System requirements 2021

[AchimMaier]

Hello, I would like to buy a new notebook to have one with an Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 in mind: https://www8.hp.com/de/de/laptops/product-details/2100654245?r=pdp

Linden Labs gives an Nvidia 9000 as a recommended system requirement. the NVIDIA 9000 series is from 2008 ... and the Iris Xe from 2020 ..

After looking at some benchmark tests, I think that the Iris Xe Second Life should be super playable in medium to high settings. Or maybe I didn't consider something and should I buy a notebook with a stronger graphics card?

What do you all mean? Does anyone have experience with this graphics card or actual onboard Graphics?

[Alwin Alcott]

57 minutes ago, AchimMaier said:

Hello, I would like to buy a new notebook to have one with an Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 in mind: https://www8.hp.com/de/de/laptops/product-details/2100654245?r=pdp

Linden Labs gives an Nvidia 9000 as a recommended system requirement. the NVIDIA 9000 series is from 2008 ... and the Iris Xe from 2020 ..

After looking at some benchmark tests, I think that the Iris Xe Second Life should be super playable in medium to high settings. Or maybe I didn't consider something and should I buy a notebook with a stronger graphics card?

What do you all mean? Does anyone have experience with this graphics card or actual onboard Graphics?

forget the published requirements, it's nearly as obsolete as a 486 IBM machine.

If you have the budget.. always go for a stand alone Graphics never a onboard .
processor i5 or higher, or Ryzen 5 or higher.
however AMD has no bad graphics, mostly work fine too, (sometimes driver issues)  Nvidia is often more recommended for SL
and again... if your budget allows.. go for newer/higher specs .but it's not needed to go for a machine of several thousends as we sometimes see pass here.

i'm at home on a ASUS Tuf Ryzen 5 /gtx 1060 laptop .. it runs SL fine, not spectaculair, but for me totally OK, also with two more accounts ( on firestorm) logged in.
at work i run SL on a older MSI i7/ gt640m .. at lower setting it runs ok .. but not that great, and bringing a alt online is for the life sake of this machine not reccomendable.

[AchimMaier]

thanks, that was helpful!

I decided to buy one with a GeForce GTX 1650 / 4GB

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by AchimMaier

[bigmoe Whitfield]

14 hours ago, AchimMaier said:

thanks, that was helpful!

I decided to buy one with a GeForce GTX 1650 / 4GB

 

You will not be able to run anything really in SL with ultra smooth fps,  everything is user created and no optimized and once you get into more crowded sims with lots of people.   best advise,  drop the draw distance to low and turn off your shadows if you want usability.

[Henri Beauchamp]

The GTX 1650 will be fine (anything equal or above a GTX 960 will do, even with full shadows). Just avoid AMD graphics cards: the OpenGL drivers for them suck rocks and will ruin your FPS; Linux Open Source OpenGL AMD drivers are much better than Windows', but at equivalent hardware, NVIDIA (with their proprietary driver) invariably beats AMD hands down in OpenGL graphics.

With a good enough graphics card, the bottleneck in SL clients (viewers) is the CPU, because the renderer is mono-threaded: you need a CPU that got the best possible mono-core performance (for your budget). A Coffee Lake (or better) or Zen3 CPU will give you the best results.

Also do not neglect RAM: 16GB would be today's standard for a comfortable SLing experience, and 8GB would be a strict minimum.

 

EDIT: oh, and in case you are not allergic to Linux, do use it for SL: you'll get quite a significant FPS bonus with it compared to Windows...

 

Edited April 19, 2021 by Henri Beauchamp

[bigmoe Whitfield]

5 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

The GTX 1650 will be fine (anything equal or above a GTX 960 will do, even with full shadows). Just avoid AMD graphics cards: the OpenGL drivers for them suck rocks and will ruin your FPS; Linux Open Source OpenGL AMD drivers are much better than Windows', but at equivalent hardware, NVIDIA (with their proprietary driver) invariably beats AMD hands down in OpenGL graphics.

With a good enough graphics card, the bottleneck in SL clients (viewers) is the CPU, because the renderer is mono-threaded: you need a CPU that got the best possible mono-core performance (for your budget). A Coffee Lake (or better) or Zen3 CPU will give you the best results.

Also do not neglect RAM: 16GB would be today's standard for a comfortable SLing experience, and 8GB would be a strict minimum.

 

EDIT: oh, and in case you are not allergic to Linux, do use it for SL: you'll get quite a significant FPS bonus with it compared to Windows...

 

I would of went that route,  but gaming really has me locked to windows,  most of my car games require I have to use windows.   also I run i7-5820k on water at 4.5ghz oc, with dual 980's with 64gb ram and I still choke lol.

[Solar Legion]

Unless those games are using a form of Anti-Cheat or can only be acquired through Microsoft's app store ... No, no they do not "require" Windows anymore, Proton is a thing and it does work. Steam, Lutris/Play-On-Linux and now at least two variants on the Epic Games launcher system use it.

While it is more Steam centric, the Proton DataBase is a good place to start checking for games - see if they work well out of the box, if they need tweaks and such. Do be warned though that all entries are more or less user reported so some titles that simply work "out of the box" now might not have at the time of the last report.

[Henri Beauchamp]

Quote

most of my car games require I have to use windows

Installing a dual boot (Linux/Windows) is also quite easy to do...

[MarissaOrloff]

On 4/19/2021 at 4:59 AM, Henri Beauchamp said:

 

EDIT: oh, and in case you are not allergic to Linux, do use it for SL: you'll get quite a significant FPS bonus with it compared to Windows...

 

Without a doubt. SL performance in Linux was one of my main reasons to switch to Linux as my full time OS. With Steam, Proton and Wine most Windows programs and games (not all) can run within Linux. Even Cyberpunk (proton experimental) ran in Linux without issue.