FPS drop

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

Hello,

I seem to be having issues with my FPS dropping from about 60fps to near 5fps in the last 2-3 months. I am running an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550Ti which is updated with the latest driver version (301.42). I recently did a clean reinstall of SL to try and fix the issue --- unsuccessful. This issue occurs no matter what sim I'm on. Could the GPU be overheating? Right now the temp is 67 degrees Celcius. Is that normal? I have nothing else running in the background. If SL is shut down the temp drops to about 32 degrees Celcius. I think I went into another issue ;)

Anyway, I checked Performance Tools and under Lag Meter it reads:

- Client: Client frame rate between 10 and 15; Possible cause: Too many images in memory

- Network: Normal

- Server: Normal

Statistics bar shows a 12.5fps, now up to around 25fps.

 

Frank

 

 

Second Life 3.3.4 (262321) Jul 24 2012 04:02:05 (Second Life Release) Release Notes

You are at 206,759.0, 327,583.0, 23.0 in The Strip located at sim10050.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.48.60:13008) Second Life Server 12.08.14.263480 Release Notes

CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 810 Processor (2593.55 MHz) Memory: 8184 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0013.0142 OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v6.4.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.10426

Built with MSVC version 1600 Packets Lost: 13/286,154 (0.0%)

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Since SL only gives you a possible cause, this is a long shot, but I can think of two things.

Either your viewer can't handle a normal amount of textures because something is wrong, or nothing is wrong with your viewer and it simply has to process too many textures.

You can look under your hardware options if the graphics memory isn't set too low. (ctrl-p, graphics tab, hardware button) It should be 512MB.

Too many images to process could mean you are wearing something with a crazy amount of textures. Try undressing completely and see if the fps go up.

As I said a long shot, but worth trying.

 

[Luc Starsider]

I don't know much about this, but it sounds to me as if your graphics card is running out of memory, and it has to start shifting stuff out to main memory or to disk. I don't know anything about your graphics card or it's specs, so I might be - probably am - WAY off.

I don't think it is because of changes to the viewer or servers. If that was the case we would have heard a lot more about it, I think.

The temperature I also think sounds about normal. In my own case, the temperature is frequently much higer than what you say. I don't experience such issues as you describe because of it.

Sorry I can't be of more help...

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Forgot to reply on the temperature, like Luc said, that shouldn't be an issue. The 550 Ti should be able to handle temps up to 100 C according to NVidia, not that I would recommend temperatures that high. 67 C under load sounds perfect if you ask me.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Is the FPS drop noticeable all the time or just sporadically? If all the time, try unticking 'Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects' in Preferences > Graphics > Hardware. The mesh viewers caused a problem for a few people like myself using AMD cards that cut fps from high figures down to around 2 to 7 fps and disabling VBO instantly fixes it. Why it only affects a few people I do not know and I can enable VBO on Niran's viewer with no issues at all, it's just the official LL viewer that causes the problem. Perhaps this issue is affecting some with Nvidia cards too so try it and see. If not that, we'll have to look at other possible causes such as a faulty card.

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

I took your advice and undressed lastnight, but no change at all. I mean the FPS was back to normal, but no significant increase. And in the hardware tab, it was set to the max (512MB).

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

Maybe I'll give EVGA a call. Maybe a defective card. I've had it since mid december of last year.

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

It is extremely noticeable. I get about 50-60FPS, but then all of a sudden it drops as low as 5FPS. I would say the issue has started about 2 months ago on/off. Last night it happened while I was visiting a friend who has a mesh house (Abiss Interior) and as I walked/flew around the FPS increased up to 10 then 20. I'll give EVGA call tomorrow. It could be a faulty card, but after almost 8 months?

[Mariano Ree]

So I'm having the same problem with my new EVGA GTX 560 SC (SuperClocked) card when ever I'm inside of a mesh building or near one. My game starts to freeze up dropping FPS below 10. Making the Game pretty much unplayable. This happens even with my GFX settings are on medium. My FPS only seems to drop when ever im in a mesh building or near a mesh building. Other then that it runs perfect even on ultra settings.

 

The thing is my old GFX card a VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 4670 Does not have this problem with mesh Buildings. It runs smooth on Ultra settings.

I made sure I uninsalled my old card Driver. Then installed the latest Nvidia driver GeForce 301.42 Driver. So I don't know what's going on..... I'm thinking its the NVidia card also since my old card runs it fine. When you call EVGA could you post what they say? Id like to know also.

My system specs:

Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q9300 2.50GHz (4 CPUs)2.5GHz

8GB RAM

Windows 7 64bit

750 PSU

[Nalates Urriah]

You can use GPU-Z, a free program, to see what you video card is doing and whether the card is over heating. You can also see the GPU load SL is placing on the card.

You can use System Explorer, another free program, to see what your CPU cores are doing and how much memory is being paged to the hard drive.

These programs may help you decide what is happening.

There are some mesh complexity render problems in the viewer. Some overly complex meshes are known to crash the viewer. 

There are Debug Settings you can use to try and figure out what is happening.

MeshMaxConcurrentRequests - Number of threads to use for loading meshes. The default value is 32. You can play with this number to see if the number of meshes in an area are affecting performance... may be too many overloading your system.

MeshUploadFakeErrors - Force upload errors (for testing).

You may also want to search the SLUniverse forum for your GTX550Ti. If anyone is having problems, they will be posting. Those hanging on SLUniverse are generally more advanced users. You can also search the SL Forum for those having problems.

You may want to try the SL Development viewer and see if it makes a difference. I find it much faster FPS-wise, but it has a lot of problems rith now. But, it should give you and idea if it is viewer or video card.

 

[Nala Spires]

67 celcius for gpu is very good really no worries there

now i see you have a lot of ram 8184 MB   so i guess you will not miss 1 gb the slow downs could be due to the cache getting fragmented you can make a ramdisk of the size of 1184 and set 1gb cache there why 184 mb extra ? so windows will not  start spamming you that your space on that hard drive  is low .... now ram disk will give you more fluid experience and possibly more stable fps here you can find instructions how to make ramdisk just ignore this guy target to put windows cache there and make a smaller  drive of 1184 mb good luck !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrecoX2nsOM

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

I was at my friends place who has a mesh house (Abiss Interior) and the fps dropped considerably, also noticed the textures on the pool deck were jagged (not from anti-aliasing which is at 4x) and seemed to jump around while walking/camming. I decided to teleport to Abiss Interior and it was the same fps issue, but without the jagged/jumping textures.

Yesterday, I was at Maven Homes for the Homestuff hunt and the fps dropped again. I logged off for the afternoon. I'm not sure if MH builds houses with mesh.

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

I have a GPU and CPU gadget from addgadgets.com via Windows 7 Gadget Gallery, but I will give your suggestions a try.

I called EVGA earlier and the guy recommended to drop the graphics settings to Low while on the latest graphics driver (301.42). If that doesn't solve the problem, he said to uninstall that driver, then run Driver Fusion to remove any excess components from the uninstalled driver and to install the later beta driver, which I think is 306.42. He also recommended PrecisionX and OC Scanner.

[FrankiePalmero Actor]

Thank you to everyone who have replied. I will keep you all posted.

[Mariano Ree]

Yeah, It sucks. Let me know if the Beta Drivers fix anything. Sucks that my older GFX card could handle the game on ultra with out FPS drops.