Jump to content

How many of you use Advanced Lighting / Materials settings?


You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2347 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Recommended Posts

I have an I-7 4770 CPU at 3.4 GHz, 16 GB of Ram and a GTX 745 and for me I can't run advanced lighting without regular crashes or performance problems sailing or riding other vehicles, even with draw distance turned down. I can't cam around the sim I manage or easily build over large areas without the danger of crashing. And as those are a large part of what I do in SL, I keep ALM turned off most of the time and only turn it on when I want to see what the materials on something looks like.

  • Sad 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Aethelwine said:

I have an I-7 4770 CPU at 3.4 GHz, 16 GB of Ram and a GTX 745 ...

That's a very poor graphical solution for your CPU and will probably act as a huge bottleneck in daily use. It also sounds like something is pretty troubled in your setup.

Depending on the available space in your case and on your power supply, you should at least look at a new GTX 1050 Ti with 4 GB RAM or greater, like a GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM.
Unfortunately, AMD cards are still much too expensive and barely available for the consumer market. Otherwise, a RX 570 or RX 580 would also be nice matches.

You could even go into higher ranges, with a quality (!) 500w power supply and the matching budget. Your CPU can handle it. 

 

Oh, and on topic: ALM is always on. AO might be off, depending on the current graphics preset.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

That's a very poor graphical solution for your CPU and will probably act as a huge bottleneck in daily use. It also sounds like something is pretty troubled in your setup.

Depending on the available space in your case and on your power supply, you should at least look at a new GTX 1050 Ti with 4 GB RAM or greater, like a GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM.
Unfortunately, AMD cards are still much too expensive and barely available for the consumer market. Otherwise, a RX 570 or RX 580 would also be nice matches.

You could even go into higher ranges, with a quality (!) 500w power supply and the matching budget. Your CPU can handle it. 

 

Oh, and on topic: ALM is always on. AO might be off, depending on the current graphics preset.

Thanks for the suggestion. The PC is a couple of years old now, I am just a bit wary going inside them. When I do something else always seems to fail and a little upgrade ends up turning in to a major parts replacement project.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pretty much always (mostly as I forgot to turn it back off after building once and was surprised). Sometimes with shadows but actually prefer a certain wl setting (depth of field I like but it is a bit too unreal after decades of old school photography). Then its only if I have to be around more than 4 or so others and usually a quick derender is faster (attachments especially). Even wombling around the mainland (draw distance usually at 96m) . Generally pull 20+ fps which is fine for my needs. Not bad for this old windows seven 32 bit box with a huge 2 gigs - about the only change since 2009 has been a vid card (first gt 610 then gt 620 - replaced an earlier dustbin find, I am way down the food chain when it comes to new stuff).

As someone noted above, sooner derender/jelly doll avs then lose the effects on builds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Aethelwine said:

I have an I-7 4770 CPU at 3.4 GHz, 16 GB of Ram and a GTX 745

Prebuilt? Im gonna guess if its a 745 in there its probably pcie power only. Find something similar under 75w because thats a huge bottleneck. Thats a decent LGA 1150 quadcore paired with a low tier GPU.

21 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Depending on the available space in your case and on your power supply, you should at least look at a new GTX 1050 Ti with 4 GB RAM or greater, like a GTX 1060 with 6 GB VRAM.
Unfortunately, AMD cards are still much too expensive and barely available for the consumer market. Otherwise, a RX 570 or RX 580 would also be nice matches.

I suggest a 1050ti if you want the absolute newest, or an RX 460/560 for a similar use case. Im gonna say pcie power only. GTX 745's are OEM cards and only really come in things like Dell prebuilts that never have a quality PSU, even if they had the pcie connector i would personally never use it on a cheap power supply. Optimally a 4770 would be paired with that recommendation of a 1060 or a 1070, though its locked the 4770 still holds its own up to about the GTX 1080. 470/480/570/580 are still being bought up by bitcoin miners so theyre out of the question anyway.

RX 560, 1050ti, GTX 950 or a 750ti honestly would be a HUGE upgrade over the 745 on its own and its not even that big of a jump.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-745-OEM/2187vs2638

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-745-OEM/3649vs2638

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-RX-560-vs-Nvidia-GTX-745-OEM/3926vs2638

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-950-vs-Nvidia-GTX-745-OEM/3510vs2638

 

Quote

Thanks for the suggestion. The PC is a couple of years old now, I am just a bit wary going inside them. When I do something else always seems to fail and a little upgrade ends up turning in to a major parts replacement project.

