Second Life Viewer

[Nalates Urriah Contributor]

I'm curious what type of performance people are getting from their computers in Second Life. If your curious too, post your information here. It will be helpful for comparisons if we know which viewer and version and a bit about the computer.

In the viewer in Help->About is the viewer and system information.

Second Life 3.2.5 (245937) Nov 30 2011 13:43:09 (Second Life Development)
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2517.67 MHz)
Memory: 3070 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit Service Pack 2 (Build 6002)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

Add which graphics setting you usually use, e.i., High or Ultra. And of course the FPS you are getting. Press Ctrl-Shift-1 to open/close  the Viewer Stats. The viewer FPS is at the top right. One has to guessimate what their average FPS rate is or give a range. With this developement viewer on Ultra I get 5 to may be 15 FPS. The longer the viewer runs the slower it goes.

If you want to know more about your system and what it is doing, check out the free programs CPU-Z and GPU-Z.

Edit: Several people have pointed out this is NOT a scientific or highly meaningful comparison. That is true. But, my hope is the information would be interesting and hopefully reveal some patterns. Most of all I wanted it to be easy for people to collect information and add it, so we would get lots of posts. I am not into asking people to change their settings, visit a location, look at whatever, report bandwith use and all the factors that affect render performance... that just seems too tedious. SL is mostly recreation. I think asking you to just copy your Help->About and tell us your FPS, is asking a lot.

I appreciate all the posts people have made. Thanks!

Ask your friends to post their information too.

Edit 2: Inara Prey recently wrote an article on Comparative Viewer Frame Rate performance. This is a handy reference and a more scientific comparison 'viewer-wise'. Using the same hardware Inara tested each viewer and provided the results. There are some interesting results.

[Sephy McCaw Honored Resident]

If you want your fps back I would suggest you go back to the 3.1 viewer as the viewer 3.2 have some bad rendering problems which are fps killers, I don't believe it matters what your hardware specs are.. Those viewers just do not work in my opinion.

[Catwise Yoshikawa Advisor]

Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2 (1102) May 14 2011 18:19:22 (Phoenix Viewer Release)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8200  @ 2.66GHz (2666.71 MHz)
Memory: 3583 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 6.14.0011.8634
OpenGL Version: 3.0.0

34-36 FPS

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Second Life 3.2.1 (244864) Nov 10 2011 10:33:28 (Second Life Release)

Same Computer

14-15FPS

Edit: Both in same sim, with 10MB adsl connection

[Innula Zenovka Helper]

Don't you require a bit more information for the results to be meaningful, like something about my graphics settings and connection details, and what sort of place I'm in when I check the fps?  For what it's worth,  yesterday I was using

Nirans Viewer 3.2.5 (8) Nov 30 2011 09:02:14 (Nirans Viewer)

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X3 435 Processor (2893.66 MHz)
Memory: 3072 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit (Build 7600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

On a quiet sim with a lot to render, but only two people about,  I was getting ~28 fps with my settings on Niran's defaults for Ultra (lights, shadows, ambient occlusion and the whole shooting match for high quality pictures).   Then, as an experiment, I tp-d to the busiest place I could think of, Old Lar's House, where there were 36 people in draw distance and it would be pointless to use those settings under normal circumstances, and I was getting ~10 fps.  

I'm in the UK and I've got a 30Mb cable connection.

[pewee Xue Honored Resident]

Second Life 3.2.1 (244864) Nov 10 2011 10:33:28 (Second Life Release)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz (2405.49 MHz) Memory: 8192 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 280/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.7533

OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

my framerate on my platform 500 meter is ~80

in my Linden house ~65

Graphics on Mid

and with graphics on high in my Linden house ~55-60

and with

Second Life 3.2.4 (245106) Nov 14 2011 08:52:00 (Second Life Development)

the framerates are a little higher

in my Linden house 59-67 on high graphic setting

and 80-85 om my 500 meter platform on a high graphic setting

ps the platfom is on a full sim, not on linden land.

