Second life with a GTX 1080 card?

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Hi there, I'm thinking of upgrading my PC this year and am looking at getting either a Nvidia GTX 1070 or 1080. Since the 10 series isn't listed in the official specs for SL I was wondering if anyone is using either of these and how they are with Second Life.

Thanks!:)

[Chaser Zaks]

I use a gtx 960 which runs SL quite well, and from what I understand, the two you listed are more powerful. So those should work very well for you.

Do note that SL is a polygonal mess. Even with really high end GPUs, expect slow FPS when in areas or around avatars that use models intended for 3D movie/photo renders, not real time rendering.

Also you need to make sure your power supply can provide enough electricity to the GPU, and that it has the right connectors. I had the last issue and had to get an adapter.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Thanks for  your reply Chaser. Yes, I've seen a few posts about 900 series cards, but I couldn't find anyone mentioning the 10 series. Just want to be sure they'll work okay before getting them:)

[Parhelion Palou]

The prices for 1070 and 1080 cards have gone through the roof thanks to cryptocurrency miners buying them up as fast as they can. The 1080s are now in the $800 - $1200 range and the 1070s are in the high $600 to nearly $1000 range. I have a 6GB GTX 1060 that I bought in 2016 for $260. That card will cost you around $550 now.

I run SL in ultra mode all the time with the 1060, btw. I usually have the draw distance set to 312 meters. Frame rates vary depending on what's in the area. Turning the avatar complexity limit down in very crowded areas is usually sufficient to get around at acceptable frame rates.

[Callum Meriman]

1 hour ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

Hi there, I'm thinking of upgrading my PC this year and am looking at getting either a Nvidia GTX 1070 or 1080. Since the 10 series isn't listed in the official specs for SL I was wondering if anyone is using either of these and how they are with Second Life.

Thanks!:)

I use a 1070, it works very well.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Thanks Callum and Parhelion!:)

Edited March 4, 2018 by Evangeline Arcadia

[bigmoe Whitfield]

i7 5820k @ 4ghz

32gb ram

gtx 980.

no shadows

and I've not hit lag in a long time.   knowing I know to keep my draw down as trying to draw everything in a scene makes things not happen with the viewer >.>

[Chase01]

It is believed that sometime in March NVIDIA will be announcing their next gen card. The 2k series (known as Volta) will be a decent bump over the current gen cards and there is a possibility that pricing will come down by then. So if you're in the market for a 1080, I'd wait a little while longer. Also keep in mind that the 1070Ti performs very similarly to a 1080. If I was buying this late into the cycle I'd be looking at the Ti variants. You might be able to save a few dollars, or get a little more bang for your buck going that route.

As far as card manufacturers go; I am a big fan of EVGA. Their service and warranty support is IMO superior to all the other card manufacturers.

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

I have the 1080ti myself for a couple of months now and can run everything with max graphics, no issues so far. Shadows I only turn on for photo's sometimes, because on lag heavy sims the shadows still cause a bit of a performance dip.

[Paul Hexem]

I can second that motion for EVGA- good prices, warranties, construction... They're the way to go.

[Derek Torvalar]

12 hours ago, Chase01 said:

It is believed that sometime in March NVIDIA will be announcing their next gen card. The 2k series (known as Volta) will be a decent bump over the current gen cards and there is a possibility that pricing will come down by then. So if you're in the market for a 1080, I'd wait a little while longer. Also keep in mind that the 1070Ti performs very similarly to a 1080. If I was buying this late into the cycle I'd be looking at the Ti variants. You might be able to save a few dollars, or get a little more bang for your buck going that route.

As far as card manufacturers go; I am a big fan of EVGA. Their service and warranty support is IMO superior to all the other card manufacturers.

 

Rumours, and that's all this is of course as Nvidia haven't said anything yet, but apparently as of 3 days ago the release will not be Volta but Ampere/Turing in June/July or maybe April. lol Though it may be that the announcement will be at GTC at the end of the month and the cards available in June/July.

Second or third now the EVGA as best choice. Best Warranty/CS in the biz.

 

PS For the OP I have had 1080 since their release and I now have 2, both liquid cooled versions, and they are terrific. 

Edited March 5, 2018 by Derek Torvalar

[Rhonda Huntress]

I have a 1070 TI that makes me happy.  There was a problem with random C2D a few months ago that only happened with SL.  I don't know if it was SL or the card's drivers but it stopped crashing before I took the time to dig any further into it.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

random C2D

Core 2 Duo? Close to death? Concept to design?

[Rhonda Huntress]

30 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Core 2 Duo? Close to death? Concept to design?

