New Computer Shopping?

[Clarke Millar]

So what should I look for in terms of a computer that will run second life well? As far as graphics card and all that?

[Lindal Kidd]

Any current model computer advertised as a "gaming" computer should have no trouble running SL. I would get a setup with the biggest monitor* you can conveniently accommodate, and a computer with at least 8GB of RAM (16 preferred) and an Nvidia graphics card**. It doesn't need to be the top of the line card, either. Anything in the RTX3000 series, or even a GeForce 1050, should work.

*I'd suggest staying clear of the "ultrawide" monitors though, and sticking to a 16:9 aspect ratio. SL stretches the material at the sides of ultrawide monitors. You get used to it, but still.

**Nvidia has traditionally run SL better and more consistently, due to better support of OpenGL, the antiquated graphics system SL uses. But I ran an AMD Radeon 6950XT for a while and it handled SL great. So if the system you really like has an AMD card in it, it's not necessarily a showstopper.

[LittleMe Jewell]

If you run any other apps (browser, photo software, etc..) while running SL, then I'd say that 16 gb of RAM is the minimum you want.

An SSD for storage of the SL cache will definitely help make things run quicker also.

Edited December 2, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Magnus Brody]

3 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

*I'd suggest staying clear of the "ultrawide" monitors though, and sticking to a 16:9 aspect ratio. SL stretches the material at the sides of ultrawide monitors. You get used to it, but still.

This surprised me, as I have a 34" ultrawide and run SL in 21:9 with no stretching at the sides.  Mine is a flat panel, is the stretching maybe a curved panel thing?

Pic to indicate the two trees on the right seem the same even if one is at the edge of the right hand side.

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Few here understand how viewer graphics work. Nor are there many that understand how the viewer uses the computer. I'll give you some of basics.

SL Viewers are multi-threaded, meaning they can distribute their work among separate CPU cores. What this means to the non-techie is that multiple cores or needed. An Intel CPU like the i5 is ideal. The i3 will work but but it will bottle neck at times. The i7 and above is more than is needed... but that is as in needed for SL. So depending on what else you do i7 and up may be justified.

While SL Viewers run multiple threads (parallel tasks) the render thread in the view is ONE LARGE CPU CONSUMING THREAD. All other threads basically feed that thread. So faster CPU speeds are WAY better. I think CPU speed is the most impactful single feature.  I consider 3.5GHz a minimum. But viewers will run on 1.5GHz laptops. But things will be slow. I overclock mine by 20% to 4.1GHz.

Memory... you need lots of FAST memory. 8GB is a minimum by the Lab's thinking. I think 16GB is more like the minimum. I prefer 32 or 64GB. Memory comes in different speeds. The faster memory is the more it costs. So, you balance performance and cost. You can look at the motherboard's specs to find out the fastest memory your motherboard can handle. That is the ideal speed.

Data storage... there are some misconceptions as to what is fastest. SSD's (Solid State Drive) are considered best. But, they aren't the fastest and if your motherboard has ePCI bus limits you may find an SSD is no faster then the less expensive mechanical hard drive with a fast disk because the PCI bus is overloaded. All these components have to work together. For the absolute fastest storage performance buy extra system memory and use a RAM Disk.

Video... NVIDIA has been way better at supporting the OpenGL system that SL uses. Apple/AMD is moving toward their own proprietary system and has poor support for OpenGL. So even if you ignore Apple's ties to the CCP and slave labor, Apple/AMD is a restrictive choice.

OpenGL, and SL in particular, do NOT support many of the great new features in NVIDIA's 3000 series cards. NVIDIA 1000 series and in particular the 1060 and 1080 cards are more than adequate. This is another performance vs cost balancing act. Newer is better overall. A 3060 is better than a 2060 than a 1060. But once a card gets you to 45 FPS in SL you have reached the system limit of what SL can use. While the viewer can render more than 45 frames what is being used to make the render can only be updated 45 times per second (Server FPS - frame rate).

If you buy the hottest game machine going and set your Draw Distance to 1024m in the viewer, depending on where you are standing, you are likely to see FPS in the 10 to 20 range. In other places you may see 150FPS. So in my opinion what you buy depends mostly on your budget because my OLD i5 6th gen machine with a 1060 video card gets 10 to 120+FPS depending on where I am standing.

[Lindal Kidd]

@Magnus Brody, I use an ultrawide too, a 38" curved Dell. Your image isn't really a fair test. Try something like this...

