Weird choppy movement, lag, framerate issues

[Shinja Ugajin]

Since last tuesday I have suddenly experienced some weird movement. Choppy like. I see avis moving fine but its like I see a slight bit of slow motion however. I noticed when my camera is off center from my avatar my framerates go up. If i center my camera at normal position or even move it closer to my avatar my framrates start to really drop. I'm starting to get like 5 fps for some reason. I'm not sure what's causing these issues. Mostly I wanted to know if it might be I need a new graphics card. I have done router/modem resets, speedtest, ping test and all of it looks fine. 

I am currenly using phoenix viewer 1.5 cause I cant currently handle mesh viewers. Here are my system specs

 

CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 550 Processor (3114.16 MHz)
Memory: 6112 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit (Build 7600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a/integrated/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.0623
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

I'm just curious cause last monday it all seemed fine, but then tuesday is when it all started to happen. I also should mention the saturday before last, Second Life had some weird issues going on. I'd freeze in some sims and get logged out. I'd crash during tp'ing and it happened so some friends of mine. It was like that until maybe mid sunday it all was finally stable. 

Main question is, if it is my GC, is i possible I could be running fine one day and the next SL decides my GC just isnt strong enough to perform like it once was?

[Knowl Paine]

Yes, it can work properly one day, and be overheating on the next day.

That's a nice processor speed, should be a decent machine.

You should consider purchasing a new Graphic Card. (technically, it's an additional Card, your PC has an integrated card that stays in the machine, you don't remove)

 

You can also adjust your setting in Preferences, lower the Graphics, create a low lag outfit for your avatar.

 

 

 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Your video card is 4 or 5 years old (at least).  It's also a very low end card (it never was anything but a low end card even when it was brand new).  Your card would struggle on SL 3 years ago.........and SL is much more demanding today than it was a year ago, let alone 3 years ago.  You might get some improvement at low settings but not much.  You're locked into low performance as long as you have that graphics card.  You need a better card.  Linden Lab does weekly upgrades to the server code on Tuesdays of each week........that coincides with your statement about when your issues started. 

If that card came with the computer I'm guessing your computer is about 2 to 3 years old for a manufacturer to use the card.  Manufacturers usually don't install graphics cards more than a couple years old in new machines.  If your computer is less than about 3 years old it probably has the PCI express interface so you probably can get a decent card for less than about $100 USD (if you want to stick with nVidia, I would look at the 200 series cards like a GT, GTS or GTS 250 PCI express x 16 with 1 GB video RAM)  There are two possible issues though with that card.  First your computer's motherboard has to have the PCI express x16 slot (I'm sure it has the PCI express x1 slot but I'm not sure you can get that card at less than x16.......you can shop Newegg or Tiger Direct to see).  The other problem is your power supply is almost guaranteed to be too under powered for that card........it wants 450 watts and your system probably has a 280 or 320 watt PS in it.  But power supplies and inexpensive (compared to other hardware devices in a computer........about inline with system memory).  They are also very easy to install.

 

[Loki Kahanamoku]

I am noticing that more and more.   It can depend on several things.  But, I have a brand new gaming computer with a I7 processor and top of the line video card with internet that is 25mbps.   I have noticed it depends on the veiwer as well.   Firestorm used to be the best and most stable until their last update.  Now, it is horrible with freezing screens and everything.  But, everyone I am talking to is experiencing the jerkiness and severe lag.  It is as if LL has changed something to cause people to have issues.   I don't know what it is. But, it is fine at times and bad at others. For example, I logged in this morning and was the only person on the sim.  There are no scripts on this sim and it was reset last night.   And, the lag was horrible.   That happens way too often.

[Rhys Goode]

Huh?  Firestorm choppy?  Not on my machine.  

I was listening to someone bitterly complain about all the SL lag in a sim the other day, so I checked the statistics panel, the sim was running at 45 fps, no time dialation.  And I was running at 40 fps, no sign of lag.

Now I know there are lots and lots of things that can go wrong, including software bugs in the viewer.  But most of the time when I have had a problem like OP describes, it turns out to be the intenet connection, often showing up as dropped packets.  Or my IP suddenly going from ping times of a few 10's of ms to a few 100's ms.  Or my IP suddenly going dead for 20 or 30 secs.  Your milage may vary, but thats where most of my lag and crashes come from.

 

[Qie Niangao]

All sorts of things may be wrong in the "Firestorm" case. The OP's problem, however, is clearly graphics card--or, if it's not, it will be. As Peggy points out, that was always a very low-end card, and now it really is obsolete. The report, however, was that it started lagging (even) worse than usual, so something must have precipitated that. The machine has enough memory that it's probably not the problem, although people often notice a change in SL performance when there's some other application competing for memory that they hadn't been running before the degraded performance.

So, in the OPs case, I'd suspect that this may be some new attachment they're wearing, causing (even) more viewer lag. Even if they fix whatever caused the immediate problem, however, they're still going to be miserable in SL until they get a decent video card.

Returning to the "Firestorm" case, yeah, who knows? Could even be the problem I mentioned above, of a new graphics-intensive attachment. But we'll never be able to suggest anything useful without knowing whether the statistics bar shows the lag to be sim-side (which does sometimes happen even on what should be an idle sim), or viewer-side.

[Karouu]

I actually started noticing this issue around the first week in October, during the time LL was once again upgrading stuff - I'm still experiencing it at random times...very frustrating!  I wonder if anyone from LL reads these forumns.

CPU:         Intel® Core i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz (3093.08 MHz)
Memory: 8079 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 640/PCIe/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.9636
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.20.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.4.0.697, Runtime: 1.4.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1
Vivox Version: 2.1.3010.6270
Packets Lost: 4/13031 (0.0%)