Computers that run well with SL?

[Samikiru]

Well guys it's time to upgrade my computer at last. This piece of junk I'm running is a Lenovo IMB ThinkPad R400 (I know, it's pretty old). I was checking out some computers the other day and stumbled upon a HP - Pavilion 17.3" Laptop. It seems to have all the right specs. An 8 gb memory, an i5 intel core processor, a 1 TB hardrive storage. But it's reviews are all over the place. My budget for a laptop  right now is from $50 to $450. Do you guys have any recommendations for good computers that can run Second Life well with nice graphics?

[Gigi Darkfury]

I had big issues previously as my comp didnt have nivida graphics that seems to be the key.  Ive tried running it on other laptops without nvidia and it just wont run cant see a thing.  Im having probs with firestorm but think thats them and not my comp.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Samikiru wrote:

Well guys it's time to upgrade my computer at last. This piece of junk I'm running is a Lenovo IMB ThinkPad R400 (I know, it's pretty old). I was checking out some computers the other day and stumbled upon a HP - Pavilion 17.3" Laptop. It seems to have all the right specs. An 8 gb memory, an i5 intel core processor, a 1 TB hardrive storage. But it's reviews are all over the place. My budget for a laptop  right now is from $50 to $450. Do you guys have any recommendations for good computers that can run Second Life well with nice graphics?

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Yeah, get a desktop.. Laptops have heat and graphics issues. Eventually you will need to upgrade the graphics and that can be difficult to impossible with a laptop. Get a decent desktop with a good graphics card.

[Prokofy Neva]

I have studied this issue for 12 years intensively and never found a happy answer.

If Linden Lab would manufacture (or offer) a computer designed explicitly to play SL well, I (and many others) would buy it, even if it cost more. I wish they'd do this.

Currently, the way it works, the people who make Second Life have their own hand-built rigs with parts from New Egg and such and they endlessly tweak and adapt and don't realize what it is like for us norms to try to find some machine that can play SL.

The average computer available at Best Buy simply can't play SL. This, despite the fact that there are blazing game rigs that play things like Final Fantasy or WoW beautifully. But as anyone who spends any time at all on this subject rapidly discovers, blazing game rigs are irrelevant to the problems of playing dynamically updating SL across different servers with user generated content.

When my latest computer crashed really finally after only about 2.5 years of use (that's how long they usually last) I studied this issue extensively.

I ended up buying a $399 HP and then grafting on to it a more expensive NVidea GeForce GTX 970 ($325). I selected this card because it had the last amount of complaints on forums and because certain very opinionated and talkative forums' regs claimed this card worked at least a year ago.

Nothing works perfectly and this isn't even the best solution *but it was what was available at Best Buy". I live in NYC which ought to be the world capital for computer purchases but after very long experience with all the various outlets I have found that none of them have the computers or even the graphic cards off the shelf, only Best Buy has a relatively cheap maintenance program with their "Geek Squad" and no, I'm not going to get a hand-built ever again, that just doesn't work for all kinds of reasons unless you yourself are a computer programmer and a technician.

What was involved? Well, first I had to turn over the cheapie HP and expenso graphics card to the Geek Squad to graft it in. But after several days they then told me I needed a different power supply and fan or otherwise it wouldn't work and would burn out. So there goes another $60 for that. Then I picked it up, brought it home, and it didn't work. There were cable problems (buy another one for $20), switch problems who knows. More tweaking and a lost week, then I got it home again. I was forced to accept Windows 10 which comes put on it by force, there is no other choice unless you pay money. Fortunately, SL more or less works better with Windows 10 now.

To no one's surprise, SL crashed constantly. Yes, I updated the drivers. I finally found a YouTube that also showed how to set the drivers for max performance, maybe not recommended but finally SL worked. To be sure, this expensive (for me and most people) card is last year's card, and not the ne plus ultra that the New Egg crowd would order, but here we all are. SL more or less works, crashing perhaps once per hour.

 

 

[arton Rotaru]

Building a PC is like building a stereo in the 80's. All components have to fit to each other, in quality and performance.

Plugging a high end graphics card into a 400$ HP from the shelf, is like plugging these into this. :matte-motes-whistle:

[Perrie Juran]



 

I was thinking something more like this.

[arton Rotaru]

:matte-motes-nerdy::matte-motes-shocked::matte-motes-sick::matte-motes-little-laugh:

[Prokofy Neva]

It's working fine though.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Hey hey hey.. i happend to have monster speakers hooked up to an alarm clock radio/cd player.. Granted it was fed throughmy amplifier/tuner/turntable set up first.. But it was the ballz.

[JayWaters]

Ok well the issue is that you used a low end HP with a power supply not good enough for a discreet graphics card.

 

Its not really grafting. You simply plug a graphics card into an avialable pci slot, and add a power cable to it. Really takes about 3 minutes, then install the drivers done. The problem again was your HP probably had a low wattage PSU and it probably didnt support an add on card. Best Buy machines all suck and it doesn't take a genius to build a pc anymore.