These are all identical spheres.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Lindal Kidd

[Magnus Brody]

26 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

@Magnus Brody, I use an ultrawide too, a 38" curved Dell. Your image isn't really a fair test. Try something like this...

These are all identical spheres.

@Lindal Kidd  Will do, but I hope this doesn't ruin it for me!  In all the 9 years I've used an ultrawide (a flat lg 29" before my current flat lg 34") never noticed any edge stretch. Although to be fair it's perhaps so slight as to not really ruin things, and/or wearing specs irl, perhaps I'm accustomed to things being a bit weird at the edges 😂

One thing I now think logically it can't be is whether your monitor is flat or curved, I mean how would sl photography know!

 

[Lindal Kidd]

5 minutes ago, Magnus Brody said:

I hope this doesn't ruin it for me! 

I don't think it will. I was a bit grumpy about it when I first noticed it, but as I said, in everyday use you don't generally notice, you have to be looking for it.

And if your monitor doesn't stretch things like mine does, I wanna know what monitor and GPU you are using!

[PheebyKatz]

The TRS-80 is in color (provided you own a color television set), and you can get a discount of 100 dollars, just in time for the holidays! Just look at all those features! 16 K-byte memory. Dude. You know you need lots of K-byte memory.

It only takes minimal tweaking to get it to run Second Life. I only had to replace the motherboard, the GPU, the disk drives, well, pretty much everything, but hey, it was 100 bucks off!

Seriously though, just about any modern (say, under 10 years old) computer can run Second Life. Don't get conned into spending loads on a high-end machine that's just going to leave you even more disappointed when SL decides to be a butt anyway, as it does occasionally. People complain all the time about trying to make it work properly, and they probably have better computers than I do. Just make sure you've got the minimum requirements or better, and you should be fine.

Right now I'm using a 9-year-old HP laptop with the wrong graphics card, and I have no problems with my SL at all. I don't even have to photoshop my snapshots to make them look good (I'm just usually too lazy to switch to my photography-optimized preset, is all... <-<;).

It's probably more important to learn and understand how to configure your viewer than it is to buy another computer. Plus you could save a hundred dollars or more.

I've gotten perfectly acceptable results with a laptop that was 13 years old and had 4gigs of RAM and an AMD graphics card with outdated drivers. I've even run SL on a netbook (remember those? *shudder*) running on a thumb drive.

Of course, if you just want to buy a new computer, as long as the processor isn't some cheap knockoff or a dusty antique, you should be fine. It's not like you need a monster gaming machine, or anything too extreme to have a good experience (though by all means you shouldn't limit yourself if you've got a decent budget).

Edited December 2, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Rolig Loon]

20 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

It's probably more important to learn and understand how to configure your viewer than it is to buy another computer.

Pheeby's basic point is a good one. A high percentage of the things that people whine about in SL could be taken care of by using more care with viewer settings. Another hefty share of the problems that people report are caused by a poor or inappropriate Internet connection. If you buy a great top of the line gaming computer and don't pay attention to how you configure it for SL, you'll get results that are no better than you'd get with an underpowered ten year old machine.  That said, a more modern gaming computer that has plenty of memory, a good quality graphics card, a fast CPU, and a good monitor can dance circles around an older machine. Nalates's summary of the important features to shop for is pretty good. So, if you have the money and can really make use of a well-designed computer, go for it, especially if you plan to have more than SL running at the same time. 

[Magnus Brody]

16 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Pheeby's basic point is a good one. A high percentage of the things that people whine about in SL could be taken care of by using more care with viewer settings. Another hefty share of the problems that people report are caused by a poor or inappropriate Internet connection. If you buy a great top of the line gaming computer and don't pay attention to how you configure it for SL, you'll get results that are no better than you'd get with an underpowered ten year old machine.  That said, a more modern gaming computer that has plenty of memory, a good quality graphics card, a fast CPU, and a good monitor can dance circles around an older machine. Nalates's summary of the important features to shop for is pretty good. So, if you have the money and can really make use of a well-designed computer, go for it, especially if you plan to have more than SL running at the same time. 

