What to look for in a GPU for Second Life? What is most important?

[Madelaine McMasters 20,525]

Hi Nethya,

The concensus appears to be that NVIDIA cards play well with SL. Here's a searchable table of GPU benchmark ratings...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

It's only a rough guide, as the benchmarks may not work the GPU in the same way as SL. I would not trust the pricing data, particularly for older cards.

The GTX 660 should allow you to run SL on Ultra with a low draw distance. I run a GTX 680MX in my iMac. That benchmarks about as well as your candidate GTX660 and gives me 15-30FPS under Ultra, depending on scene complexity. Running the came GPU under Windows should yield even better performance.

Good luck!

[Madelaine McMasters 20,525]

Hi Nethya,

The concensus appears to be that NVIDIA cards play well with SL. Here's a searchable table of GPU benchmark ratings...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

It's only a rough guide, as the benchmarks may not work the GPU in the same way as SL. I would not trust the pricing data, particularly for older cards.

The GTX 660 should allow you to run SL on Ultra with a low draw distance. I run a GTX 680MX in my iMac. That benchmarks about as well as your candidate GTX660 and gives me 15-30FPS under Ultra, depending on scene complexity. Running the came GPU under Windows should yield even better performance.

Good luck!

[Lindal Kidd 12,293]

I ran a GeForce GTX 550 Ti with good results, and my GTX 670 is even better.

Pretty much any Nvidia GeForce card from the GTX 440 upwards ("upwards" is any higher first digit, so long as the second digit is 40 or more) will run SL.