Recommendations?

[vierasidarov]

So I want to get a new desktop computer or laptop that can run Second Life very smoothly with shadows, on ultra and  just overall has great graphics.  Can anyone recommend a computer to look at around 750$ or under.

[Nalates Urriah]

I think in that price range you'll be a bit restricted. but, spend some time looking around for what is out there.

The i3, i5, and i7 4th generation CPU's are the newest and most costly. The i3 is low end and i7 high. They have 4 to 8 cores (CPU's in one chip) and the more cores the better. Fast memory  and 8gb or more is important for performance. An NVIDIA graphics card is a must because of the viewer's using OpenGL to render this world. NVIDIA's 200 to 700 series cards are the best with the 700's being the newest and fastest. The higher the second digit in a series the faster the card is. So, a 280 is better than a 440... and it gets complicated... go for 260 or 560... or 680... Fast storage is important and many have gone to SSD (Solid State Drive - like thumb drive/USB memory sticks, no moving parts) which when used as an internal storage device are really fast.

If you look through the list of computers Dell sells you'll find they still sell new Core2 Duo and Quad core systems (several generations of CPU back). But, you can buy refurbished used computers (not the same as refurbished new computers that have returned to the manufacturer because of failure in the first 90 days - these are the best deal) way cheaper. 

Good, new gaming machines tend to be costly. But a decent machine is an older Core2 Quad running 3.4 ghz with a good graphics card. You'll get 20 to 40 FPS with shadows.

However, even with a top of the line machine you cannot turn up every setting to the max. A US$3,000 machine with everything turned up and a draw distance set to 512m will suck. 

eBay has used refurbished units for $100 to $200. Get one of those and add a used graphics card like a 560 or 760 for $100 to $200 and have a pretty hot machine for half what you expect to pay for a new one. Google and Youtube have videos on how to upgrade computers.

[Orca Flotta]

Very good and useful recommendation by Nalates. Let me make it even more clear: SL needs good to exceptional graphics cards, CPUs are not as important. Any halfways modern Intel or AMD CPU will run SL without any probs. Neither will you need a particularly huge HD, and not an SSD at all. Put all your money into a nice beefy Nvidia GPU. You won't find any older generation than 5xx in the shops these days, and that's okay. I guess you can get some real good deals for cards 6xx and older. But be aware to buy a GTX card! GT series is not good, these are cards x20 up to x50. So get at least a x60, better a x70 or x80.

And yes, try to get a refurbished or otherwise used second hand machine. Forget the dual cores, Pentium and Celeron procis, try to get at least an i5 processor 2010 an later and you shouldn't have any problems. 4MB RAM should work but I'd go for 8.

[vierasidarov]

So thank you for all of  that information. It help a lot with what I needed to know. Although I am still a little confused on some things. I'm looking at graphic cards right now and these are the two I found that I think is what you two were talking about. Would you mind taking a look?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GeForce-GTX-680-N680GTX-Lightning-DDR5-2GB-Graphics-Card-VGA-PCI-Ex-/331265827727?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4d20fb638f

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-680-overclocked-4GB-Graphics-Cards-BRAND-NEW-/161373712986?pt=UK_Computing_Computer_Components_Graphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW&hash=item25929f725a

 

Also, would this graphics card be able to work on a macbook pro 2013? And would it help it run shadows smoothly? Or would I be better off buying a refurbished computer?

[Qie Niangao]

A MacBook Pro?  I don't think so. I'm no Mac expert, but as far as I know, those notebooks all come with embedded Intel HD4000 graphics subsystems, with no way to upgrade (and certainly no way to use a desktop graphics card).

Generally, notebooks are very considerably more expensive for comparable performance especially for graphics. If you don't need a notebook, you'll get much more bang for the buck with a desktop.

Those 680s are very nice cards indeed. I'm perfectly happy with a (slightly overclocked) 660; I use nearly Ultra settings but with short draw distance and no anti-aliasing because I much prefer that, but your requirements may make use of the extra capacity of the 680.

One caution: if you'll be adding a graphics card to a refurbished desktop, be sure it has (or you add) a big enough power supply to keep that graphics card happy.

[vierasidarov]

What do you mean by power supply? 

[Qie Niangao]

Power supplies such as these things. The reason it could be an issue in this case is that good graphics cards use a lot of power (and dissipate a lot of heat), more than the average desktop machine needs, so the power supply is one component of a refurbished desktop that's likely to need upgrading when a graphics card is added.

This used to be even worse. For example, the nVidia 4xx series was notoriously power hungry; successive generations of cards have delivered better performance for less power, and therefore less heat, and therefore less fan noise.

Oh yeah: cooling. It's possible you'd need to replace or add fans to a refurbished computer's case. I think that can wait until it proves to be a problem, if ever.