Best CPU for SL

[Amichai Shamen]

Hi all,

Im in the middle of a PC build, and I was wondering which CPU would be better suited to running Second Life.  I am trying to decide between a quad core 4ghz processor, and a six core 3.75ghz (or is it 3.5ghz, I forget) processor. Would the viewer benefit from the additional cores, or am I better off with the best quad core I can find?

[Sassy Romano]

Better graphics card

[Qie Niangao]

Heh. My first reaction was: "But that's not the question!" and then... yeah: If you can save enough with either of these CPUs to be able to afford even a slightly better graphics card, it's a sure win. 

For a given price point, however, and for typical real world desktop use, fewer, faster cores usually win over more, slower cores. That said, it won't be a disaster either way. (On Windows, you can watch how well load is balanced among cores from the CPU tab of the Resource Monitor, accessible from the Performance tab of the Task Manager.)

[Sassy Romano]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Heh. My first reaction was: "But that's not the question!"

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Well, it's not my fault that the wrong question was asked!

[Amichai Shamen]

Well, in truth, I didnt ask about GPUs because my guess is that a 12gb GPU cant really be beat...

[Sassy Romano]

Well, simply stating the amount of memory is irrelevant somewhat beyond a point with SL.  The same GPU with 4GB is going to be pretty much the same for example.

Anyway, the answer is not the amount of memory yet again, but how well that GPU is supported under SL's choice of OpenGL interface.

Either way, your CPU question is now irrelevant.

[Drew Bhalti]

Guessing trying to run one of those fancy "cad" graphics cards?  or the titan series cards?   yeah those might have TONS of memory on them. but they lack features which the gaming cards have.  so "but this has 12gb of ram"  does not mean diddly when it comes to gaming.   I ran a card with 512mb of ram and it was running better then my titan series with 6gb of ram.   why. because one is made for the purpose, the other was not.  

 

also cpu wise.  i7 or above.  would be a logical start. 

[NaomiLocket]

I haven't tried many CPU's so I can't answer that question. But for what people have been saying about graphics cards;

In terms of graphics card, the two major parts you'll need to consider are processing shadows and projection lighting. They tend to be the heavy hitters. But it is irrelevant if you don't run those settings and still end up with a slow pc. I would be more concerned about other bottlenecks, like how often the HDD is being read and written to. If processing even the most basic things comes to a crawl it all gets kinda mute.

[NaomiLocket]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

 

Either way, your CPU question is now irrelevant.

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A CPU question is never irrelevant. Games not built for mulitcores have a habit of stalling or crashing unless forced through settings to run on a single core. So asking if the viewer would benefit beyond a certain number of cores is always valid. From both a sanity and financial point of view.

[Sassy Romano]

Both are so similarly spec'd, already highly capable processors, with a likely highly capable GPU.

 

SL isn't something that benefits from multi core, the question is about performance in SL...

 

Thus the CPU question is irrelevant.