Playing Below Minimum Spec for the lols

[cykarushb]

So I recently built a fun PC, an inverted sleeper. Old parts in a new case. And i wanted to see if it could even start SL.

Technically its below spec, https://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/

SL says it needs a Geforce 6600 or better as a minimum. I have a 6200 which even in 2004 was very low end, display adapter type hardware. Also in this system is a 2.2ghz Northwood Pentium 4, 2gb of 166mhz DDR (not DDR3, not DDR2, DDR.), a 160gb WD Blue IDE hard drive and some other goodies.

Downloaded the Obsolete platforms viewer for windows XP, lo an' behold:

It started, it loaded, and it actually ran without crashing.

Now im getting maybe 5fps on generally low settings in 1024x768, but its running. It is technically playable, a PC from 2004 can in fact still play SecondLife.

And now i gotta wonder, how low can i go? Can a Pentium 3 really run SL like the linux system requirements say? Whats the actual minimum GPU requirement? Can i go to 423 Pentium 4's and run a 1.2ghz one? Whats the bare minimum i can get away with for ram? 2gb is actually a LOT of ram for a system from 2004, this should have something like 512mb to be "average", maybe even less. With more cut down versions of XP i could probably run SL on 512mb but i cant be sure.

Whats the lowest end PC you have that can run SL?

 

Computer stuff below:

[animats]

I have that experience occasionally. I normally run on a 64-bit Linux system.  So I run Firestorm. On the rare occasions I need to run the LL viewer, I crank up an old Windows 7 machine with onboard graphics.  5 FPS on lowest graphics settings. It's too bad LL dropped Linux support.

[cykarushb]

Up next I’ve decided to do some tests with “old ati graphics cards”, because according to some people on this forum, these cards don’t work with SL and cause endless problems.

Im gonna start with the high end, a 4870x2, a dual gpu crossfire monster.

And then I’m gonna work my way down to older and older cards until the game is unplayable.

[Coffee Pancake]

If you're going to play with old AMD drivers, I recommend that you image your drive before you start installing drivers.

The old AMD installer can fail and when it does, you're left with a windows that wont boot .. this is especially likely of you have to uninstall drivers or mess about a bit with different versions. Fixing in safemode isn't a given and a fresh reinstall ends up being quicker anyway. (We were mostly on Vista/7/8 at the time ... our own XP testing was limited to integrated intel GPU)

Also, watch out for bad ram, in our efforts to resolve the issue years ago we accumulated a few bits of AMD hardware that had some major stability problem when running SL. We never managed to work out exactly what was causing the AMD drivers to pop and in the end started to suspect the cards had ram issues. (We have never personally encountered Nvidia cards with similar problem .. which is probably just luck)

 

I've had SL "run" on a first gen netbook with XP and 2G ram, was in hospital for a while and it was my only way to get on SL. The frame rate is woeful, but with a little tweaking (read, switching rendering modes off) managed to stay in touch with people and hang out in a skybox. It worked in a pinch, but there is no way I could tolerate it as a daily driver.

[cykarushb]

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If you're going to play with old AMD drivers, I recommend that you image your drive before you start installing drivers.

The old AMD installer can fail and when it does, you're left with a windows that wont boot .. this is especially likely of you have to uninstall drivers or mess about a bit with different versions. Fixing in safemode isn't a given and a fresh reinstall ends up being quicker anyway. (We were mostly on Vista/7/8 at the time ... our own XP testing was limited to integrated intel GPU)

Everything worked out fine, and the 4870x2 wasnt that bad of an experience although it did have some problems with transparent water.

Performed about as well as i expected it to.