Very, very good point @Rolig Loon and @PheebyKatz my comp is now less than what would run sl at its best, as it once did: old 7th gen i7, 32GB ram, and now a creaking old 1080ti; however I still manage mostly over 20fps everywhere with graphics maxed and a draw distance of 512m.
I agree the internet connection quality is key, however the best tip I ever received, which at the time doubled my fps was MAXHEAPSIZE and MAXHEAPSIZE64 in debug settings which effectively controls the max sl when running can use of your ram, its standard is set at 1.6 and I have found setting this at just less than half of your ram unthrottles sl masively. I have 32GB and have set both these settings to 16.00, sl never uses more than 6, but it runs hugely more smoothly.

[Perrie Juran]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

But once a card gets you to 45 FPS in SL you have reached the system limit of what SL can use. While the viewer can render more than 45 frames what is being used to make the render can only be updated 45 times per second (Server FPS - frame rate).

I am certainly not an expert in this but I am going to question this statement. While is is true the simulators are running at 45 fps  (unless they are lagged) not everything runs on the server, for instance animations. And we also need to take into account how the human eye sees. I will refer back to two statements by  Masami Kuramoto in this old Forum thread: 

"

Myth #1: Second Life cannot render more than 45 FPS.

Fact: Sim/physics FPS and client FPS are unrelated. The viewer will interpolate between simulator updates, predicting updates before they happen and rendering intermediate frames to keep things smooth. This is precisely why avatars start walking through walls or beyond simulator boundaries whenever there is sim lag or network congestion. "Overkill" is any framerate above the monitor's refresh rate (e.g. 60 FPS on LCD/TFT screens)."

 

 

"It's not about distinguishing individual frames but about perception of flicker. There are two types of photoreceptor cells in the human eye, rods and cones, and their flicker fusion threshold is different: 15 Hz for rod cells, and 60 Hz for cone cells. These are average values; some individuals will see flicker up to 75 Hz and higher.

The slow response time of photoreceptor cells is the reason why we see fast moving objects blurred. If a fan rotates faster than the eye's flicker fusion threshold, its blades blur into a transparent disc because the eye can no longer distinguish between the blades and the background; it will see both at the same time.

Motion pictures run at 24 FPS; much slower than the flicker fusion rate. They get away with it because movie cameras expose frames long enough to include a considerable amount of motion blur. The faster an object moves, the softer its edges will be rendered on screen. This reduces the strobe effect and makes the experience bearable.

In Second Life each frame is rendered with zero seconds of motion blur; it looks like it was shot at infinite FPS. That's OK as long as nothing is moving faster than one pixel per frame. Once you have objects moving faster than that, the strobe effect becomes fully visible along their edges. This strobe effect is what triggers epileptic seizures in some individuals. And it is stronger in peripheral vision. If you focus on your avatar while turning it around at 45 FPS, you can easily see it, no meth required.

So there are two ways to eliminate the strobe effect: add motion blur to each frame, or render frames faster than the eye's flicker fusion rate. In the latter case, motion blur will appear naturally

---

[PheebyKatz]

19 minutes ago, Magnus Brody said:

...the best tip I ever received, which at the time doubled my fps was MAXHEAPSIZE and MAXHEAPSIZE64 in debug settings which effectively controls the max sl when running can use of your ram, its standard is set at 1.6 and I have found setting this at just less than half of your ram unthrottles sl masively. I have 32GB and have set both these settings to 16.00, sl never uses more than 6, but it runs hugely more smoothly.

I just set mine to 6 to see what happened, and my nice building preset now has the same FPS as my 32M-draw-distance combat preset did before. I'm getting over 24 FPS with an extended draw distance now, so thank you for this! I wasn't sure if it would do anything as you had included the phrase "at the time" when you described it, but yeah, this actually makes a difference for me.

I'm adding it to my list of things I tell people and that they ignore while they complain about only getting 7 FPS on an empty ocean with transparent water turned off, now. Thanks again~!

[Lindal Kidd]

5 hours ago, Magnus Brody said:

the best tip I ever received, which at the time doubled my fps was MAXHEAPSIZE and MAXHEAPSIZE64 in debug settings which effectively controls the max sl when running can use of your ram, its standard is set at 1.6 and I have found setting this at just less than half of your ram unthrottles sl masively. I have 32GB and have set both these settings to 16.00, sl never uses more than 6, but it runs hugely more smoothly.

If I hadn't already told @Marianne Little I wanted to marry her and have her babies, I'd be throwing myself at you.

