Older pc - could anything be tweaked to help it run SL better?

[Emma Krokus]

Asking for a friend who is having performance issues with an older pc but not able to afford a new system at the moment...

Accessing SL on another pc, there are no issues - though the inventory can take a minute or two to load fully.

However, on the older pc there are numerous issues - avatar not fully loading on log in, rezzing failures, inventory slow to load (there are sub-folders so it's not a flat inventory structure), frequently unable to get inventory folders to open, both system and user-created folders.

Very low fps, around 3 in the same place where I was able to get between 50 - 80 fps yesterday. Frequent freezing in place, particularly when group notices arrive or anyone sends an IM. Walking, turning etc can be painfully slow and after a tp it can take minutes before the avatar is able to respond in any way. Very slow rendering even with draw distance set very low.

Here are the system specs:

Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Sep 28 2019 09:08:31 (32bit) (Firestorm-Release) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at xxxx located at xxxx.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.52.10:12035)
SLURL: xxxx
(global coordinates xxxx)
Second Life Server 2020-04-24T20:13:35.540928
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU        E3400  @ 2.60GHz (2593.49 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit (Build 9200)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 26.21.14.4219
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 442.19

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.03
Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer
[2020-05-06 18:16]  xxxx:  Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1680x987 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 32 m
Bandwidth: 500 kbit/s
LOD factor: 4
Render quality: Medium (3/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: No
Texture memory: 224 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): unknown
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 163/216,634 (0.1%)
May 06 2020 18:15:55 SLT

Advice from you clever people would be much appreciated! In plain English, assuming no more than basic technical knowledge please  

Thank you.

Emma  

Edited May 7, 2020 by Emma Krokus

[811Lord]

7 minutes ago, Emma Krokus said:

Asking for a friend who is having performance issues with an older pc but not able to afford a new system at the moment...

Accessing SL on another pc, there are no issues - though the inventory can take a minute or two to load fully.

However, on the older pc there are numerous issues - avatar not fully loading on log in, rezzing failures, inventory slow to load (there are sub-folders so it's not a flat inventory structure), frequently unable to get inventory folders to open, both system and user-created folders.

Very low fps, around 3 in the same place where I was able to get between 50 - 80 fps yesterday. Frequent freezing in place, particularly when group notices arrive or anyone sends an IM. Walking, turning etc can be painfully slow and after a tp it can take minutes before the avatar is able to respond in any way. Very slow rendering even with draw distance set very low.

Here are the system specs:

Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Sep 28 2019 09:08:31 (32bit) (Firestorm-Release) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at xxxx located at xxxx.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.52.10:12035)
SLURL: xxxx
(global coordinates xxxx)
Second Life Server 2020-04-24T20:13:35.540928
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU        E3400  @ 2.60GHz (2593.49 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit (Build 9200)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 26.21.14.4219
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 442.19

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.03
Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer
[2020-05-06 18:16]  xxxx:  Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1680x987 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 32 m
Bandwidth: 500 kbit/s
LOD factor: 4
Render quality: Medium (3/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: No
Texture memory: 224 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): unknown
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 163/216,634 (0.1%)
May 06 2020 18:15:55 SLT

Advice from you clever people would be much appreciated! In plain English, assuming no more than basic technical knowledge please  

Thank you.

Emma  

Sl needs minimum RAM. The Win System too, together 2048 might not be enough, so my idea

 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

There is a general flaw in that setup: apparently, it merely runs on 2 GB RAM (could also be DDR2, which is very dated by now), but the system is 64bit, thus... simplified... meant for 4 GB or more. Perhaps it would help to install a 32bit WIndows version or to give Linux a try.

The CPU and GPU very old as well and very low entry class. I may suppose that the power supply is of the same age and quality.

What's your friend's budget? Putting any money in this would be a total waste.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

First of all, go to the graphics settings in Firestorm and make some changes:

In the general tab, make sure basic and atmospheric shaders are on, then check hardware skinning. Turn the max particle count down as far as is tolerable, 0 would be best, but no more than 512 if they want to see particle effects. Water reflections should be minimal.

In the Hardware Settings tab, uncheck anisotropic filtering, check enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects, streamed VBOs and enable lossy texture compression. Set antialiasing to 2x. Viewer texture memory should be able to go higher than the 224MB it's set at, run it up as high as it will go. That should be at least 512 on a GT 730.

2GB of memory isn't much, and upgrading that is pretty cheap and easy. That PC should have at least 4GB of memory. I'd also look at replacing the hard drive with an SSD, that makes a world of difference on old computers.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Lyssa Greymoon
words are hard

[bigmoe Whitfield]

the system is fighting it's self because of the lack of ram.    windows will use almost all of the 2gb by it's self.    I'm not sure of any tweaks for it.

[Chic Aeon]

Many to most of us had to upgrade our computers (often graphics cards) when we decided to live in SL. This isn't unusual and it is a choice we made.   You need a fairly good computer to run SL competently and it is really unreasonable for Linden Lab to cater to the lowest common denominator  

 

That being said, while Firestorm is the viewer of choice for most SLers, it is also very complex. So trying a simpler browser ,  perhaps one based on the old 1.23 viewer may have things working better for you. I had a notebook long ago that could not run SL on Firestorm but it could on Singularity. So trying out some 3rd party viewers (the simpler ones) may be your best move if you cannot afford a better computer.  

[Emma Krokus]

@ Lyssa

My friend followed your viewer suggestions and is reporting a small but pleasing improvement in performance - THANK YOU

@ Chic 

I will again recommend Singularity (my viewer of choice also)

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thread - I do appreciate your expertise, comments and advice very much.

Emma  

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, do all the things said with the sliders, but also:

o turn off streaming music

o turn off voice

o if at an event, using the advanced menu, turn off "avatars" so you can't see them.

o don't have breedables, doors that listen, security orbs, weapons, rocking chairs, etc. around you - get Xoph's HUD on the MP and measure scripts and take out the things that are high usage

o use only 512 textures

o sit on your porch and chat to friends in IMs - why are you trying to fly around? Your arms will only get tired.