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Game Optimization and GPU improvements - what can it take to truly push 4k UHD?


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As the game further improves with the optimization, and the Graphics cards improve, will Second-Life be able to handle 4k UHD at 60fps in most parcels with the highest settings? What GPU will it take to handle that? My GTX 1070 Max-Q design can only seem to handle 60fps in 1080p - except for overcrowded areas I get much less. Will I need a crossfire setup, or can I get by with 1 Radeon 7, RTX 2080 ti, or RTX Titan? Speaking of which, do you think the new Radeon 7 16GB high memory speed can pull more fps? Will I have to wait another year for Arcturus and the RTX 2280/3080 ti. What else I been concerned about, according to the previous forum feeds, some say that second-life lacks support for content creators who use a workstation GPU such as a FirePro or Quadro. If second-life would properly support workstation GPUs content creators wouldn't need to worry about switching computers who use it to upload graphics. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh boy, this is quite the topic.

On 2/9/2019 at 11:09 PM, lupaspirit said:

 

As the game further improves with the optimization, and the Graphics cards improve, will Second-Life be able to handle 4k UHD at 60fps in most parcels with the highest settings?

 

SecondLife can do it, but a lot of how SecondLife renders is dependent on the CPU and SL is not particularly good at utilizing the CPU. SL really isn't the most demanding of games, its graphical "look and feel" hasn't changed much in a long time and even most midrange cards from a few generations ago will handle SL at overall average settings and get decent frame rates, provided you have a processor that can allow the gpu to be properly utilized. 

Its really dependent on the CPU and until there's a change in the engine SL is built on that will increase performance at that level, even the most high end graphics cards today will struggle at higher resolutions. Because while something like an i7 9900K will blast through anything, SL is only using one of its cores to its full potential and the rest are being used sparingly. And one core on its own in high end processors is still really capable but not as much as it could be. This also relates to the gpu, the gpu is dependent on the CPU giving instructions, and there's a bit of a bottleneck when only one CPU core is handling its graphical workload which is directly tied to the instructions of the gpu.

On 2/9/2019 at 11:09 PM, lupaspirit said:

Will I need a crossfire setup, or can I get by with 1 Radeon 7, RTX 2080 ti, or RTX Titan? Speaking of which, do you think the new Radeon 7 16GB high memory speed can pull more fps?

SL doesn't support SLI or crossfire sadly, not much does these days anyway. A few select dual gpu cards can be forced to run multi gpu profiles with SL but its really unstable and the most recent card to do that is the Radeon Pro Duo which isn't that impressive since it's really just two RX 470's together.

No point in going RTX because SL doesn't use ray tracing, there's a high end GTX line hopefully coming soon, recently the GTX 1660ti showed its face implying there are non ray tracing cards in the works on Turing.

Better video memory is only going to help so much, no games out there are showing drastic differences between GDDR5, GDDR6 or HBM2.

On 2/9/2019 at 11:09 PM, lupaspirit said:

some say that second-life lacks support for content creators who use a workstation GPU such as a FirePro or Quadro. If second-life would properly support workstation GPUs content creators wouldn't need to worry about switching computers who use it to upload graphics. 

SL fully supports workstation cards, they're just normal GPUs with different drivers, in some cases those driver changes can be beneficial for SL because SL is laid out more like a 3D workspace than a conventional game. It's just that this game doesn't support some of the special features that these cards have, like the radeon SSG with its onboard nvme storage for caching or really any use for the obscene quantities of video memory they have. There's not much point in buying a Quadro RTX 6000 when SL won't use more than maybe 2gb of video memory tops and doesn't support ray tracing when the card otherwise performs like a GTX 1080

 

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For the past few months, I have been thinking about upgrading my desktop since my CPU is constantly maxed out when running Second-Life and only provides me as little as 5-Fps in maximum settings. My boss purchased me this desktop back in late 2016 for only $280 new with an A8 9600 APU, and it's not meeting my needs. The good thing about this desktop is the upgrade capabilities. I should be able to support the new Ryzen 7, 3700x 12-core CPU, and any GPU with a PCIe 3.0 16x slot. As for my laptop I purchased back in 2018, it comes with an I7-8750h turbo to 3.5Ghz 6-core with a GTX 1070 Max Q. I am able to get 60-fps in some areas in 1080p; however, some locations can dip below 30fps. Since I also use my computers for work, I was thinking about going for the Radeon 7 for my desktop but not entirely sure. I am concerned if I go 4k with the hardware upgrade, I will not reach 60fps.

