Ready to finally try Second Life viewer with my SSD

[Love Zhaoying]

I got a SSD when I first bought this potato.

I've noticed some "high usage" with annoying results recently, so may as well finally move my Second Life to use the SSD for cache.

What is the correct procedure to do this?

Not sure what all steps I need: 1) Uninstall, delete cache, reinstall on SSD, or 2) just clear cache and point cache to SSD, etc.

Edited to add:

I doubt it's the cache, as the "red bits" in Task Manager when it starts to do the new "freeze" is "memory usage".

So, there's that.

Thanks,

Love

Specs from recent viewer (collected for a different reason):

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (3410.01 MHz)
Memory: 32720 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19043.2006)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 23.21.13.9135
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 391.35

Window size: 1920x1017
Font Size Adjustment: 96pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128m
Bandwidth: 3000kbit/s
LOD factor: 1.125
Render quality: 2
Advanced Lighting Model: Disabled
Texture memory: 512MB
Disk cache: Max size 204.0 MB (99.7% used)

Edited September 28, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Modulated]

You don't even have to clear the cache. Just make  a folder on the drive, and point the viewer to it in preferences. Restart the viewer and it should work fine.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Modulated said:

You don't even have to clear the cache. Just make  a folder on the drive, and point the viewer to it in preferences. Restart the viewer and it should work fine.

Thanks! Will try that. 

Assuming the "memory" is actually my issue (based on it being "new" behavior and seeing it red-flagged in Task Manager) - perhaps 3 Gig RAM isn't quite cutting it, with whatever my settings are?

[Love Zhaoying]

FYI, I had also noticed in my "viewer stats" prior to moving the cache, it said "99%" was used. So, I'm changing it from "1024" to "4096".

[Modulated]

I assume you mean 3gb of vram?  That should be fine, more or less.  But there's no reason not to max out the cache if you have the space.

[Coffee Pancake]

dont forget to add your cache folder as an exception in your anti virus / windows defender 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Modulated said:

I assume you mean 3gb of vram?  That should be fine, more or less.  But there's no reason not to max out the cache if you have the space.

Actual, physical RAM.

33 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Memory: 32720 MB

I think Task Manager was complaining that it had to use a lot of VRAM for Second Life. 

Not sure why this started only recently (the freezing), but the issue is only a few weeks old and only happens "sometimes".  

I did move my cache to SSD, thanks! 

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

dont forget to add your cache folder as an exception in your anti virus / windows defender 

Will do! I shut down that PC due to the power fluctuations (even with the UPS).

I did wonder if perhaps the Norton 360 was somehow impacting the performance before I moved the cache, but then wondered why it only started recently with no warnings etc.

I'll try to make sure SL is white-listed both for the main app and the new cache folder.

I actually remember now installing SL itself on the SSD way back when, but it kept defaulting to the c:\ drive so I gave up never followed up.

Thus, the SSD went completely unused for years now.

[MarissaOrloff]

What do you mean by "high usage"? That's important to know. High cpu, gpu, disk (which one), memory, process?

[Love Zhaoying]

33 minutes ago, MarissaOrloff said:

What do you mean by "high usage"? That's important to know. High cpu, gpu, disk (which one), memory, process?

Next time it happens, I will update this thread with a screen shot of what I mean.

My memory is that the indicated entry was "red", and something over 1 Meg.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

I did already have the Second Life folder excluded from scanning, and now added the new SSD Cache folder:

 

 

[Fritigern Gothly]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Actual, physical RAM.

I think Task Manager was complaining that it had to use a lot of VRAM for Second Life. 

Not sure why this started only recently (the freezing), but the issue is only a few weeks old and only happens "sometimes".  

I did move my cache to SSD, thanks! 

3Gb is really itty bitty for SL. SL keeps swapping stuff from your physical memory to your virtual memory (not to be confused with cache) because it is basically gasping for air, that's how cramped it feels your memory is and this causes your high disk activity.

To be honest, SL only starts to feel comfy when you have 16Gb of RAM. I have 12 and I really notice that SL sometimes can not get enough space for itself and the scene it is trying to display.

So my advice would be to invest in more memory if/when you can. It will make you a world of difference!

[Love Zhaoying]

30 minutes ago, Fritigern Gothly said:

3Gb is really itty bitty for SL. SL keeps swapping stuff from your physical memory to your virtual memory (not to be confused with cache) because it is basically gasping for air, that's how cramped it feels your memory is and this causes your high disk activity.

To be honest, SL only starts to feel comfy when you have 16Gb of RAM. I have 12 and I really notice that SL sometimes can not get enough space for itself and the scene it is trying to display.

So my advice would be to invest in more memory if/when you can. It will make you a world of difference!

Oops, my own specs that I quoted say I have 32gig. Sorry! That extra digit, I'm so old that I'm not used to big numbers.

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Memory: 32720 MB

 

[Monty Linden]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I did already have the Second Life folder excluded from scanning, and now added the new SSD Cache folder:

Missing from this was the *old* cache location.  You very likely were having a good deal of slowdown from your AV.  (The installation folder is one you might want to have scanned.)

[Love Zhaoying]

40 minutes ago, Monty Linden said:

Missing from this was the *old* cache location.  You very likely were having a good deal of slowdown from your AV.  (The installation folder is one you might want to have scanned.)

Thank you!

[Anicha Heartsong]

Don't forget to delete the old cache - doing so will free up a lot of space.

[Love Zhaoying]

36 minutes ago, Anicha Heartsong said:

Don't forget to delete the old cache - doing so will free up a lot of space.

A message in the "Preferences" dialog where I changed the location, said the cache would be deleted automatically when I changed it..

I will set it back to the default to find the location, just to check in case it was wrong.

Thanks!

Edit:

I did move the cache back, and check that it was deleted when moved again - yes indeed, the SL (Official) viewer does delete the cache when you move it.

Thanks again!

Edited September 29, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

13 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What is the correct procedure to do this?

Don't forget to check that your partition(s) are correctly aligned to optimise for the SSD writes. There's a couple of free-download checkers that will do this and adjust the partition alignment.