Changing out a GPU is a very easy task, especially one that doesnt require any extra power connectors. MSI has a quick guide on it: https://www.msi.com/blog/pc-gaming-101-how-to-upgrade-your-graphics-card
Basically uninstall current drivers, open it up, remove 1 or 2 screws and press a little lever on the slot and pull it out. Plug in the new one and screw it back down. Install drivers and youre good to go.

Edited by cykarushb
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

A humble hint... overloading a technical newbie with a flood of information, like questionable userbenchmarks, can easily be overwhelming for that reader.

The last paragraph with the instruction link is more motivating.

No need to worry, whilst I am no expert, I am no novice either, I have been breaking PCs upgrading them for 20 years. I remember when ISA I\O Cards were a thing, and upgrading from Hercules to EGA was a step up in to the world of colour.

Edited by Aethelwine
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

No need to worry, whilst I am no expert, I am no novice either, I have been breaking PCs upgrading them for 20 years. I remember when ISA I\O Cards were a thing, and upgrading from Hercules to EGA was a step up in to the world of colour.

Im still living that life today. Picked up my IBM PS/2 Model 30 for 10$ thinking it would be fun to clean up, turned out to work just fine. They dont make em like they did in 1987.

So im looking for 8 bit ISA expansion cards that could be fun to use, this machine was the dawn of VGA but its just VGA text only mode onboard, thinking of getting a proper VGA card and maybe some networking stuff to use it as a dummy terminal to view the web via w3m or links2 on a linux machine. I use to have a PC/XT with a Hercules card in it, fun for old DOS based drafting software like DESI-III that supported Hercules modes, sold that a few years ago to a collector.

This is definitely off topic.

duxhs2wb1udz.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I turn it on and off.  I like to go sailing, and with ALM the boat looks flooded, without it the water and sky looks rubbish (ah well).

Also, although I have a powerful 8-way CPU, 16G memory, and GTX 1080ti, I have a rubbish rural internet link 12Mbps but with horrible latency.  Oh and I use Linux, and Firestorm Linux 64 bit, while a great improvement on the SLV, isn't very fast.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 02/10/2017 at 11:15 PM, Talligurl said:

I turn it on as much as i can, but often my computer wont handle it well.

This is my answer too. It's partly my internet connection, I suppose, as well as the computer, but switching off ALM can double my frame rate.

I seem to remember a claim that ALM didn't hit frame rates much, back when it was introduced, but that doesn't seem to be true any more.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 14 October 2017 at 5:36 PM, arabellajones said:

I seem to remember a claim that ALM didn't hit frame rates much, back when it was introduced, but that doesn't seem to be true any more.

Check the render settings on the developer menu, see if you have "object to object occlusion " enabled, THAT does stomp on fps quite badly. One aquaintance of mine was getting what they thought was an ALM induced fps drop of 50%, turned out it was the "O2O O".
 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 14.10.2017 at 6:36 PM, arabellajones said:

I seem to remember a claim that ALM didn't hit frame rates much, back when it was introduced

They used to say that increasing the RenderVolumeLODFactor didn't affect performance too.

Here is a simple test that only takes a minute and that anybody can do:

Stand absolutely still at a location where you won't see any moving objects. Open whatever windows you need to read your fps and to switch ALM on and off (which that will be, depends on your viewer). Wait a few seconds for the fps to stabilize and read the number. Switch ALM on or off, wait a minute or so for the fps to stabilize and read the number again. Everybody should do that test before they say anything about how laggy ALM is or isn't. And even afterwards it's important to remember that the result is only a snapshot of one specific incident. Different conditions may give completely different results.

I've only done that test once myself and it was in a fairly high lag environment where my computer was struggling a bit in any case. I can't remember the exact numbers but they were in the low 20s with ALM on and high 30s with ALM off. That's a huge difference and even more important, high 30s is a perfectly acceptable fps, low 20s isn't. I'd love to hear what results others get.

 

9 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Check the render settings on the developer menu, see if you have "object to object occlusion " enabled

Object to object occlusion is a two edged sword. To put it simple, if you switch it off, your computer will spend more time preparing for items it may need later and less on what is already in the scene. Whether you loose or gain from that in the long run, depends on what the future brings.

