SL using Wrong Video Driver?

[Jolene Merlin]

Why does my Second Life say it is using a "Windows Graphics Driver" ... and not the Driver for my AMD Radeon card?

The onboard video is disabled in the BIOS and the computer is only using the Radeon Card.

Is this "Windows Graphics Driver" the reason why Second Life is running so horribly slow?

 

 

[Chic Aeon]

I am not sure about the slower part, many things seem slower these days for lots of people. I DO KNOW that when I crash (black screen and need to reboot graphics card crash) Windows tells me that it can't find my Nvidia driver and is "now" using the Windows driver. So resetting only keeps that until I crash again (this weekend not looking good with four crashes on Friday and I only went a couple of places :D.   So Windows apparently resets to its default upon a crash.

 

If you HAVEN'T been crashing -- maybe in other manners than the black screen version, don't know), then congrats and my answer isn't the right one.  I have found no real way to fix this since we went to the cloud.  I am at least happy that I finally figured out it was not my card (it would have died long ago if it was the card :D).   

 

 

[Jolene Merlin]

No SL isn't crashing, though I appreciate your reply.

I also know its not the video card itself as all my other games run just fine on the video card without issues; and its the only display adapter showing in my device manager so I'm confused as to how SL can even find another one to use.

[Mollymews]

the version numbers shown are for the latest Radeon Adrenalin driver. This includes the named Windows Graphics Driver

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-2-2

suggest that you remove and reinstall the driver

if this doesn't work then could try rolling back to an earlier driver version

I don't have this graphics card but some people who do have said that version 19-8-1 works ok for them

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-19-8-1

 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

we are almost comparable in specs,  but I run nvidia for obvious SL compatibility reasons,    but,  let me point out a few fps solutions just incase,  turn off shadows,  I know, I know,  one should support them, but they kill fps on my 980's,  I turn it off, I get great fps even in crowds.   Draw distance,    people need to understand if you are pulling more than 64/32m you are loading all the things and you really do not need to load that much, it causes bottlenecks.

[Lindal Kidd]

Just to be clear, no, the problem isn't the "Windows graphics driver". Your specs show that your AMD Radeon card is recognized and is being used.

[Nalates Urriah]

To be clear on which driver/card is being used get the free app GPU-Z. It will show you which card is being used and what percent of its capacity being used.

In Windows you can also open the Task Manager and watch the Performance tab. Here on the forum it shows 0% of my NVIDIA in use. Starting Firestorm that jumps up to 30%. So, you can easily see if your card is in use without downloading or installing anything.

I suggest running SL in less than full screen so you can be in SL and see GPU-Z at the same time.

I am not clear if you are running a desktop or a laptop. I will point out that unless you make SL Viewer related settings on a laptop it will try to save battery, plugged in or not, by turning off the graphics card and using the CPU-based graphics render.

Whether desktop or laptop, the graphics card should be set specifically for your SL viewer. In my NVIDIA control panel I have a set of settings specifically for Firestorm, Default, and Black Dragon viewers.

[panterapolnocy]

I'd only like to point out, that the "Windows Graphics Driver version" is just a hardcoded string and it really doesn't matter - what does matter is the numbers behind the colon sign. It's the "graphics driver that Windows is currently using" - can be ATI/AMD/NVIDIA/anything. Your computer is using ATI Radeon RX 580. Remember, that Second Life is heavily bound to CPU, at least by most of the viewers - try to kill some processes in the background.