Getting an inconsistent framerate ingame, and very frequent crashes.

[Marigold Devin 5,676]

Welcome to Second Life Answers, karabina.

This could be due to your connection not being consistent. Even if you have potentially a high broadband speed, your inworld performance and FPS will fluctuate at times there are more people sharing your broadband area. For example, I find Friday evenings and Saturdays the worst days for me, and my FPS can go as low as 1.8, whereas during the early hours of the morning I can get up to 22FPS.

Also, connection issues will cause the crashes you mention in your post, as will over-zealous anti-virus programs.

[Marigold Devin 5,676]

Welcome to Second Life Answers, karabina.

This could be due to your connection not being consistent. Even if you have potentially a high broadband speed, your inworld performance and FPS will fluctuate at times there are more people sharing your broadband area. For example, I find Friday evenings and Saturdays the worst days for me, and my FPS can go as low as 1.8, whereas during the early hours of the morning I can get up to 22FPS.

Also, connection issues will cause the crashes you mention in your post, as will over-zealous anti-virus programs.

[Nyll Bergbahn 1,051]

Hi karabiner,

Second Life is not renowned for consistent frame rates due to its very nature, constantly loading textures etc but fluctuations as wild as you are seeing is certainly not right.

Marigold has suggested some possibilities. Another I'd suggest is hardware issues with your newly built computer, possibly overheating of your your CPU or your GPU. Install a hardware monitor and check the temperatures. As you've just built this computer, dust is an unlikely cause but if the monitor shows high temperature in your CPU, check the thermal paste and that your cooler is working efficiently. Same for your GPU, is the fan working and doing its job.

[Rolig Loon 26,934]

Unlike computer games that you may have played, SL uses a very large amount of bandwidth swapping information back and forth between its servers and your client.  Every time anything changes in world within your field of view, SL has to send updated information to your GPU.  If you move to a new spot and need to render new textures, for example, or if a new av crosses your field of view or changes appearance in any way, SL has to let your client know about it.  Meanwhile, other things that may be using bandwidth (like an audio stream, or a voice conversation) are cutting into your efficiency.  Every time Microsoft or my anti-virus provider forces an upgrade on me, my FPS dives.  On a clear day, in a nice, quiet sim where I have already cached most textures, my FPS can be 45 to 70.  On a bad day, in a crowded mall, it can plummet to 5, so I feel like I'm walking in molasses.

How to beat it:

1. Get off wireless, if you are on it.  Even on a private router, wireless gets interference from cell phones, garage door openers, and household appliances.  Use a direct cable connection if you can.

2. Drop your draw distance to something like 64m.  The fewer textures your GPU has to render, the happier it is.

3. Disable shadows and antialiasing, which slow things down significantly.

4. Consider moving other graphics sliders in Preferences to the left.

5. Reboot your router and modem by unplugging them for a minute or two. That will force them to grab a fresh IP address, maybe clearing some cobwebs out of the connection.

6. Some viewers seem to do a better job than others.  It's wierd, and not the same for everyone. I have a great time with Phoenix or Firestorm, personally, but I can't guarantee that you will.  Try a couple of different ones to see.

[Faubio Alter 72]

I was having similar problem with the last two SL viewers with the new one it has straightened out. While this was occurring I cleaned the LM history ......... Globe tab > TP history tab > Gear (bottom left) > clear TP history and routinely cleared the history cache Me > Preferences > Privacy > Clear history button. If it hangs repeatedly click the viewer button in the taskbar, if using the windows OS, this may break hangs loss.

 

I was also showing excessive memory usage in the Windows event viewer for the GPU as one possible cause.

[Silky Mesmeriser 7]

Something that has not been mentioned here previously but I note the rather heavy overclock on that CPU of yours.  That can be problematic and in some cases produce CPU errors even where the temperatures look normal and needs to be investigated as a possible cause here.

Firstly check your system temps especially that CPU but also watch the GPU etc as well, clear warning signs are seeing temps over ~60 on the CPU (At full load) or over ~80-90 depending on model for the GPU (See manufacturer website for thermal tollerance data and make sure you are at LEAST 10% bellow at full load).

I suggest doing the above while doing intensive CPU and GPU work to see their load temps which are far mor imporant idle temps will tell you nothing of value here.  Prime95 is a good one for the CPU as not only will it's torture test put the CPU under load to get a good idea of the true temps you are getting when the CPU is under pressure but it also checks for CPU errors by checking the results of the calculations against known valid results.

A soak test of prime95 or similar in torture test mode for at least 24 hours continuous should be you next thing to try but ONLY if the temps look okay first if not fix the temps first as a long torture test with bad cooling could harm the CPU perminantly.  The end result of this will tell you if your CPU is throwing math errors under load which will cause crashes, sudden performance issues, and worse data corruption and other problems where applications don't detect the errors which is common.  Such problems will be mostly intermittant though more common when the system is at load like when playing second life (Though if it is the overclock you will get some at light load also usually).

 

Note also that the maximum overclock a chip can handle safely is very unique to the individual chip, once you go pushing beyond it's design tollerance you will get some chips that are well able to handle it others less able but pass quality control as the quality control spec was written for standard speeds.  In other words your milage may very and you should never assume just because others have acheived a high overclock with a given model of chip that your specific part has the same capability.  Another comfounding issue is the interaction of other components in your system, I susggest anyone planning on building or using an overclocked system always do the testing yourself, don't rely on anything else.

[Ormand Lionheart 2]

When I have that uissue it is related to running out of RAM even though I have 5 gb avialable if I get over 3.5 gb used it will slow fps down radically. Crashing might also be heat related. But definitely check Ram usage in Task Manager performnce Tab.