SL performance has drastically gotten worse?

[Centerfold]

Hey all, my laptop ran second life fine and smoothly in mid to high graphics but lately it has gotten very bad lag wise and visually, whenever I use recommended settings it puts my graphics down so much that other close-by avatars are cloud forms, I'm really confused as to why it is doing this & have a suspicion that it shouldn't be this bad & that  something may be wrong with my graphics card or something, unless it's gotten so outdated now that this is normal, I'm not really sure, which is why I came here for help in diagnosing the problem, my laptops specs are as follows:

 

intel core i3-380M (2.53ghz, 3mb L3 cache)

Nvidia Geforce GT425M up to 2747MB TurboCache

4GB DDR3 Mmeory

500GB HDD

 

Thanks guys

[Rolig Loon]

Well, you're right that this is an old card. It was introduced seven years ago, and was a mid-range card at the time. Compared to anything you'd buy today, it's not much to write about.

Still, you ought to be able to get marginally acceptable performance if you keep your graphics quality setting at Medium, your draw distance less than 128m, and your Max Non-Imposter avatars at 2 or 3. The card may be dying gradually, as you suggest, especially if you have been pushing it hard and it has been getting overheated. On the other hand, you could just have a crummy Internet connection. If you've been using wifi, get off of it and use a cable or DSL connection instead.  Reboot both your router and your modem. Try moving to a different place temporarily and plugging in to their router.

EDIT:  For comparison, I bought a laptop in 2013 with a GeForce GT 650M card in it, which you can see has a rating about twice yours. I very rarely use it in SL these days because I get disappointing performance and because it gets disturbingly hot.  If I have no other choice, as when I am out of town, I try to stay in world less than 10 minutes at a time and avoid really laggy spots.

Edited October 1, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[cykarushb]

I mean thats definitely pretty outdated hardware, but it should be holding 20fps on medium low. It may be an issue related the recent update, a lot of people are talking about sudden worse performance. We'll see if thats the case in the future id guess?

For the time being, check for any kind of performance related issues such as excessive heat from dust buildup, make sure your GPU is being used over the integrated stuff as well.

 

[Qie Niangao]

Because you say it's a sudden change, I'll second the suggestion of checking temperatures and fan speeds to make sure they're normal; laptops have basically zero margin for dust build-up or anything else affecting thermal efficiency. And that's kind of a big deal because replacing components inside a laptop inevitably tempts thought of replacing the whole machine.

You might also check to see if you may have done anything to your own avatar to make it harder to render, since it'll be visible in most every frame. Have you added a mesh head, for example, or different hair? Also, of course, be wary of changes to graphics settings -- for example, extending the draw distance will slow everything down dramatically, especially with a graphics card that's already challenged by SL.

[Nalates Urriah]

You can get the free program CPUID HD Monitor to check performance and temperatures.

Your i3 and 425 should provide mid-range performance. That it has changed does suggest something isn't the same. The viewer and servers have not changed that much in the last couple of months, at least in performance. I suggest looking at your Windows software. That your machine only has 4GB is a likely problem. If it only has 4GB because it is a 32-bit system, you may want to upgrade to 64-bit. A 32-bit can only use 3.5GB so you would gain 0.5GB. 

I had problems with 8GB doing mini freezes. An upgrade cured the freezes.

Also, look to see what is running in the background. Microsoft likes to load stuff in with the updates that run in the background. Something may be using memory and squeezing the viewer out, A free program named Memory History will give you info on how much memory your viewer is using and how much is free. You should be able to tell if there is a memory squeeze slowing you down.

[Monti Messmer]

And check your connection if it´s WLan, forget about.

This did work years back but now the traffic has increased because more and more people have WLan´s around you and more "things" in our homes use WLan connections.

Well, thats a reason why i cannot run SL via WLan anymore. Homeautomation, Alexa n stuff.

Monti