[Nalates Urriah]

5 hours ago, Perrie Juran said:

I am certainly not an expert in this but I am going to question this statement. While is is true the simulators are running at 45 fps  (unless they are lagged) not everything runs on the server, for instance animations. And we also need to take into account how the human eye sees. I will refer back to two statements by  Masami Kuramoto in this old Forum thread: 

---

You are conflating several things. In that thread I agree with Baloo.

The server is going to provide updates on what is happening in the simulator. But only 45 times per second. So there technically is noting for the viewer to interpolate to after the latest frame arrives. The viewer takes an average of recent movement in past frames to guess (extrapolate based on history) where moving things will be to render what I will call the in-between-frames and show smooth movement. Often when the next frame arrives the viewer corrects it extrapolation of past frames and we see the avatar snap to a new position. Or do a huge rubber-banding thing in extreme cases.

As the camera moves the render engine can provide in-between-frames that work well because the buildings don't move. This isn't extrapolation. The viewer knows where the buildings and camera are. Things only jerk to a new position when the camera is moving with the avatar and a new server sent frame updates the avatar to a location different from the viewer's extrapolated location.

Often when we loose connection to the server side we can spin the avatar around. Everything moves but the avatar is stuck in one place. Animations play, rotating objects continue to rotate.

Animations do run on the viewer side. Object rotations run on the viewer side. So the viewer can create in between frames and the server is not going to update that information. So the viewer is not extrapolating animations or object animations, like a rotating sign. I doubt most people can notice a difference in an animation running on a screen with 30, 60, or 90 FPS regardless of how many frames the card is generating.

While the computer screen usually updates at 60 fps some screens update at 144 fps or to be more technically correct 144hz. If one wants to use a VR headset or NVIDIA's 3D glasses they need a card that can render 90 fps or more. In the cases of the glasses 144hz to provide a frame for each blink of the glasses. The card has to provide left and right eye renders. If I remember correctly the same frame is rendered twice  in these cases but from different camera positions. So while the video card is rendering 144 fps we see 72 FPS and literally get by with 72/45=1.6 original frames per second. The fractional frame is the reason the viewer uses the video card's ability to handle vertical sync to avoid screen tearing when things are moving quickly. Since few people ever use SL this way it is moot. The only people that this type of discussion matters to are the combat gamers in SL. They are generally more interested in generating more frames viewer-side for keystrokes and clicks so they never have a viewer signal missing a server input window.

In general we get by with 30 FPS for most of the video we watch. So most people can tell no difference between 30 and 60. To spend hundreds of dollars more to get tech most cannot see is foolish. Oz Linden thought SL was playable at 10 FPS. In general he was right. But no combat gamer in SL will agree with that idea. The serious ones turn their graphics way down turning off most of the viewer candy to allow the fps to skyrocket.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

If I hadn't already told @Marianne Little I wanted to marry her and have her babies, I'd be throwing myself at you.

 

Actually, it was @Aethelwinethat you said you wanted to marry and have babies with:

 

[Lindal Kidd]

I'm fickle that way.

[clarissanargi]

This is the build i recently got and everything works fine

CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900 @ 2.50GHz (2496 MHz)
Memory: 32477 MB
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22621.819)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8192 MB

Edited December 3, 2022 by clarissanargi

[Modulated]

17 hours ago, Magnus Brody said:

Very, very good point @Rolig Loon and @PheebyKatz my comp is now less than what would run sl at its best, as it once did: old 7th gen i7, 32GB ram, and now a creaking old 1080ti; however I still manage mostly over 20fps everywhere with graphics maxed and a draw distance of 512m.
I agree the internet connection quality is key, however the best tip I ever received, which at the time doubled my fps was MAXHEAPSIZE and MAXHEAPSIZE64 in debug settings which effectively controls the max sl when running can use of your ram, its standard is set at 1.6 and I have found setting this at just less than half of your ram unthrottles sl masively. I have 32GB and have set both these settings to 16.00, sl never uses more than 6, but it runs hugely more smoothly.

This sorcery actually works! Thank you for the tip. 👍

[HeathcliffMontague]

22 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Few here understand how viewer graphics work. Nor are there many that understand how the viewer uses the computer. I'll give you some of basics.

SL Viewers are multi-threaded, meaning they can distribute their work among separate CPU cores. What this means to the non-techie is that multiple cores or needed. An Intel CPU like the i5 is ideal. The i3 will work but but it will bottle neck at times. The i7 and above is more than is needed... but that is as in needed for SL. So depending on what else you do i7 and up may be justified.