I did a similar test to my ALM test, switching O2O on and off and got only a marginal difference - about 1 fps difference (O2O switched on being the fastest). A single fitted mesh item in the scene can easily make a bigger difference than that. But again, that was just a snapshot - different conditions may well produce completely different results.

 

One aspect we should have discussed, probably in a thread of its own, is what is an acceptable frame rate. The answer to that is probably very personal. For me, anything in the 40s is good, if it's higher than that, I can enhance my experience by increasing my graphics settings (unless it causes my computer's fan to start up that is - that's an instant experience killer). An fps in the 30s is perfectly acceptable but if it's lower than that, I can enhance my experience by reducing my graphics setting - the increased fps more than compensates for the reduced image quality.

Edited by ChinRey
Typos
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

One aspect we should have discussed, probably in a thread of its own, is what is an acceptable frame rate

For "Persistence of Vision", that is, the illusion of movement rather than a series of still images, the Mk I Human Eyeball (tm) needs an fps of about 25.

Early CRT based analogue TV's aimed for either 25 or 30 fps, however, limitations in the electron beam/phosphor coating technology meant that to produce 30 fps they used a 60 fps interlaced system, even numbered scan lines, then odd numbered scan lines, the result was an ACTUAL fps of 30, but that 60 number stuck in peoples heads.

Games consoles boasted of 60 fps, later generations of gamers assumed this was the minimum number needed for NON-interlaced screens that came later as technology improved.

The whole "Tech-Illiterate Cyber-Geek Wannabe" culture took over, the demand for "moar fps 4 mah leet gamerz pc", and so we climb in multiples of 30, magic-90 for the vomit cam scene, people boasting that they get 120 fps, 0r 180 fps or more, I've seen people claiming they get over 220 fps...

Of course, these numbers are entirely imaginary. The highest FPS you can get on any computer monitor is determined by the MONITORS refresh rate, that Hertz number listed along side the screen resolution when you set the thing up.

That's why most 'games' these days come with a 'VSYNC' setting, it limits the softwares fps output to the maximum that can be displayed by the monitor, so as not to waste CPU/GPU grunt generating frames that simply wont be displayed, while overheating your chips.

Simple rule : The MAXIMUM FPS you can display is the Hertz number / refresh rate for your monitors current screen resolution.

People claiming they get 200+fps while using a monitor with a 60-90  herts refresh are basically melting their GPU for nothing...
 

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Stand absolutely still at a location where you won't see any moving objects. Open whatever windows you need to read your fps and to switch ALM on and off (which that will be, depends on your viewer). Wait a few seconds for the fps to stabilize and read the number. Switch ALM on or off, wait a minute or so for the fps to stabilize and read the number again. Everybody should do that test before they say anything about how laggy ALM is or isn't. And even afterwards it's important to remember that the result is only a snapshot of one specific incident. Different conditions may give completely different results.

I made a little test.

1st I went to a place with some complexity to lower my fps

With ALM+shadows: 33 FPS and 25 million triangles in the scene
With ALM+NO shadows: 56 FPS and 12 million triangles in the scene
With NO ALM+NO SHADOWS: 53 FPS and 12 million triangles in the scene

That backs up my experiences that ALM has no effect on my FPS. Surprisingly I get better FPS with ALM ON. I'll have an eye on that at other places. The result I got is repeatable.

I must add that the scene with ALM+shadows compared to the scene with ALM off is like a Hollywood movie compared to a comic strip so ALM off is absolutely no option for someone that is already pampered by running around with ultra setting.

I checked the LOD factor setting too - If I crank it up I see a significant increase in the triangle count but the FPS don't reflect that since the FPS goes down barely noticeable. Guess the GPU has reserves. I keep my LOD setting at 2 though to detect and avoid bad made mesh.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Nova Convair said:

Guess the GPU has reserves.

I think that is the clue. I haven't done any actual tests in lower lag environments but my impression is that ALM and O2O and LOD factor all have very little negative effect when the GPU is cruising. But the moment you start pushing it jsut a little bit, performance drops very fast.

That may be why I didn't get much difference when I tested O2O too. I did that at my own place and you have to have a really poor gpu to have problems with it there.

The ALM test was at Morris on the beta grid and that's a fairly high lag place with weird things scattered all around and lots of exposed system ground.

Edited by ChinRey
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 2347 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...