Best Base Unit to Buy for SL

[Emmie Silverspar]

Hi All

Please feel free to move this thread if I've posted it in the wrong section!

 

Please can someone give me some advice? I currently have a Dell Inspiron 1721 laptop and its not the best to run SL. I find that SL does lag quite abit. I know this could be down to my internet connection as well but I think I'm running at 10MB.

I'm thinking of buying a base unit to connect to my Samsung TV so I can play SL on my TV. What is the best base unit and graphics card to get? I dont have a big budget though, probably £300?

 

Thank you!!

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Well... I recently built a PC specifically for SL (purpose-built, runs nothing else) with the following specifications:

AMD Phenom X4 920, 4GB RAM, nVidia 9800GT, Linux... price: US$200.

If you want to actually get shadows and all the bells&whistles you'd probably want a beefier GPU, like the nVidia GTX460 1GB (NOT the 768MB... if price is an issue go with the 1GB SE instead). CPU matters relatively little, though it does run marginally better on Intel chipsets.

Number of cores, as I found out, is largely irrelevant as SL is still not terribly multi-threaded. I myself run it, right now, on an older Intel C2D E8400 with 4GB and a stock nVidia GTX460 1GB (which does, btw., overclock fairly well), with shadows enabled most of the time except in very busy venues. In that case, SL is CPU-bound.

However, even on the AMD with the ancient 9800GT it can handle shadows, as long as there's no big crowd around and not too much scenery.

Your internet connection is unlikely to be the cause of lag btw, the SL servers rarely push more than about 1500kbit/sec. I've seen it higher, but for an internet connection these days... 1500kbit/s is dog slow. Watch out for traffic limits though - SL eats traffic like popcorn.

[Emmie Silverspar]

Hi Jenni

Thanks for your reply.

I would have no idea how to build a PC! How would I go about buying something already made that was good to run SL? I'm in the UK

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Pre-built PCs will work, though you're going to pay more. Your best bet would probably be to go to a locally-owned computer store and have them put one together for you. If at all possible, try to get opinions from local geeks on where to go - too many bad apples in the industry.

Typically, most pre-built PCs from brand name manufacturers lack the high-end graphics card SL pretty much needs. There are some that offer "Gaming Rigs" but they charge an arm, leg and first born child for it.