graphic card

[Sky Fehr]

About to purchase a lappy with AMD Radeon R5 M335 graphic card  - cannot find up to date info from Sl - will it be compatable ???

[Prokofy Neva]

Laptops of any sort often aren't compatible with SL at all -- full stop. So there's that.

Look on the specs page under HELP on this site to see what is required or Google it with the term "Second Life" to see if there are any forums or comments anywhere about trouble. I don't recall that particular one.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Sky Fehr wrote:

About to purchase a lappy with AMD Radeon R5 M335 graphic card

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Seems... a little weak.

Scoring less than 20FPS in games is not a good sign, esp. if you plan on running it at 1080x1920. Second Life pushes your PC a fair bit harder than most 3D games.

Remember also that there's plenty of other factors involved. Laptops definitely need RJ45 sockets and a respectable NIC (for wired Ethernet), good quality, high-airflow fans and a speedy CPU/RAM combo.

Laptops compatible with Second Life do exist, but expect to pay ~£800 or more. Pound for pound, desktops are more cost-effective.

[Jean Horten]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

Laptops of any sort often aren't compatible with SL at all -- full stop. So there's that.

Look on the specs page under HELP on this site to see what is required or Google it with the term "Second Life" to see if there are any forums or comments anywhere about trouble. I don't recall that particular one.

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"Laptops of any sort often aren't compatible with SL at all -- full stop"

That*s utter nonsense, you don't have the slightest idea what you are talking about. I have been using SL with an Intel i7 2nd gen laptop equipped with a non optimus Nvidia GTX 770m  for several years without problems with very acceptable 30-50 fps.

J.

[Sassy Romano]

To be fair, she didn't say "laptops of any sort aren't compatible" but rather "laptops of any sort often aren't compatible"

I'd change compatible to "particularly appropriate" but the point was valid.

[Nalates Urriah]

Sky, your biggest problem is AMD does not support OpenGL as well as NVIDIA does. If you run searches on this forum for NVIDIA and AMD/ATI problems you can see which has fewer problems.

Depending on the laptop, you can run into various limits. Older laptops were often limited to 2GB of RAM. For SL you are going to want 8GB or more.

You will also want a network card that supports the G and N protocols. Most laptops run the network at 2.5Mhz. N will bump that up to 5Mhz, closer to what you get with a wired connection. In this case faster is better.

Your router/wireless access point also has to support G & N protocols.

In terms of bang-for-the-buck, the i5 is the best deal. The i7 costs 50% more for 25% more performance - generalizing.

Pay attention to the number that goes along with the i3, i5, or i7. There are six generations of iCore processors.You can easily end up paying 6th gen prices for 3rd and 4th gen iCore CPU's. Each generation runs faster and draws less power. Also the letter designators affect price. An i5-6600K is the top of that level. Without the K it should be cheaper. Chips with numbers less than 6600 should cost less too. Bigger numbers cost more. Again, I'm generalizing.

The latest information for what is considered the minimum for running SL is here: https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/index.php?

The information shows the minimums. This means turning off shadows, ambient occusion, and Advanced Lighting. I run a Core2 Quad and GTX560 and am borderline for shadows. So, how much muscle you need for that laptop depends on how nice a render you want.

Anything short of a GTX980 or GTX1060+ is not going to cut it for Project Sansar... well, we can't be certain but, common hardware is not providing good VR. A top of the line 2015 gaming machine is needed. The new 10 series NVIDIA video cards are designed for duel image VR rendering.

[JayWaters]

In terms of bang-for-the-buck, the i5 is the best deal. The i7 costs 50% more for 25% more performance - generalizing.

You would see NO difference between an i5 6500k or an i7 6700K in SL. A Skylake i7 gives you more lanes yadda yadda but they are both going to clock the same (depending on the silicone lottery of course) and perfom identical in gaming and Secondlife. The only benefit anyone would really see with a skylake i7 is in video rendering or maybe some in Photoshop and the like, in gaming..completely useless and waste, there will be NO performance increase in SL which is not going to take advantage of anything beyond the i5's 4 cores and hyperthreading isn't going to do jack if we are specifically talking about just Secondlife.

I am currently builiding both a skylake i5 and i7 and will benchmark both with the same set up (GPU, RAM etc) and I bet there is not a single notable difference based on what I know about these CPU's. I will eat my hat and a little crow if I am wrong but I am 99.9% certain there will be 0 difference.

I really doubt a gtx 1060 or 1070 or even a 1080 is going to perform any better or worse in SL with either CPU. Do the lindens do something amazing to Open GL that would allow it to benefit from more than 4 threads/cores? Considering it is still running on a 12 year old platform I really really doubt it as even dual cores back then were a rare bird.