Occasional very long freezes since a specific time.

[Feuerblau]

Recently... or well at least 2-3 months now Firestorm keeps freezing for several seconds up to a minute sometimes (and if to long looses connection), mostly it handles the freeze and comes back.
I've seen it happens when loading certain textures, at least that SEEMS to be the problem. When i changed texture layers like BoM stuff it happen regularly. But also not every texture.
For example when at a club, all runs fine, then it starts to freeze for a second a few times and the big freeze happens.
Happens more often when there are more people. Because more textures are loading in. And at some point it seems to "much" or some stuff isn't to my viewers delight.

What i've done:

• Firestorm clean installation. Deleted everything, config files, cache, the program itself of course.
• Exceptions for firewall, app and folders.
• Exceptions for Antivir software, app and folders. (Both are windows own security app, no third party stuff and others were never installed).
• Connection WAS unstable in the upload. Provider fixed that recently. Now upload AND ping is rock stable. Tested with Plotter and other programs. (Modulation problem from the node because another houses connection interfered with the whole node network where i live.)
• Changed decoding set from 0 to 1. (No effect whatsoever)
• Tested the RAM, no errors. 

What i didn't do:

• New windows installation. I want avoid that and others had no fix after it as well.
• Change the GPU driver so far, i think (AMD had issues with the 6000 GPU series so i was avoiding an update.)
• Using another viewer, what i will test.

What i've noticed?
When i only look at me, not the crowd it seems not to happen or not as frequent.
Texture streaming problem? Asynchronous image decoding with high multi core CPUs? 

My hardware:
AMD Ryzen 5950X
AMD RX 6900XT
64GB RAM
If more infos needed, lemme know.

Hardware shouldn't be the problem, performance wise. AMD seems also to have fixed their OpenGL performance last year. (doubled it to be specific)
Will try another driver version now.

 

I know SL isn't any game. But so far had no problems with other 3D software so far.
And the CPU should be more than enough to handle SL properly.
Except Firestorm got issues with handling AMDs multi core CPUs. Who knows... wouldn't be the first time stuff gets not optimized for AMDs stuff... 
The problem also wasn't present end last year. It appeared the last 3 months or so.
It seems that some specific stuff freezes the viewer or lets it get stuck in some workload, so it halts the entire process and it disconnects/looses connection due to no answer towards the server anymore.
It does NOT crash. It disconnects when the freeze is to long. NO crash, that's important. It literally gives me the disconnect screen and i can quit the viewer normally.
The problem was before the unstable connection and after it. Didn't changed anything btw.
So either texture streaming from my viewer towareds AWS Servers got some weird issue or something local with my Viewer together with something keeps it stalling on some texture processing.

 

PS: 
Grammer issues please let me know. Not native english speaking person here.

PPS:
Seems a driver issue. Testing different versions now. Fun...
 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Feuerblau

[Henri Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, Feuerblau said:

New windows installation

So you are running it under Windows...

6 hours ago, Feuerblau said:

AMD RX 6900XT

6 hours ago, Feuerblau said:

Seems a driver issue. Testing different versions now. Fun...

Yes, AMD's proprietary OpenGL driver is a likely culprit...

AMD rewrote their driver a few months ago (because the old version sucked rocks and was dead slow), but their new driver is crippled with bugs.

If it gets confirmed that your problem stems from the graphics driver, then short of replacing your GPU with a NVIDIA one, your other option to avoid crashes and freezes would be to run the viewer under Linux (which Mesa Open Source drivers run well and are stable); the good news is that the viewer would then run even faster and smoother !

Edited February 25, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Feuerblau]

I changed the drive and so far all is fine. Will see how it runs with higher populated regions.

Won't change that quickly. The card isn't that old and paying another grand just for SL  me not likely.

It seems to run properly now. 

[Feuerblau]

Seems it was indeed the driver itself. 
The new version at least for me, works just fine so far. (Version 23.2.2)

[Cody Houley]

Heyy! Hope you're well. I've seen your name on the SL forums, regarding the freezes. My partner is having the same freezing issue now with her SL where she freezes every so often. I see you found a solution saying you changed the drive, how did you do that? Thank you for any assistance you can provide!

[Nalates Urriah]

@Feuerblau There are varied reasons for freezes. Since you have ample RAM and have tested it, that eliminates several. But this type of issue is almost always a Windows issue.

Next I would check the Windows install using SFC /scannow

SFC=System FIle Check - a tool built into Windows. Run in a Command window (cmd) as an admin. The result is no problem found, fixed problems, or could not fix.

Once the SFC finishes successfully run a disk check: chkdsk (letter C and a colon here - no parentheses) /r  this is Windows built-in tool for testing your hard drive. The /r option looks for weak sectors on the drive and repairs them. Windows will go into a retry cycle that can appear to freeze the running app when it tries to read a bad/weak sector.

Also make sure you run Windows Update.

The Windows Task Manager will show you what is going on in your computer. Run the manager using the performance tab. Hopefully, you'll be able to see what is happening when you get a freeze. At the bottom of the Performance tab is a link to open the Resource Monitor. The resource monitor will give you more detail as to which processes are likely causing the freezes.

You can use specific tools to get an idea of what the problem may be. HWMonitor will report temperatures inside the computer. If the CPU is over heating its protective features will slow or shut down your computer. MemHistory will report what is using system memory and graph the use. Both are free.

Again. Freezes are almost always a Windows problem. Replacing (re-installing) Windows is a LAST resort. Do the easy stuff first.

Edited April 13 by Nalates Urriah
that stupid C and colon.

[AmeliaJ08]

On 4/12/2024 at 7:01 AM, Cody Houley said:

Heyy! Hope you're well. I've seen your name on the SL forums, regarding the freezes. My partner is having the same freezing issue now with her SL where she freezes every so often. I see you found a solution saying you changed the drive, how did you do that? Thank you for any assistance you can provide!

They mean the driver for the graphics card, in this case it was an AMD 6000 series graphics card. Find out what graphics card she has and download the appropriate latest driver and install it.

If you wanted the latest AMD graphics card driver you would go here: https://www.amd.com/en/support

Or for an Nvidia graphics card you would go here: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us