Crash to desktop.  Not as bad as BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death -- but you may be familiar with that)
Sorry ... helpdesk TLAs and LFLA's are hard to shake loose  (Three Letter Acronyms and Longer Four Letter Acronyms)

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

Crash to desktop.  Not as bad as BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death -- but you may be familiar with that)
Sorry ... helpdesk TLAs and LFLA's are hard to shake loose  (Three Letter Acronyms and Longer Four Letter Acronyms)

Us programmers get in trouble if our stuffs C2D.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

15 hours ago, Chase01 said:

It is believed that sometime in March NVIDIA will be announcing their next gen card. The 2k series (known as Volta) will be a decent bump over the current gen cards and there is a possibility that pricing will come down by then. So if you're in the market for a 1080, I'd wait a little while longer. Also keep in mind that the 1070Ti performs very similarly to a 1080. If I was buying this late into the cycle I'd be looking at the Ti variants. You might be able to save a few dollars, or get a little more bang for your buck going that route.

As far as card manufacturers go; I am a big fan of EVGA. Their service and warranty support is IMO superior to all the other card manufacturers.

 

Super helpful thanks!!

[Lillith Hapmouche]

What else do you got in your system, by the way?

Like, what CPU, how much RAM, what power supply? What's your current graphic card? 
Enough space in your case and proper ventilation might also be worth to consider.

PS: I only associate "C2D" with "core 2 duo" ... "crash to desktop" was a new one.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

PS: I only associate "C2D" with "core 2 duo" ... "crash to desktop" was a new one.

Yis, it gave me head-tilt also.

[Chase01]

8 hours ago, Derek Torvalar said:

Rumours, and that's all this is of course as Nvidia haven't said anything yet, but apparently as of 3 days ago the release will not be Volta but Ampere/Turing in June/July or maybe April. lol Though it may be that the announcement will be at GTC at the end of the month and the cards available in June/July.

Second or third now the EVGA as best choice. Best Warranty/CS in the biz.

 

PS For the OP I have had 1080 since their release and I now have 2, both liquid cooled versions, and they are terrific. 

They can call it a crap on a stick, the point is, that generally speaking; the next gen cards will have a bump in performance over their predecessors. While AMD's current gen cards have been a bit of a letdown; their next gen stuff will put more pressure on NVIDIA. That is a good thing.

 

Edited March 5, 2018 by Chase01

[cykarushb]

Yeah, a 1080 will be fine, dont even bother with the system requirements page for this game, its really out of date. Hardware is very universal these days, you dont need to concern yourself about game compatibility.

 

On 3/4/2018 at 7:58 PM, Chase01 said:

It is believed that sometime in March NVIDIA will be announcing their next gen card. The 2k series (known as Volta) will be a decent bump over the current gen cards and there is a possibility that pricing will come down by then. So if you're in the market for a 1080, I'd wait a little while longer. Also keep in mind that the 1070Ti performs very similarly to a 1080. If I was buying this late into the cycle I'd be looking at the Ti variants. You might be able to save a few dollars, or get a little more bang for your buck going that route.

As far as card manufacturers go; I am a big fan of EVGA. Their service and warranty support is IMO superior to all the other card manufacturers.

 

Really dont even bother waiting for a 2k series card, the pricing rumors that have been out are insane, 1000$+ for a "xx80", not even a ti. Also its a "tock" cycle for nvidia, dont bother buying into that generation because the performance boost will be minimal. Definitely not worth the cost over a GTX 1080 as prices are with cryptocurrency miners.

And thats another thing, OP if you dont have the dosh to dish around, do not buy a 10 series card at all, the prices on pretty much anything more than the GT 1030 are all inflated and youre paying way more than MSRP. SL also really doesnt require super high end hardware to get a great experience, as @Parhelion Palou said, hes getting a good experience on ultra with a 1060.

Older hardware is also going to be cheaper to find used, there are 980/980ti's on ebay for 250-450$, which perform similar to a 3gb/6gb 1060 and the 980ti performs similar to a 1070. Something like a 780ti would be similar to a 3gb 1060 and cost about 250$ (though you'd have to use older drivers, the current ones gimp the 700 series cards).

Of coruse ignore all that if you dont mind paying nearly double MSRP for the 10 series cards.

[Love Zhaoying]

48 minutes ago, cykarushb said:

dont even bother with the system requirements page for this game

Game? So there’s a goal, and a point, and an end? Did not know.

[Chase01]

Going based off past launches; it would be expected that the new 2080 would be similar in performance, but faster then a 1080Ti. Now before you assume what he should buy, we should probably know if he plays games and at what resolution? You buy a video card that is going to give you the performance you need for the resolution you play at. Arguably a 1080Ti is overkill for 1080p gaming.

The next gen cards may very well be over $1,000, but an announcement is expected sometime in the next month. For that reason It would just make sense to wait and see. Rumor has it that both AMD and Nvidia are working on releasing mining-focused graphics cards which would ship with a slightly lower price tag and no video connectors. That would make them useless for running a gaming PC, but perfect for mining rigs, and could help keep prices down on standard GPUs. That may finally present an option that has some impact on pricing, but few such cards have appeared so far. Maybe more to come there.