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42 minutes ago, lupaspirit said:

For the past few months, I have been thinking about upgrading my desktop since my CPU is constantly maxed out when running Second-Life and only provides me as little as 5-Fps in maximum settings. My boss purchased me this desktop back in late 2016 for only $280 new with an A8 9600 APU, and it's not meeting my needs. The good thing about this desktop is the upgrade capabilities. I should be able to support the new Ryzen 7, 3700x 12-core CPU, and any GPU with a PCIe 3.0 16x slot. As for my laptop I purchased back in 2018, it comes with an I7-8750h turbo to 3.5Ghz 6-core with a GTX 1070 Max Q. I am able to get 60-fps in some areas in 1080p; however, some locations can dip below 30fps. Since I also use my computers for work, I was thinking about going for the Radeon 7 for my desktop but not entirely sure. I am concerned if I go 4k with the hardware upgrade, I will not reach 60fps.

There is probably no commercially available (/viable) build that can run SL maxed out in every situation. SL viewers are already off to a poor start when most of them run single-threaded and don't utilize the GPU even nearly as much as the CPU. But it's not so much that SL itself isn't capable of performing well, it's the content in it that's the biggest problem.

Almost everything in SL is created by regular users with no standards or understanding of working in an environment rendered in real-time. Some of the most popular/recognizable products and brands like Maitreya, Belleza, and Catwa create bodies and body parts that are hundreds if not thousands of times more render-heavy than the equivalent you'd find in even a hobbyist video-game. If you're around people (or just bad enough objects), expect to lag no matter how powerful your computer is.

If you will be using your computers for work as well (what kind of work?), you wouldn't have to worry about SL not performing flawlessly as if you wasted money.

Edited by Wulfie Reanimator
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I know someone that makes SL videos in 4k 60-fps and I wonder how he does it if second-life has that optimization issue. As for the work I do, I am a video editor that uses premiere Pro mainly but I sometimes work with Sony Vegas and Avid Media Composure and sometimes after effects.

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51 minutes ago, lupaspirit said:

I know someone that makes SL videos in 4k 60-fps and I wonder how he does it if second-life has that optimization issue. As for the work I do, I am a video editor that uses premiere Pro mainly but I sometimes work with Sony Vegas and Avid Media Composure and sometimes after effects.

If you know them, you should ask! Or you could link a video here so we can speculate.

It depends on how many avatars are in your view and what they are wearing. I would expect someone making that high performing videos to be pretty aware of this and take it into account. Maybe it's just a couple avatars in carefully constructed settings. If something is causing them performance issues, they'll probably hold back on recording until it's resolved.

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I have an Nvidia 1080 Ti graphics card and a 4K monitor.  I have most settings at max (including jellydolls disabled) but my draw distance is mostly set to 256m.  I have seen frame rates at some un-laggy skybox places at between 100-140, at places with a few people I can get around 60 mostly, a handful more people and it is around 30 but at a popular place such as a relatively full sim such as an event or club and I am mostly around 10-20.  Of course I could change my settings when at those places and often do but it seemed pertinent to describe my experiences here.

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Another question, does the workstation graphics card handle second life better if they handle certain workloads better? The pictures below are benchmark results that reveal how workstation graphics cards outperform consumer ones.  I am not entirely sure how the Second-Life engine works to determine how it handles it. Because you have 3D graphics designing capabilities does that leverage it? I have never used a workstation GPU for Second-Life nor a prosumer GPU either.

workstation-gpu-bench_ptc-creo-viewport.png

workstation-gpu-bench_siemens-nx-viewport.png

workstation-gpu-bench_solidworks-viewport.png

workstation-gpu-bench_catia-viewport.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/22/2019 at 2:10 AM, lupaspirit said:

Another question, does the workstation graphics card handle second life better if they handle certain workloads better? (...)

