Ancient Hardware

[DaniRost]

I am trying to setup a couple of older laptops for some people who don't have the money to buy anything better. They are in a different country and technology is either nonexistent or very costly. 

Is there any viewer that will run on old hardware. Yes, I realize they won't "see" everything we see but if they could move around and go to events, even without seeing all the detail that would be fantastic. I've tried older viewers but most of them are as buggy as all get out. No, these laptops don't have great video. No, I can't go out and buy anything better for them (of course is someone wants to donate a couple...).

Just looking for the lowest tech solution I can find. Trying to help a couple of people out. 

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, DaniRost said:

I am trying to setup a couple of older laptops for some people who don't have the money to buy anything better. They are in a different country and technology is either nonexistent or very costly. 

Is there any viewer that will run on old hardware. Yes, I realize they won't "see" everything we see but if they could move around and go to events, even without seeing all the detail that would be fantastic. I've tried older viewers but most of them are as buggy as all get out. No, these laptops don't have great video. No, I can't go out and buy anything better for them (of course is someone wants to donate a couple...).

Just looking for the lowest tech solution I can find. Trying to help a couple of people out. 

 Cool Viewer, Catznip

[Coffee Pancake]

17 minutes ago, DaniRost said:

I've tried older viewers but most of them are as buggy as all get out.

Always run the latest release of any viewer you try. LL do update the service and older clients will miss features, have bugs and increasing incompatibility the further back you go.

As someone who works on Catznip, I'm obviously biased.

We do spend significant time each release working on performance especially of benefit to older hardware and actively test across a wide range of machines. The installer ships with a version specifically for older intel based machines that should run automatically if needed.

R12 is the current release, we are about to update to R13 in the next week (fingers crossed).

Things to keep in mind when sourcing hardware. Any discreet graphics (AMD or Nvidia) is always better than integrated on the age of machine you're talking about. Run 64bit Windows 10 and 64bit SL if at all possible, this combination is significantly more reliable. If nothing else get an SSD in the machines, it's night and day different and can make up for shortcomings in other areas (even a super cheap budget SSD is a huge upgrade). Add the cache folder as an exception to Windows Defender (don't use any other AV).

If you need help, poke our discord https://discord.gg/rxKQMG7 or inworld group 

secondlife:///app/group/0ca3355c-c72c-4db5-d2e2-79127a134d55/about

Or me .. if you can catch me online / awake / caffeinated 

 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

What ancient hardware, and what version of Windows?

Aside from some viewers that use AVX extensions, the basic hardware requirements are mostly the same, and have been for a very long time. Where you're likely to run into problems is Windows not playing nice with your video because it doesn't have drivers. In that case, you're probably out of luck without rolling back to an unsupported version of Windows. Which Microsoft goes out of their way to make a total pain in the ass.

 

[DaniRost]

I'm not even going to tell you how old. But old. They are i5 processors and they have 8GB and SSD's. That was the least I could do - oh and they are laptops. Laptops are much better for my "friends". I mean if I could afford it I would buy some lower end gaming laptops if I could but I can't. 

So the best news is that Catznip works. When you install there is a Intel Legacy mode - and that works just fine and in 64 bit mode. What's nice is, although it's slow, you can move and function better as things finish filling in their detail. 

No, this is not ideal. I know that but this was the best I could do for them at this time. And it's way better than what they have - trust me. 

Thanks for the help. I really do appreciate it. 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Make sure,  with that setup,  if they can turn shadows on,  have htem turned off, the fps will come way up,  tell them to not run over 64m draw either.  

I've currently got a backup machine with a i5 with 8gb ram and an ssd with intel graphics and if I make sure things are down down on the client,  It's very useable and that's using firestorm.