. Moving the affected windows to the 2001FP fixes all lag and stuttering. I am using the latest Detonator drivers as of Feb 6th.

Is there some BIOS setting or windows setting to fix the craqppy performance on the PCI card? Or is the card so bad it just can't push 1280 x 1024 @ 32bpp over DVI? Should I upgrade to a Radeon 9250? I just want good 2d performance with the same Radeon driver as my primary card... Any tips would be appreciated!

 

[Matthias99]

If you start applications on one monitor and drag them to another monitor (especially 3D games), performance may tank. It reverts to various crappy software modes, because it can't have a hardware-accelerated buffer associated with one card being displayed on a different one.

Usually it's not that a problem with solely 2D programs like web browsers, though, since they don't explicitly use any special video modes or hardware acceleration other than what the Windows GUI itself provides.

 

[taylorstrait]

Well flash and even web page scrolling stinks on the 1905FP, which is an 8ms panel I believe! Maybe it isn't being hardware accelerated even though I have it set to "Full Acceleration?" I've really disappointed with the performance of my second monitor - especially since I bought another video card for it!!!

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: taylorstrait
Well flash and even web page scrolling stinks on the 1905FP, which is an 8ms panel I believe! Maybe it isn't being hardware accelerated even though I have it set to "Full Acceleration?" I've really disappointed with the performance of my second monitor - especially since I bought another video card for it!!!

Yeah, something's gotta be wacky with the hardware acceleration on that display. 2D windows like web browsers should be OK.

Does making the R7000 the 'primary' display fix anything?

 

[ForumMaster]

just asking, y did u buy that crappy PCI card? y didn't u just upgrade ur Radeon 9800 pro to something that has dual DVI? it would be able to acclelrate ur moniter and you'd get something like 200% better performance. as i recall, ati released thier X1600 for AGP and it offers Dual DVI. even one dual-link DVI port! i know that this is the last thing you want to here but it would give u MUCH better performance.

 

[taylorstrait]

things that haven't worked:
- making the 7000 primary
- making the 7000 primary and disabling the 9800
- disabling write combing
- all levels of hardware acceleration (though disabling HA really kills performance...so it is accelrated)

things I will try:
- moving PCI slot
- removing both cards from windows device manager
- monkeying around in BIOS

Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[Steelski]

Does the display look that bad when in analog instead of DVI?
sell the two cards and get the x1600pro. it will perform almost the same. or maybee upgrade to an X series or 6 series card?

 

[Peter]

The 7000 is one incredibly slow graphics card, particularly if it's one of the ultra-cheap versions with SDRAM. Putting it onto the pathetic PCI bus of a normal desktop PC doesn't exactly improve things either.

Take the advice given above, and get a dual-DVI card for your AGP slot. Or run the lesser of the two displays off the VGA port of your AGP card.

 

[Hardlin]

If you are going to stay with your existing hardware, remove the AGP card and see if you get acceptable performance from the PCI card. It may be that your issue is actually with that particular card.

 

[taylorstrait]

Originally posted by: Peter

...run the lesser of the two displays off the VGA port of your AGP card.

This fixed my problem. Image quality isn't as high as dual DVI but there was no solution to the stuttering and lag problems with the PCI card. Guess I will have to manage until the next upgrade cycle. Thanks for your input, everyone!