As other people have mentioned, there is nothing on the market than can reliably run SL at 4K60maxed because...

A) It's a product over 15 years old that doesn't really do a good job at multi threading.
B) The content creators are under the impression their works of art should be put on a pedestal and as such they make they ridiculously heavy.

Let me give you an example, I have a watch in SL, leather bracelet with stitched, the inside of the bracelet has 3D modeled and perfectly textured stitches... something that you never even see unless you clip the camera inside my arm.
If it was just the outside of the bracelet on a first person shooter game where the arms would be visible in the entire game, I could comprehend that level of detail put in a watch, but on SL... ?
And the problem is everything is built like that in SL, everything has to be over the top.
Now some creators just don't think about it, others don't care, while others are just peer pressured to do the same because if they don't people will say "this and that looks bad, this other creator makes better quality stuff."
Because for these people, quality means something you can rub your nose against and contemplate texture and geometry detail that are way over the top.

Now to answer your question (finally) you shouldn't buy something with just SL in mind, and you can pretty much forget having it run at 4K60maxed.
Get something for your work, and with that make the best of what you can out of SL.
In a viewer like Firestorm you will have a lot of options to control things like shadows in greater detail, these in SL are a real killer of performance but you can set them just right to claw back a lot of frames, and there is always the option to lock your frame rate at 30. Now you might complain about that (and a lot of people do) but you pretty much have the choice of having it stable, or having it jump around like a wild horse.

I've measured my peek frame rate at over 300 frames on SL, obviously that is NOT anywhere near my average, but with my tweaked settings and locked at 30 I can at least enjoy SL 99% of the time at that frame rate that if nothing else, makes for a stable experience that I can enjoy.

Oh and I would also like to have a look at those 4K60 videos you mentioned, but I can tell you that highly depends.
I myself have recorded SL at 1080p 240 frames a second but that was in a highly controlled setting.

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24 minutes ago, lupaspirit said:

Here is a video from someone that does 4k 60fps, I wonder how he does it.

First off, furries are weird.

Secondly, note the surroundings. Its not that complex of a place and theres no other avatars. Theres also no shadows which are a massive FPS killer due to it being a CPU bound rendering task. I have an RX 560 that im currently using and it will push 4k 60fps easily sitting in a non complex skybox only rendering my avatar.

The same card struggles to get over 10fps maxed in 1080p when in places like NCI Kuula with 10-15 people around because theres a lot more to render. This is really true of any GPU and any game, if your card can actually output 4k, theres going to be some scenario where 4k will be playable. Technically a GT 710 can support a 4k display, two even, but its not gonna do much gaming at 4k. 4k Sims 1? Totally. 4k Battlefield V? Might actually catch fire.

Could you do 4k in normal playing though? Oh yeah, youre just gonna need pretty much the best hardware on the market optimizing for single thread performance. The above mentioned 9900k and something like an RTX Titan or Quadro RTX 6000 would easily do 4k/60fps max settings in most scenarios, but there would still be some limitations in obscenely complicated places and areas with lots of players around.

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15 hours ago, lupaspirit said:

On the AMD side which CPU/GPU would be the best option?

Ryzen 2700x and Vega VII

Threadripper is more multi thread oriented and suffers in single thread. Vega VII beats out the Radeon Pro WX 9100 by a small but not tiny margin.

So that's really the best AMD has to offer for high end gaming right now, specifically for a single threaded game that doesn't support crossfire.

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On 3/7/2019 at 8:43 AM, lupaspirit said:

From my understanding with the new drivers, you can clock the Radeon 7 clear to 2100Mhz.

and?  thats a GPU, this whole discussion EVERYBODY is telling you,  SECOND LIFE IS CPU BASED, the gpu only does a little, it's the PROCESSOR of the computer doing mostly everything else.

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Eventually, I will need to upgrade from what I have.
A8 9600 APU Turbo to 3.4Ghz.
8GB DDR4 2400Mhz (SINGLE CHANNEL)
Radeon R7 Graphics (512MB GPU)
I am running the viewer on high settings and my display is 1080p.
FYI- this is with only SL running.
SL-viewer-performance.thumb.jpg.deea0a783343b80e4bd5102b1a7c056c.jpg
My boss bought me this PC early 2017since it was only $280.

