Low FPS despite PC exceeding requirements.

[Monster Adagio]

Majority of the time I have terrible FPS on SL. Around 8-30FPS Max

Currently I'm using Firestorm but have tried other viewers with no benefits.

I run pretty much any video game out on max settings with good FPS but SL runs like crap. I've also had many friends with lesser computer specs be getting 60+FPS while I'm running at 30-FPS

Windows 10

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

Intel Core i7-4820k CPU @ 3.70GHz

8GB Ram

Firestorm is running from a SSD with plenty of diskspace.

Attached is a picture of GPU/CPU/RAM usage in a sim packed with poorly optimized avatars to give you an idea of usage under heavy load. Graphics are maxed in that picture. However even if I set all the graphics settings to absolute bare minimum the FPS continues to be extremely poor with no real increase. I run in 2560x1080 resolution but even if set at a lower resolution it does not help. Running literally nothing but SL and it still doesn't matter.

 

Please help, this is very frustrating.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Monster Adagio

[Etierre Bonde]

Same problem, computer far exceeds requirements (I have run SL on REALLY slow old computer before!) and I have 150mbps internet, to boot.

[cykarushb]

Welcome to SL's terrible coding.

SL doesnt utilize multiple cores well and most of the graphical hard work is done by the CPU, GPU is really just there for textures and geometry.

My system is showing about the same kind of utilization of each component and i get about 20-30fps in more complex places with people around, 50-60 in more empty places. It varies wildly from PC to PC, some specific hardware configs will push obscene framerates, others will be just outright terrible even if it should be fine.

Without an OC, the 4820k has the same single threaded performance as a Pentium G4560. So a 60$ processor would perform just about the same in SL.

The reason is that its built off some ancient code that was designed originally before dual cores were even a thing, and then later updated on a foundation around the time of early dual cores like the core2duo lineup. So it doesnt really use multiple cores well, which is why youre seeing 2 of your cores entirely idle. 1 probably handling the game, 2 is just not doing anything, 3 is probably a few outlier services running in the background and 4 is also doing nothing.

 

So, tl;dr, SL is only gonna use one core and what it does on one core is a lot of work

[Nalates Urriah]

Without knowing your viewer 'settings' we can't put a finger on the exact problem.

cykarushb thinks the problem is in viewer coding. I disagree. The problem is in the nature of the content and the complications of a non-sharded environment. Go into an empty, deserted region and you'll likely see FSP in the 150 FPS range. Empty regions only have optimized objects and deserted means there are no updates propagating.

Most of the other games you refer to are 4 to 8GB downloads and created by professional modelers. The content of SL is made by mostly hobbyists. Too many polygons are used, non-optimized mesh omits efficient LoD level models and those texturing stuff totally miss the point of efficient texture use. The result is well over 200 petabytes of non-optimized content. Fit that on your hard drive... 

The nature of SL is to break regions into 256x256 meter regions. While a unified shard, one where everyone mingles in the same environment, numerous servers are involved. Other than High-Fidelity no other game has to transfer data from region to region as SL does. So, your Draw Distance (DD) is a MAJOR factor in the performance you see. A 128m DD limits you to dealing with 2 or 4 region, depending on where you stand. A 256m DD can have you dealing with 9 regions/servers. At 512m you can be talking to 25 regions. At 1024m (the max) up to 81 regions. It is your viewer that is talking to all the individual servers. Even an awesome maxed out game machine is overwhelmed at 1024m DD.

NVIDIA and ATI build  in support for various games. But, the user base for SL is not large enough for them to include SL by default. So, you have to create a profile for SL. The steps are here: http://blog.nalates.net/2016/06/05/nvidia-settings-2016/ 

ATI has poor OpenGL support. So, if you went that way you have a further disadvantage. But, you can extrapolate from the NVIDIA settings.

Explanation of the SL graphics settings is here. These settings are best optimized by experimenting. There is no single best because of variations in hardware plus personal preference is a big part of optimization. If one just wants high FPS, open Preferences->Graphics and set it to LOW. Some playing in SL combat games do that.

With other games the modelers and game makers are working together and devising content and graphics settings to best work with their game. You just play it and MAYBE make a couple of settings changes to best display the game on your screen. SL is far more complex as content makers and programmers aren't really working together. So, the programmers cater to personal tastes and old and new hardware which results in a relatively huge number of settings you can tweak. Setting them all to max quality kills performance.