Ideal Nvidea Graphics Settings for SecondLife

[Extrude Ragu]

I wonder if you guys can help me. It's an odd question and a very specific one, please don't answer with things about the in viewer graphics settings, i'm not interested.

 

What I wish to know is, what are the optimum graphics card settings, in the Nvidea control panel NOT the viewer. To play SL with.

 

I can get SL to run smoothly, but I wonder what I can do with my graphics card settings to give me headway to up the graphics settings in SL.

 

My system is as follows;

 

Intel Core2Quad Q6600

4 GB DDR2 5300 RAM

Nvidea GTX 650 Ti Graphics

 

Thankou!

[Rhys Goode]

I have an Nvidea GTX 560M.

I get marginally better performance (faster fps) if I turn on anti-aliasing and anisotrpopic filtering in the Nvidia control panel (where I can set them for the specific SL client I am using), and then and turn both settings off in my SL client preferences.  I usually use Firestorm, but sometimes use the LL client, so I have application specific settings for each of them in the Nvidea control panel.

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CPU: Intel® Core i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz (2195.08 MHz)
Memory: 16362 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560M/PCIe/SSE2

 

[paula Mellow]

for the gtx 560Ti, any settings are good... except for the draw distance... increasing that will slow down the framerate.

the sim you are in has some affect on your framerate, in the magnum beta testing sim the framerate is always high it seems. (in the LL homes sims, the FPS seems to vary depending on draw distance, cpu and GPU)

 if you are finding that this is not the case, the problem is the CPU. because  a Intel Core2Quad Q6600 (a 2007 cpu, 2.4 GHz) a bit slow... but the upside is that a gtx560Ti is NOT the bottleneck in the system and the card is great for gaming.

i can get 30 fps without shadows or Anisotropic Filtering and Antialiasing on a hd2500 (intel pentium g2120 3.1GHz) the hd2500 is a gpu that approx 6 times SLOWER than a gtx560ti.  so you should be able to get 24 fps at the same settings.

 

having said that i know that using Anisotropic Filtering or Antialiasing on a HD2500 (INTEL g2120) will reduced your framerate from 30 (without any "hardware" settings AF or AA)  to 12.8... (ultra quality and speed detail 160 in tackleberry LL homes) and if you use shadows "for-get-a-bout-it" lol cause you are looking at 5-6 FPS... but when using a Nvidia card 560Ti it is all sunshine and rainbows! really! 

in short any Nvidia card gt 640 and higher is great. (Gt630v2 not sure about...) but the gt630v1 will do 60fps no shadows, ultra detail, 128 draw distance best case, with a g2120. 

 

 

TL;DR... on a GTX560ti, anything is good... except the draw distance will reduce the Framerate. your cpu speed plays a roll too. you should be able to get 24fps... in a LL home sim. on ultra settings, 128 draw distance.

BTW to see your frame rate in SL press  ctrl-shift-1... 

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Second Life 3.6.2 (278491) Jul 12 2013 00:55:07 (Second Life Beta Viewer)

CPU: Intel® Pentium® CPU G2120 @ 3.10GHz (3093.01 MHz)
Memory: 7107 MB ddr3 99924 1t 1600
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel® HD Graphics

[Suspiria Finucane]

DL and install the Geforce experience. It will maximize all your games to your card.

 

[Cincia Singh]

Haha not surprisingly SL is not on the GeForce Experience list of games it recognizes to optimize settings.

[Nalates Urriah]

The nVidia is better/faster at Anti-Alaising (AA). The problem is the card will AA the control panels, inventory, text, etc. The viewer's AA is slower but skips the panels and text. So, you get a crisp UI with viewer Aa and a soft UI with the card's AA.

Graphics Tweaking for Second Life is an article that while old gives you the information you need to tweak your card's settings.

The viewer is becoming more multi-threaded. So, advice to turn off all multi-threading for nVidia is out of date. Also, the viewer can make use of multiple video cards. But, not as well as other games.

There are no best settings for SL. Too much is dependendent on your personal preferences. Once you understand the various settings youcan  experiement to find the best settings for your preferemces and hardware.

[Innula Zenovka]

As Nalates suggests, graphics settings are more of an art than a science.   In addition to her article, you might also find this (rather old) one from Shopping Cart Disco a good basis for experiments.

The topic is sometimes discussed in the SLU Technical Help subforum -- might be helpful to look round there.   But I think the thing to keep in mind is that what matters isn't so much much the settings as what they actually achieve on your machine, which will partly depend on what you want to do in SL.

[Suspiria Finucane]

My bad, I was thinking of the manage 3D settings for the control panel set up. I should have looked before I posted. :matte-motes-agape:

[sodasullivan]

I tried this on my new Nvidia card and thought it wasa big mess, mainly becausee Nivida has no standards for Second Life. I find using the maunal setting inthe Nvida control panle much easier and more specific to Sl, but i would loveto be wrong. AAlso, Nalates article on viewer graphics she linked to should be mandatory reading for every resident of SL.

[kite013]

Um I have a question and I am going to be blunt about it.

 

I have a Nvidea Graphics card, but I was wondering if haveing GE Force Experience, that little program that optimizes game experience, dose Geforce experience work for second life, not the grahics card,  and if second life is my only game should I get rid of Geforce experience.

[Innula Zenovka]

GForce Experience, at least as I understand it, automatically adjusts some of your GPU's settings to optimise it for games you have installed.   However, it doesn't know anything about SL settings, so it won't help for SL.    I would get rid of it, as a waste of resources.

[WangYingII]

At an Amazon River class the Shopping Cart Disco reference  turns into a 404 Not Found and can be accessed at https://web.archive.org/web/20150627171858/http://shoppingcartdisco.com/digitallife/tutorials/tutorial-letting-your-graphics-card-do-the-heavy-lifting/