Dual Monitor Support Nerfed in 1.7

I've been using dual monitors with SL practically since I started. Until now (1.7), I’ve been able to keep the SL viewer stretched across a monitor and a half, which allowed me to put my inventory window, mini map, editor window, and statistics bar over on monitor 2 while leaving a free, unobstructed, nearly full-screen view on the monitor 1. While it's always been true that running SL in such a big window has yielded lower FPS than I'd like, up until now it had always been worth the tradeoff. The panoramic width of the window spread across the two monitors made the feeling of immersion in the world so much more real and the clear field of view on monitor 1 made building soooo much easier, especially for large projects, that prior to l.7, the corresponding minor loss of FPS was easy to justify.

However, since 1.7 was released, the loss is no longer minor. My FPS has been atrocious. If I'm alone in a good area, the best I can get is about 8 or 9 FPS with all options turned off except for shine. Before, I was getting almost double that with all options turned on except for anisotropic. That’s not the worst of it though. I mentioned that’s the rate I get when I’m alone. Well, as soon as three or four more people show up, my FPS drops to about 2. Even worse, moving the camera has devastating affects on frame rate, whether I’m alone or not. Move the camera, and after a few seconds my FPS to drops to 1 or below and then stays there until I touch an arrow key to return the camera to normal position, at which point the FPS instantly shoots back up to 8 or 9.

If I put the viewer window on just one monitor, my FPS skyrockets to 25-30, and the slowdown from camera movement is only a drop of couple of FPS. This is true regardless of which monitor the window is on. However, if I move the window so that it overlaps both monitors even by just one column of pixels, FPS drops right back to 8 or 9, and the severe camera problems resume. This happens no matter how large or small the window is. If it's on one monitor, it’s smooth sailing, but if it's the slightest bit on two, everything goes to hell.

Nothing like this was happening prior to 1.7. Clearly something has changed in the way SL works with multiple monitors. Is anyone else experiencing any similar results? LL, can we please do something about this? Using dual monitors is an integral part of my SL experience. Being used to two, and having them both sitting right in front of me, but being forced to use just one is extremely irritating.


Here are my system specs, if it helps:

2.54 GHz Pentium IV
nVidia Quadro FX 3000 256MB graphics card
768 MB PC1066 RD RAM
Dual Samsung Syncmaster 191T+ flat panel monitors
Soundblaster AudigyII ZS
Windows XP Pro SP2 fully up to date
All drivers & Direct-X fully up to date

I have always had a serious slowdown with SL running duel monitors unless I use the "spanned" type desktop. Its the one where the desktop image would be stretched across the two monitors. Any other option killed frame rate badly for me, I dunno why.