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SL was written way back in early 2000s. Now think back to all the blazing fast devices and internet speeds we had then. and even what we have today in SL came on way after the base of SL was written. From what i ready the primary thing that can speed up SL is a good CPU with good clock speeds, and even at that SL primarily uses one core. a good graphic card only helps up to a certain point. The thing is though if one can maintain at least 20-25 fps with 'everything on' it will still be a fairly decent experience - it is never gonna be a lag free super high FPS gaming experience 

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On 3/16/2019 at 8:24 AM, Jackson Redstar said:

SL was written way back in early 2000s. Now think back to all the blazing fast devices and internet speeds we had then. and even what we have today in SL came on way after the base of SL was written. From what i ready the primary thing that can speed up SL is a good CPU with good clock speeds, and even at that SL primarily uses one core. a good graphic card only helps up to a certain point. The thing is though if one can maintain at least 20-25 fps with 'everything on' it will still be a fairly decent experience - it is never gonna be a lag free super high FPS gaming experience 

Adding to the above:

Nor was Second Life - and the content within it - ever intended to run at such an insane resolution.

As one of my room mates put it once: There is no reason to be running 4k on something the size of a computer monitor. That assumes of course that you're being sane about that and not trying to use something pushing 40+ inches as a monitor ...

A 55+ inch unit as a TV or gaming display (for a console or in home streaming)? Sure, 4k is sane-ish. For Second Life or about any other general computer use case? No. Sorry, not even for 3D modeling. You're not going to use something that big for that, you're just not.

What's that? You say that 4k exists on smaller displays? And your point is ... what exactly? What you're using in that instance is a display size that has to have pixels crushed down to allow for such an insane display size. You're not really going to notice much improvement - no, you're not, don't even attempt to argue.

This absolutely irritating trend to make more and more content/PC games 4k is just that - irritating.

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On 3/16/2019 at 8:24 AM, Jackson Redstar said:

SL was written way back in early 2000s.

That's not even nearly true, SL has been under constant development since inception, there is almost no code from back then still in use today and the feature set is vastly improved.

There is no forever-set-in-stone-base of SL, many of the original protocols don't even exist anymore.

The client and the servers are not old code.

SL is very threaded, but it wasn't designed to be threaded from the ground up, so the threading is somewhat constrained by the need to sync everything up in time for the next frame. It will happily consume 2 cores, any more is not really likely without redesigning the client from the ground up .. it's  an ideal candidate for vulkan tbh.

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6 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Adding to the above:

Nor was Second Life - and the content within it - ever intended to run at such an insane resolution.

As one of my room mates put it once: There is no reason to be running 4k on something the size of a computer monitor. That assumes of course that you're being sane about that and not trying to use something pushing 40+ inches as a monitor ...

A 55+ inch unit as a TV or gaming display (for a console or in home streaming)? Sure, 4k is sane-ish. For Second Life or about any other general computer use case? No. Sorry, not even for 3D modeling. You're not going to use something that big for that, you're just not.

What's that? You say that 4k exists on smaller displays? And your point is ... what exactly? What you're using in that instance is a display size that has to have pixels crushed down to allow for such an insane display size. You're not really going to notice much improvement - no, you're not, don't even attempt to argue.

This absolutely irritating trend to make more and more content/PC games 4k is just that - irritating.

I did some math...

Turns out that there are more pixels in a 4K display than there are cones (the dudes that detect color and fine detail) in the human eye. By a pretty wide margin, too...

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/rods-and-cones

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On 3/18/2019 at 12:21 AM, Theresa Tennyson said:

I did some math...

Turns out that there are more pixels in a 4K display than there are cones (the dudes that detect color and fine detail) in the human eye. By a pretty wide margin, too...

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/rods-and-cones

But it is the number of neural network connection determining how things are seen as for example colors - once it was believed the human eyes had upper limit of colors able to been seen - modern research argument for infinite numbers, where the critical factor is the ability to distinguish thresholds (delta-values).

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