While SL Viewers run multiple threads (parallel tasks) the render thread in the view is ONE LARGE CPU CONSUMING THREAD. All other threads basically feed that thread. So faster CPU speeds are WAY better. I think CPU speed is the most impactful single feature.  I consider 3.5GHz a minimum. But viewers will run on 1.5GHz laptops. But things will be slow. I overclock mine by 20% to 4.1GHz.

Memory... you need lots of FAST memory. 8GB is a minimum by the Lab's thinking. I think 16GB is more like the minimum. I prefer 32 or 64GB. Memory comes in different speeds. The faster memory is the more it costs. So, you balance performance and cost. You can look at the motherboard's specs to find out the fastest memory your motherboard can handle. That is the ideal speed.

Data storage... there are some misconceptions as to what is fastest. SSD's (Solid State Drive) are considered best. But, they aren't the fastest and if your motherboard has ePCI bus limits you may find an SSD is no faster then the less expensive mechanical hard drive with a fast disk because the PCI bus is overloaded. All these components have to work together. For the absolute fastest storage performance buy extra system memory and use a RAM Disk.

Video... NVIDIA has been way better at supporting the OpenGL system that SL uses. Apple/AMD is moving toward their own proprietary system and has poor support for OpenGL. So even if you ignore Apple's ties to the CCP and slave labor, Apple/AMD is a restrictive choice.

OpenGL, and SL in particular, do NOT support many of the great new features in NVIDIA's 3000 series cards. NVIDIA 1000 series and in particular the 1060 and 1080 cards are more than adequate. This is another performance vs cost balancing act. Newer is better overall. A 3060 is better than a 2060 than a 1060. But once a card gets you to 45 FPS in SL you have reached the system limit of what SL can use. While the viewer can render more than 45 frames what is being used to make the render can only be updated 45 times per second (Server FPS - frame rate).

If you buy the hottest game machine going and set your Draw Distance to 1024m in the viewer, depending on where you are standing, you are likely to see FPS in the 10 to 20 range. In other places you may see 150FPS. So in my opinion what you buy depends mostly on your budget because my OLD i5 6th gen machine with a 1060 video card gets 10 to 120+FPS depending on where I am standing.

Very well summarized. Might go over some folks heads, though.  So if I might add: If you get a so-called gaming laptop, and don't really get all the spec stuff,  make sure you don't get one that overheats. It's actually a real issue. Google the laptop you're interested in, read some reviews etc, and if unsure about any specific specs post here, and  you'll prob get some good advice  

[Carolyn Zapedzki]

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8850H CPU @ 2.60GHz (2592 MHz)
Memory: 98064 MB
Concurrency: 6
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22621.521)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: Quadro P2000/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 4096 MB

That's my gaming laptop(Dell precision, 7530), it runs SL much better than my desktop and it doesn't get hot, granted I do use a laptop cooler but sometimes it isn't on and I don't find it overheats. FPS is good (average around 60), I rarely notice any lag and I rarely crash. 

Good internet does help though, my speed on the laptop is 516Mbps

[cunomar]

Thought i would have to replace my MSI leopard 7rd a few months back and if your in the UK and looking for new on a budget the Lenovo Legion seemed to be about the best bet to me .

[shireena1]

4 hours ago, Carolyn Zapedzki said:

Good internet does help though, my speed on the laptop is 516Mbps

Gees, you must have the expensive interwebs, mines about 95 mpbs .

Just a note here, from what I have read, it doesn't seem to matter too much if your pc has ddr4 or ddr5 ram presently. (based on 4800 mhz ddr5 ram compared to the fastest ddr4 ram sticks, but this will soon change as technology inceases.)

Edited December 4, 2022 by shireena1
typo

[Carolyn Zapedzki]

7 hours ago, shireena1 said:

Gees, you must have the expensive interwebs, mines about 95 mpbs .

Just a note here, from what I have read, it doesn't seem to matter too much if your pc has ddr4 or ddr5 ram presently. (based on 4800 mhz ddr5 ram compared to the fastest ddr4 ram sticks, but this will soon change as technology inceases.)

True, it aint cheap.

That's interesting to know about the RAM

[Bree Giffen]

I believe you can get 500 Mbps speeds on a fiber internet. I have cable internet and am getting 230 Mbps. I just unplugged the network cable from the laptop and my network wi-fi is only 30 Mbps.