Need Techy Help with Running SL Better

[Suki Pelazzi]

'Hello Everyone, 

Its been a few months that ive spent more than a few hrs in SL, mainly because its like all of a sudden my computer cant handle it? 

im constantly freezing up, crashing, glitching, etc etc. even when im just standing ijn my house while typing in IMs it will freeze up for like 3 minutes mid convo. 

i dont have time for that! 

Basically IRL my dad is great with computers, but he doesnt know SL so he wouldnt know exactly how to fix this issue. I run all the proper tests for viruses etc. and i know i have a decent PC. I BELIEVE i need more memory, but could that be the only reason for this bull? or could it be something else? 

my inventory is also at 94K.. could THAT be it? because otherwise my PC runs fine.. 

or maybe is there another viewer i could use that wouldnt act like this? currently im using firestorm beta 4.5.1, im not sure if thats a crappy one, but i know for a fact i really dislike the general SL veiwer.. unless someone insists i use it.

If youve read this far, i highly appreciate you helping me out, i will provide as much tech info as i can - and please feel free to comment with whatever more tech info i should post.. because im not techy myself.

Windows Edition: Windows 7 Ultimate

System rating: 4.6 

Processor: AMD Phemon(tm) II X4 840 Processor 3.20 GHz

Installed Memory: 4 GB

System Type: 64-Bit

 

if theres any other information i should include please let me know.. otherwise if someone could help me out with some ideas so i could get sl running normally again.. id really like to be able to stay inworld.

Thanks much!!

Suki

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Suki Pelazzi wrote:

if theres any other information i should include please let me know..

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The two most important things for SL are your internet connection and your graphics adapter.

Your connection doesn't need to be all that fast, I rarely see bandwidth over 300kbs, but it does need to be very stable. So can you give some details about that? Do you use a cable or wifi? What ISP do you have? What's your upload/download speed? What type of router/modem/network adapter do you use?

You didn't specify what kind of graphics card you have. For SL it's highly recommended to use a dedicated video card, not the graphics adapter on your motherboard which is usually not only very slow in comparison, but also uses system RAM rather than its own memory. SL content is pretty much completely unoptimised, so your graphics card is bombarded with lots of data (geometry and maps). So the question obviously is: what kind of graphics adapter do you use?

One other thing you could post is the specified version of the system rating you post. Is the 4.6 an anomaly or are all subscores close to that?

With a dedicated video card I'd say 4GB of system RAM is enough. Most SL viewers are 32 bit so won't use more than 2GB if I'm not mistaken, even on a 64 bit system. However, if you run other software simultanious with SL (like 3d or 2d sofware), 4GB might not be quite enough. Just open your task manager to see if you run out of physical memory.

[Orca Flotta]

my inventory is also at 94K.. could THAT be it? because otherwise my PC runs fine..

No, your invent only has a minimal effect on your speed. Although 94k is quite huge, you fashion victim. :smileyvery-happy: And of course your PC otherwise runs fine, unfortunately though SL isn't like any other application.

Basically system freezes are caused by either bad connectivity or bad graphics.

The graphics problem can be sorted quite easily by adding a good gpu to your system. Nvidia GTX series comes highly recommended for SL. But that upgrade of the GPU might an upgrade of the power brick (PSU) and maybe the mother board necessary as well. It will cost you money. Or are you on a laptop? Too bad, you're basically mucked. :smileysurprised:

Connectivity is a more complex problem. Conduct a speedtest and find out if your ISP delivers what they promise. Do one local test and one to Dallas, TX and copy/paste the results to this thread. If the result is far below what your contract says complain! And don't let them give you stories.

Oh, and for fux sake, plug your computer into the router! Don't do wireless. And always make sure you're the only one in your household using the connection when you're in SL.

[Poenald Palen]

This is in basic viewr mode catagory? You may need to use advanced to do the below stuff. If you are interested in the tech, I bet you are not afraid of the advanced settings or even the developer menu's!

Help menu then lag meter. It may help point you in the right direction. I bet it is ping time, this is a network thing and maybe also another person on the net. Maybe something downloading in the background.

Plus, did you see the SL wiki entry or knowledge base article yet? Here it is: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-improve-Viewer-performance/ta-p/1316923

It sounds like ping time to me. Ctrl+Shift+1 plus looking at ping time, which is sort of near the top. The freezing reminds me of this type of thing.

I don't think it is your RAM or PC. SL runs on old Pentium 4 (single SPU, slower ram speeds even running at 333mhz bus speeds and AGP Gpu)though I am sure the system reqs say something more. GPU's though, this is another issue and you end up turning off most features when usind old AGP cards. They sometimes have the shader support, but the AGP system is slow, RAM is slow and so on. So, very low frames per second.

If it is network, your third party viewer may or may not have the automatic latest client download option, so this may not apply. But, turn this off if you want to not get it downloading stuff when you start up the viewer. 

Just press cntrl + P or use the "Me" menu and "Preferences." and toward the bottom tab, maybe even the bottom tab at the left side there is an entry for automatically downloading viewers, maybe try choosinig to manually download them. Not only that, but a check box for taking part in test viewers.

Sometimes I change the invetory download from http to no http (I think it uses UDP then, network protocal stuff) and it helped a whlie back when I ended up just having to uninstall SL as much as I could and delete any folders it left and reinstall. That was a while back, it had some odd issue with the old folders and HTTP was strange. I still turn HTTP off sometimes, I swear it works with fewer bumps. The main reason may be my RAM is slow, HDD slow and whole system basically. So, maybe HTTP is to quick and I get a slow down as it handles inventory or textures? Not sure, but I try and feel that it helps. I also turn off water when I am not seeing it or need to drive. It takes a few FPS off. But, lagging on chat? I think it is ping times or network issues.

[Orca Flotta]

This is in basic viewr mode catagory?

Yeah, Peonald, this section is more or less dead since LL stopped making that shtoopid basic viewer. They are just too lazy and uncaring to remove this section from the forums. But now I quite like it again since it seems just the right category if you don't know if your problem is viewer or server side.

[Poenald Palen]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

This is in basic viewr mode catagory?

Yeah, Peonald, this section is more or less dead since LL stopped making that shtoopid basic viewer. They are just too lazy and uncaring to remove this section from the forums. But now I quite like it again since it seems just the right category if you don't know if your problem is viewer or server side.

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Yeah, someone may think "no, I don't program servers" and "Oh, I am not advanced!" so this works I guess. Funny stuff. Bugs are so aplenty that some of them seem like normal features

[Rhys Goode]

My old computer was similar to yours, I found it very helful to use the Windows Performance Monitor while I was running SL.  I found that unless I was careful about running other programs in the background, I would run out of RAM, SL would start page swapping to disc, and my performance would crash.  Also, for some reason, just having voice enabled, without even using it, caused a lot of page swapping, and that cut my framerate down a lot all by iteself.  Running in a window, rather than full screen also helped me.

And I agree with others, your connection can be crucial.  I pay very close attention the the figure for dropped packets, at the bottom of the report you see from help>about.  If that is more than a few 0.1%, your performance will suffer.  Running with wifi can easily (but not always, it depends on the modem and external interference) boost the packet loss up to 5 or 10%, even on a link that tests out find for upload/download speeds.