I know people do it all the time, but I personally wouldn't buy a used video card unless I knew who owned it before me.

[Roby Easterwood]

Apologizing about my bad English, I've to say my Asus Strix GTX 960 4GB, medium/high graphic set (PC i7 -16GB RAM - Samsung Evo SSD - 1GB Fiber connection) , in crowded places (45/50 avatars) the VRAM gets easily filled 😕 I'm just about to buy a 1080 hoping its 8GB will be helpful. 

[cykarushb]

8 hours ago, Roby Easterwood said:

Apologizing about my bad English, I've to say my Asus Strix GTX 960 4GB, medium/high graphic set (PC i7 -16GB RAM - Samsung Evo SSD - 1GB Fiber connection) , in crowded places (45/50 avatars) the VRAM gets easily filled 😕 I'm just about to buy a 1080 hoping its 8GB will be helpful. 

Try not to necrobump, start new threads in the future. Im not sure how you found this considering it was from march of last year.

I could definitely see it being a vram limitation but ive personally never seen vram come into play on my 970 no matter where i was. Most ive ever seen SL use was about 2.2gb and that was in a rather people packed location.

If youre playing in much higher resolution than 1080p, yeah, you will probably see your vram get maxed. But 4gb shouldnt have any problem with SL in 1080p.

If vram is your main concern and you dont need the best of the best gpu wise, you could look into an AMD RX 580/590, which have 8gb options and perform like a 6gb 1060 which performs slightly better than a 970. Its not the greatest jump overall but it will give you overall better performing video memory compared to the 960 with its 128 bit memory bus.

On 3/6/2018 at 3:24 PM, cykarushb said:

Really dont even bother waiting for a 2k series card, the pricing rumors that have been out are insane, 1000$+ for a "xx80", not even a ti. Also its a "tock" cycle for nvidia, dont bother buying into that generation because the performance boost will be minimal. Definitely not worth the cost over a GTX 1080 as prices are with cryptocurrency miners.

Older hardware is also going to be cheaper to find used, there are 980/980ti's on ebay for 250-450$, which perform similar to a 3gb/6gb 1060 and the 980ti performs similar to a 1070. Something like a 780ti would be similar to a 3gb 1060 and cost about 250$ (though you'd have to use older drivers, the current ones gimp the 700 series cards).

Let it be known i was right, while 1000$ was incorrect it was pretty damn close, with a 700$ rtx 2080 and 800$ "founders edition". Not to mention the 1200$ 2080ti founders edition. Oh, or the 2500$ rtx titan.

And also that a used 980ti is going for about 250-270$ right now, as are gtx 1070's. Though oddly enough i would still say the 980ti would be a safer buy because Maxwell was terrible for crypto mining and a lot of the used 1070's are from crypto mining.

So at this time in march we were at the peak of the cryptocurrency GPU inflation, 1080ti's going for 1100-1300$ new on average, their MSRP used and even higher. We got these cheap cards:

On 3/6/2018 at 7:20 PM, Chase01 said:

 Rumor has it that both AMD and Nvidia are working on releasing mining-focused graphics cards which would ship with a slightly lower price tag and no video connectors. That would make them useless for running a gaming PC, but perfect for mining rigs, and could help keep prices down on standard GPUs. That may finally present an option that has some impact on pricing, but few such cards have appeared so far. Maybe more to come there.

With no video outputs, and then like a month later crypto crashed and Nvidia was left with this massive stock of 1060's they cant sell, oddly enough people figured out how to game on the cards with no video output anyway.

People wonder why i like old tech. Anything current is always a complete mess to deal with.

Edited January 15, 2019 by cykarushb

[Rachel1206]

9 hours ago, Roby Easterwood said:

Apologizing about my bad English, I've to say my Asus Strix GTX 960 4GB, medium/high graphic set (PC i7 -16GB RAM - Samsung Evo SSD - 1GB Fiber connection) , in crowded places (45/50 avatars) the VRAM gets easily filled 😕 I'm just about to buy a 1080 hoping its 8GB will be helpful. 

It is my understanding the VRAM is limited as follows:

GPU 1GB = up to 768MB
GPU 2GB = up to 1024MB
GPU 4GB+ = up to 2048MB

So the maximum Viewer Texture Memory Buffer with a 1080 8GB VRAM will be 2048MB.

And with the latest updates by LL there clearly has been a change, where this has a huge impact, when there is a lot of avatars and textures in view.

Visiting say a place like Fogbound Blues with nearly anybody there, gives high FPS and no problems, as soon ppl starts to enter the FPS will drop and VRAM Usage starts to increase fast. Clearly this is something which must addressed by LL and handled different/improved.

Your options currently are lowering draw distance and set number of imposters to a lower value to say 8, 4 from the default value of 16 in FireStorm (not sure what default is in the official viewer).

The 1080 will overall perform better and faster as  long VRAM usage is low, but else no difference compared to older cards.

 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Rachel1206