Help/Questions About GPU/CPU

[zandre88]

Hey everyone,

So I have a question that I need some help with and I am not quite sure really where to put it. If this is the wrong forum to have this question placed in please feel free to move it. Anyways, if you take a look at my signature that is the computer in which this question is pertaining to. The CPU is running at stock as well as are the two HD5870s in crossfire. Here is my question/slash problem. A game I like to play a lot is World of Warcraft which isn't terribly graphically demanding and relies more on the processor I believe at least currently. Anyways, sometimes I like to watch a movie from the same computer on another monitor using Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player. Something of the sort usually .avi files at times .mkv files. However, when I attempt to watch the movie/television shows I have downloaded while playing WoW at the same time WoW starts to clip and lag tremendously bad. This does not have anything to do with my internet connection because it is quite good 95% of the time and also the lagging/clipping goes away once I close the video.

I am not sure why this is happening. Maybe the computer can't handle doing both? I mean honestly I thought a computer with as much as the one I have listed in my signature would be able to handle playing a game like WoW and watching a movie on a separate monitor without any troubles. In fact, I believe before I built this computer I would play on my Lenovo Ideapad which had a mid-range laptop GPU and an i7 and I could watch videos and play WoW without any clipping/lagging.

The weird part is that I am able to watch podcasts I have downloaded from iTunes (via iTunes Media Player) without any clipping/lagging problems. The problem only occurs with VLC Media Player and/or Windows Media Player. I am not sure if maybe Windows is not allocating the workload properly to the different cores and if I should maybe try to do that manually or what. If that is the case could somebody suggest an easy program that would allow me to do that.

Basically, I just think that with what this computer has it in component wise it should be able to play a mid-range demanding game like WoW and still be able to watch a downloaded video on a media player like WMP or VLC. Any help or ideas would be hugely appreciated. Also, if there is anything else you need to know from me to help you help me please feel free to ask.

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[-RockMan-]

To tell you the truth, I don't think you wear out your card like that by having a movie going and a mid range game going on.
However though if your mobo is crossfire ready, what you could do is setup 5870 [1] on the main monitor which has movie and 5870 [2] on the second one which has game on good but not demanding fps settings.

Personally, I would not game while watching a movie, depending on your cpu resources meter, it probably can't handle alot of big tasks like that while other programs in the background are still active.

Given that it might work out, it might not, but if your willing give it a shot and open taskmanager and look at your cpu resource meter and try it out.
If it starts to peak up past 75% and stays up there for a long time, then don't push your computer if certain stuff starts to freeze up and let it go for now.

Also set your cpu 1 and cpu 0 to the game itself and leave the rest to windows for it to have.
To do this, go in task manager go to processes, and look for a process for your game, it should WoW.exe, set it's affinity to 2 cores, and that might help things out more.
Just remember, when you reboot your computer or close the application all cores will go back to windows again like it is defaulted to.

 

[zandre88]

To tell you the truth, I don't think you wear out your card like that by having a movie going and a mid range game going on.
However though if your mobo is crossfire ready, what you could do is setup 5870 [1] on the main monitor which has movie and 5870 [2] on the second one which has game on good but not demanding fps settings.

Personally, I would not game while watching a movie, depending on your cpu resources meter, it probably can't handle alot of big tasks like that while other programs in the background are still active.

Given that it might work out, it might not, but if your willing give it a shot and open taskmanager and look at your cpu resource meter and try it out.
If it starts to peak up past 75% and stays up there for a long time, then don't push your computer if certain stuff starts to freeze up and let it go for now.

Also set your cpu 1 and cpu 0 to the game itself and leave the rest to windows for it to have.
To do this, go in task manager go to processes, and look for a process for your game, it should WoW.exe, set it's affinity to 2 cores, and that might help things out more.
Just remember, when you reboot your computer or close the application all cores will go back to windows again like it is defaulted to.

Hey,

Thanks for the response. My motherboard is crossfire ready and I do have my cards in a crossfire configuration. I am a little confused by your suggestions with the two monitors? Are you saying I should take them out of crossfire? Than run the game off of one of them and the movie off of the other one? Also WoW, from everything I have read relies a lot more heavily on the CPU than the GPU anyways. At least I believe that is the case since it is an older game engine and when it was first made the CPU was relied on more heavily than the GPU as games are now.

I will try to put the two cores strictly on the game itself and see what happens there. The thing that is odd is that I have pulled up task manager and watched the CPU usage while having the game playing as well as a movie and it never even comes close to approaching 75%. I don't think I've seen it go past 25% maybe 30% usage with both the game and movie running. I am smart enough to know if it was usage was sitting up that high constantly that I wouldn't be even attempting it but I don't think it has ever even spiked that high although I don't leave a usage meter up the entire time I'm on my computer.

The weird thing to me is that I have no problem playing a video podcast through iTunes and playing the game. No clipping/lagging or anything. It is only when I try to open up an .avi or .mkv file in WMP or VLC Media Player. However, if running a game like WoW and watching a movie causes that much stress to my CPU and/or GPU that it will cause it to run at unsafe levels than I won't do it. I just find it really strange that on my Lenovo Ideapad Y550P (Notebook) that has an i7 (much weaker than my desktop version) and a much less powerful NVIDIA GPU that it could watch a movie and play the game without skipping a beat.

Anyways, I will give the isolating of the cores on the game a shot and see what that does and than go from there. I just like to watch a movie and/or video that I've downloaded from time to time while playing certain games such as WoW because a lot of the time you'll just be doing laid back tasks like leveling professions, farming crap, etc, etc. That do not require you to be constantly paying attention to the game.

Thanks again all.

EDIT: Just a quick update. So I went ahead and isolated WoW onto the first two cores. It seems to be working almost perfect now with a movie playing alongside it. Very little if any clipping or lagging. I was monitoring the CPU Usage via the Task Manager for roughly a 20 minute period doing low demanding tasks within WoW and it never went over 20% usually hovered around 12-15% usage. I mean this is an i7 950 I feel like it should be able to handle these two items without a ton of trouble. Its now like I'm asking it to play Crysis or some other extremely high demanding FPS on ultra graphics while also trying to play a movie. I guess the whole problem was that Windows wasn't allocating the work properly to the cores?

 

[-RockMan-]

hehe, yeah I meant to be more clear, you need to crossfire if you wanted certains apps, games on what screen, and the other to have active movie going on.
Crossfire isn't hard to setup up at all, it's like me SLIed with my GT430's on my mobo and have certain stuff be moved onto another monitor if needed be.

Your cpu the Core i7 950 should be able handle those tasks no problems, its a good quadcore so I see where you are questioning about the performance of the cpu.
The only main things I am concerned about with your semi solved problem, is which applications has most of the cpu resources to itself ?

Could be anti-malware/virus combo on standby, it could be chrome with 2 tabs open all day hogging some cpu usage or etc.
Other than that for now, it should be fine for now, not unless windows has error problem later on down the road.

Good Luck.