[Thrayce Lanley]

CPU:  Intel E5300 2.6GHz Dual-Core

RAM:  4GB DDR2 667

HDD:  320GB WD 7200RPM 

GRAPHICS:  Zotac Nvidia GTS-250 Eco 1GB

OS:  Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (streamlined, no unnecessary services, nothing running in background when in SL)

CONNECTION:  High-Speed Cable (not sure about speed, but no waiting usually, so no complaints)

VIEWER:  Niran's Viewer 5b (latest iteration) running full-time in ULTRA.  Shadows, SSAO, 2xAA, DoF.

FPS:  18-25 on a good day in a sparsely-populated sim. 12-18 in a populated SafeHub.

Cheers! 

[Nalates Urriah Contributor]

To do a technically accurate comparison, yes we would like to provide much more information. But, that is way too tedious.

May be adding one's graphics settings would not be asking too much. But, this is more casual curiousity than a scientific effort.

[Nalates Urriah Contributor]

I have used most of the viewers available and have about 8 installed now. They do preform differently. But, I'm more interested in how hardware is performing. I expect to see some drastic differences based on CPU and video cards. Video card drivers may make a difference to.

Spread the word and get more people to add their performance information.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

On my gaming machine:

Second Life 3.2.4 (245931) Nov 30 2011 21:49:35 (Second Life Beta Viewer)
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU         E8400  @ 3.00GHz (2983.02 MHz)
OS Version: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic-pae #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 15:17:35 UTC 2011 i686
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2

OpenGL Version: 4.1.0 NVIDIA 280.13

Custom settings, somewhere between high and ultra, render radius 96m, shadows, no DoF. ~40FPS on a sim with 15ppl, 60 on an empty sim. It's frame-rate limited to 60fps by vid driver, so nothing more than that will show. Runs all day without crashing, uUnless I trigger a bug that is (too lazy to report bugs)

[Linda Brynner Member]

Hardware at the moment seems irrelevant. All 2/3 viewers above 2.7.4 perform terribly bad no matter what is what i understand inworld. Some seem to be lucky.

With 2.7.2, and all V1 based viewers i have 35 fps on average, 70 fps in an empty sim. Since 2.7.4,  Firestorm (v2/3 source based) and all other 2/3 based viewers it went to 10-15 fps, 25 fps in a total empty sim, draw distance 168.

I have all shadows off btw. And i always have HTTP turned off since HTTP on is seriously counter productive for me since its invention.

Duo core T9400, Vista Home SP2, Nvidia 9800MGT 512, ddr3, 4 ddr3 gig main mem, video 256 bits bus width, OpenG 3.0.

It doesn't matter much how i set all settings in SL preferences, low, ultra, advanced tweaking, upgrade my graphics driver and set 3D performances in the Nvidia 3D settings, but that's what i understand inworld as well. Pretty much nothing helps to improve.

At this moment V2/3 viewers perform much worse than V1 iterations. Only top machines seem to be able to have a reasonable performance is what i see and hear confirmed inworld. But is that so? i7 core, nvidia 500-like-top-version... they perform the same like my machine, really nothing helps other than lucky combinations one has the magic specifications for SL.

I have reported this to LL making certain first they have nothing to "shoot" at to me... it remains silent from HQ till now, except a few automized/mechanical like replies which made no sense at all, lol.

Interesting, because the actual graphical output hasn't changed since 2.7.2 if shadows are turned off and without the new lighthing shaders and DOF. Texture rendering seems ok if i turn off HTTP, however just nothing helps to cranck up basic fps to a playable level.

Avatar physics and mesh, it pretty much has ruined SL for many... since a major part in SL is still on an older viewer because 2/3 based viewers kills their performance.

I skipped V3.1 btw. I read that it has a better performance. Perhaps i will test it, but i fear the worst already,