Why does Second Life not recognize my graphics card?

[Gianni Broda]

I got a new desktop yesterday but everytime I try to log into Second life it says it does not recognize my graphics card and gives me the most basic of graphic settings and wont allow me to even check basic shaders. What went wrong? I know my graphics card is good enough to run shadows. I have a  AMD Radeon HD 8470D

 

AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 3900 Mhz, 1 core 2 logical processors and im operating on windows 8

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life Answers

As daft as it might sound, you probably need to pay a visit to the AMD Radeon website and get the latest drivers installed for your graphics card.

Let us know what happens when you do please, by clicking on "options" at the top right hand corner of your original post and "edit" to add more.

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi GIanni,

Have you installed the latest version of the viewer? Viewers determine compatibility with your card by examining a file called gputable.txt, which is included in the bundle of things that make up the viewer application. LL added your family of cards to that gputable.txt file in the latest release, which is 3.6.11.283787. If you are running the beta viewer, the "Project Interesting Viewer" or a third party viewer, the gputable.txt file may be out-of-date. Firestorm is usually pretty current, you might try that viewer.

If you don't want to use the latest SL viewer and you are computer savvy, you might be able to find the gputable.txt file from the latest LL download and use it to replace the gputable.txt file in whatever viewer you are using.

I don't know where you'd find it on a PC, but on a Mac, right click the SecondLife viewer application icon and select "Show Package Contents". Then navigate to "Contents->Resources" and you'll see gputable.txt there. Copy it and then navigate in the same way to the contents of the viewer you are using and paste it in the folder where you find that viewer's gputable.txt.

Good luck!

[Nalates Urriah]

When you ask a technical question post your system's specs. You can get them from the viewer's Help->About...

Be clear whether you are running a laptop or desktop.

If you aren't everyone guesses at what may be the problem. You'll have to sort through all the bad guesses.

Laptop love to conserve power. So, your laptop may be turning off the graphics processor and using CPU processing to save power. Thus the SL Viewer never sees your actual video card.

In your video control panel you should be able to set specific settings for individual games. In that section setup a settings preference for SL. Have it use performance over poswer savings to turn on the video card for the SL Viewer.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Dear OP,

All Windows 8 Users

1) Manually apply ALL the Required and Important patches for Windows 8 from Microsoft. A new Win 8 PC needs 4-5 iterations of this to get them all. The easiest way to do this is to:

.... a) Enter Desktop Mode
.... b) Launch Internet Explorer
.... c) Right-click on the options area of the Browser and turn on Menu & Status Bar [and any other of the old standards you like]
.... d) Tools / Windows Update.
.... e) Select the CUSTOM button so you can monitor and select the downloaded options to install
.... f) Repeat until all are DL'd and installed

Note: Don't install the Bing Desktop. Also, don't install any optional Windows Live components unless you have an email account with Microsoft.

2) Identify the Video / Graphics system in your PC and get the Windows 8 drivers direct from the Video System manufacturer.

.... http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

.... http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

.... http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect/graphics

3) If you just performed the items 1) & 2) above, please reinstall SL again using the official version from Linden Lab. [be sure to do a clean install

.... http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-Second-Life/ta-p/1375231

Here is the Windows 8 Manual System File cleanup procedure since it's not in the procedure above.

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

.... 1) Open C:\Users\(PC Login Name)\AppData\Local and delete the contents of the SecondLife folder.
... 2) Open C:\Users\(PC Login Name)\AppData\Roaming and delete the contents of the SecondLife folder.
.... 3) Uninstall Second Life using the Programs and Features tool in the Windows Control Panel.
.4) Download and install the latest release of the Second Life Viewer from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/.

Note: (PC Login Name) is the Windows 8 User Account Login Name

If you can't see the files or folders described above:
.... 1) Using File Explorer navigate to -> Libraries / Computer / ( C: ) / Users /
.... 2) Press the Continue button to get permission to obtain permanent permission edit this directory.
.... 3) From the View drop-down menu option select Options & Change Folder & Search Options
.... 4) Select the View Tab
.... 5) Under the Hidden Files and Folders options click on the - O Show hidden files, folders & Drives radio button
.... 6) Push the Apply Button then the OK button.

You should be up and running in no time.

P.S. I recommend these steps on all Windows 8 PC's and Laptops, specifically designed for Windows 8 with high-end Graphics Sub-Systems or Graphics Cards.

P.S.S. - On Upgraded PC's & Laptops - If your computer was not designed specifically for Windows 7 or Windows 8 these steps may still help. There are many "Designed for Vista" PC's that don't upgrade well to Windows 8. If your PC was designed for Windows XP, Windows 8 is usually NOT a viable option, practically speaking.

[Lindal Kidd]

I concur with Second Life...I don't recognize that graphics card model either, and neither does Tom's Hardware.  The latest Radeon cards don't go over 7970.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Here is the link to the report about this graphics processor from www.notebookcheck.net

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8470D.96605.0.html

"The performance of the Radeon HD 8470D differs depending on the benchmark. In synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark 11, final scores suggest better gaming performance when in practice the frame rates are slightly lower. In our gaming tests the HD 8470D was similar to the Trinity Radeon HD 7660G in the mobile A10-4600M and comparable to the average HD Graphics 4000 on Ivy Bridge chips. Therefore, very demanding games like Company of Heroes 2 will not run fluently on the APU (see below for detailed benchmarks)."

The statement "comparable to the average HD Graphics 4000 on Ivy Bridge chips" is worrisome Also, this processor is located towards the bottom of the list in the  Class 3 graphics offerings on this site.

The article has more details.