Dual Monitors & DirectX Slowdown Bug

[Paul King]

How many others get massive editing slowdowns when driving ArchiCAD 11 with dual monitors?

ArchiCAD 11 works well for me with 2 monitors IF and ONLY IF the second monitor is first deactivated in the driver software before starting ArchiCAD.

Once ArchiCAD is running, I can reactivate 2nd monitor again and everything works very well. I can even expand OpenGL ArchiCAD windows across the two screens & navigate and edit in 3D and the software does not skip a beat.

If I launch ArchiCAD with both monitors active however, the DirectX generated overlay ArchiCAD uses to give visual feedback during editing slows down to a crawl in 3D OpenGL windows - so an operation normally taking a fraction of a second now takes several seconds to respond with feedback, even on high end hardware - making ArchiCAD virtually unusable.

Can anyone on PC run AC11 on dual monitors without this problem in 3D windows? If so, what hardware and graphic driver version are you using? What screen resolutions?


(Whoops! - I voted "No", when I should have votes "Yes" to my own question! - ignore that result!)

[Rob]

Paul,

is your GFx card NVIDIA 6 or 7 series on XP?
We are having real s*h*i*t*s with them on AC11 (running them in dual view mode on 2 monitors).

more here:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=103398&highlight=kliment#103398

[Anonymous]

I've been running 2 monitors on xp for a long time now with a variety of different video cards. (however, not the series mentioned in the previous post) I've never had a problem.

[Paul King]

Rob wrote:
Paul,

is your GFx card NVIDIA 6 or 7 series on XP?
We are having real s*h*i*t*s with them on AC11 (running them in dual view mode on 2 monitors).

more here:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=103398&highlight=kliment#103398

Hi - I have tested using Ati X1900XT, and Ati HD2900XT (both 512 Meg) , and on 64 bit Vista& 64 bit XP , and using Dual Core Athlon and Intel Quad Core PC's. Always the same problem
Have not tested Nividia on dual monitors though have certainly heard several reports of editing slowdown on 8 series Nvidia's with single monitor.

Are you running 32bit or 64 bit XP? Could it be a 64 bit OS only issue?

[Erika Epstein]

I have an nvidia card on my laptop on which AC11 kept crashing. My resolution included updating the bios and then updating the drivers as well as some other crucial system updates which depended on the bios being updated first.

To accomplish this I had to call the laptop manufacturer's techsupport, HP, and they logged me in to a special site where the bios and other updates could be found.

I haven't had any trouble [yet] when I hook up a second monitor.


HTH

[Paul King]

Erika wrote:
...I haven't had any trouble [yet] when I hook up a second monitor.

Hi Erika - are you on 32 bit version of XP with your laptop?
Have you tried the editing speed/responsiveness in an OpenGL 3D window with & then without 2nd monitor attached as an extended desktop when you boot up?

I think the second monitor needs to be set up to extend / make existing desktop view wider for the problem to be invoked rather than acting just as a larger replacement to standard laptop screen - i.e it shouldn't just be showing same desktop view at higher resolution the way most most people default to when plugging monitors into laptops...?

Cheers

[Paul King]

Dom wrote:
I've been running 2 monitors on xp for a long time now with a variety of different video cards. (however, not the series mentioned in the previous post) I've never had a problem.

Hi Dominik - are you running 32 or 64 bit XP? I am guessing it might make a difference...

[Paul King]

I notice from my further testing that the issue indeed requires an extended rather than cloned desktop, and is heavily affected by display resolution.

Running both monitors in 1600x1200, the extended desktop slowdown exhibits in the form of random half second pauses or "catches" while editing or moving mouse pointer around - annoying and disruptive but not terminal if you don't work in 3D much anyway.

Running one monitor in it's native 2560x1600 landscape mode and the other in portrait mode in it's native1600x1200 (or 1200x1600) however, the effect is doubled or worse - pauses last for several seconds - after every mouse movement over editing pallet - selecting the right editing tool from pallet is a nightmare!

Yet if second monitor is not enabled during start-up of ArchiCAD, and is enabled once ArchiCAD is going, everything runs as sweet as a nut on maximum resolution.

Problem seems to apply to 64 bit Windows only (both XP & Vista) - under Windows XP 32 bit, same file started up with same dual monitors active at maximum res. seems to be ok.

Would consider downgrade to 32bit OS if I didn't have to give up half my addressable RAM to do it

[Rob]

I have found Vista (as well as XP, however both 32-bit) as buggy as hell in terms of GFx driver handling. I do not know what those MS idiots do but some time when I install an update (either for Vista/XP) it stuffs up all bloody GFx drivers.
Anyway, AC11 behaves strangely on Vista in my opinion... whole OS looks dodgy I have bitterly regretted I got one just being curious, however that is a different cup of tea...

[Anonymous]

Hi Paul

Have you been able to resolve your dual screen issues?

I am just about to upgrade to V11, Vista and a new machine which I want to run with dual screen. Any advice?