Second Life and ATI Radeon HD5750 & HD 5770

[Rosaria Constantine]

I'm so sick of running sl on an integrated graphics chip.  Going to buy a new desktop.  Looking at the ATI Radeon HD5750 or HD5770, but don't want to buy until I hear some feedback about either of these cards.  I can't find very much regarding compatibility with sl and of course as they are newish cards, sl does not officially support them.  Does anyone have any experience/advice with these cards.  It would be much apprectiated.

[DR Dahlgren]

SL has always had, and continues to have, issues with ATI cards. While driver updates etc can make a big difference, the only cards I have had contiued good performance from are NVidia. My latest is a 9800 series and it works great. You might, if your main use is SL, reconsider your purchase of ATI. No recommending anything, just giving you my experience.

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[Nyll Bergbahn]

Hi Rosaria!

I'm not running either of those cards but I currently run SL on an ATI Radeon X1500 card at mid settings with little problem and have a new computer on order with the HD 5850 card. The two cards you mention are some way below ATI's top end 5850 and 5870 cards in terms of performance (and also price!) but should run SL very happily indeed. If cost is a concern, consider also the previous version of the 5770, the 4770, said to outperform the newer card in many respects but then the 5770 has Direct 11x support while the 4770 has only 10.1x support. Note that the 5770 is a full height card so check space. The 5750 I believe is more like a less powerful version of the 5850.

The NVidia alternatives to the two you mention are probably the GTX 250 and GTX 260 if you want to look at them.

I would suggest you do some research on the internet as there are a number of comparison reviews between the 5750 and 5770 and either of these against the NVidia alternatives.

Hopefully someone actually using one of these cards for SL will chime in.

Nyll

[Rosaria Constantine]

Thanks Nyll,

yeah price is definitely a consideration which is why I'm looking at the mid range cards . I have had a look at a few of the online reviews on these cards, but so far have found no sl specific information/advice.  Several people have mentioned the NVIDIA 9800 or 8800, but systems with these cards are few and far between and there is no way i am going to build one myself .

I will check out the GTX cards too.

Obviously the Radeon cards have Direct 11x support, but I am assuming that this will not really have any effect on SL.

Would love to hear from someone running these Radeon cards - maybe the fact that there is no mention of them means they are running fine, but I just want to be sure before I buy a system for SL that doesn't run SL.

 

[Nyll Bergbahn]

According to information quoted by Ella McMahon in jira issues relating to the 5700 and 5800 series ATI Radeon cards, both series are on the new gpu_table for Viewer 2. I can't locate that new gpu_table so if Ella reads this, I'm hoping she posts a link.

Nyll

[Irene Muni]

AFAIK the gpu_table.txt archive is in the Second Life folder in our computers (the main Second Life folder that create the installer).

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Thanks Irene. It's in the main folder as you said and all the new ATI cards from the 5700 to 5900 series are there.

Whew! At least I can relax myself now knowing my soon to arrive computer with the 5850 will work.

Nyll

[Irene Muni]

YW

And congratulations for your new computer!!

[Rosaria Constantine]

Thats great - thanks guys.

I was looking everywhere to locate the gpu table, no wonder I couldn't find it on the blog.

Now I'm going to go and click BUY for that new computer and say goodbye to integrated GMA950!

 

[Irene Muni]

You're welcome