What is the cost of the computer you use to run Second Life?

[Rick Nightingale]

1 hour ago, Istelathis said:

Strangely, I haven't noticed a difference in my room while the computer is running.

Seems they've improved efficiency a lot since my GTX 1080 then; perhaps another reason I should consider upgrading. Mine can certainly help keep a room warm, and overheat it if we get a warm summer spell; unfortunately very rare for the last 10 years. Previous to that, there were times over the summer I couldn't bare to run the PC during the day because the room just got too hot and that was with a GTX 960 in the previous rig.

Idle, with Firestorm minimised and just this web browser up, the GPU is at 52W. This is it at the fair about 30 seconds after TP'ing in. I saw a peak at 137W while turning around.

Edited April 27 by Rick Nightingale

[gwynchisholm]

2 hours ago, Rick Nightingale said:

Seems they've improved efficiency a lot since my GTX 1080 then

Actually the opposite, pascal was definitely an outlier of a generation. But it’s hardware performance tier being similar to the rtx 3060 while being nearly the same wattage is somewhat normal. The 1080 is a 180 watt card, the 3060 is 170 watts.

What isn’t, is that it’s product placement tier equivalent, the 3080 , is 320 watts, as is the 4080.

Even my partners card, the Titan X pascal, the top end of that generation, is only 250 watts. Meanwhile the 4090 is 450 watts. And further is that those numbers for peak wattage don’t include transient spikes, where the cards can very briefly tap over 600 watts, both 3000 and 4000 series do that as well. Where cards like the 3090ti could run close to 500 watts under load and spike to 650 momentarily, which would actually kill some power supplies.

GPUs have gotten way more power hungry, it’s a shame.

[Spiffy Voxel]

I have a 2017 iMac 27-inch machine, which cost £1749 as a basic spec (8GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive, 3.5Ghz Intel Core i5, Radeon Pro 575 4GB) when I bought it in early 2018 to replace my previous 2011 iMac 27-inch. I subsequently spent in the region of £300 to upgrade the RAM to 24GB (2018) and later 48GB (2020), and more recently spent about £100 for a new external SSD to run macOS from. Those upgrades have removed most of the bottlenecks on my machine, and it runs pretty darn snappy! As far as Second Life goes, performance has increased immensely over the last few years thanks to viewer improvements, and if anything it's even better running the latest Alchemy Viewer or the official Linden Lab viewer.

The remaining constraints on this rig are down to Apple: it will be stuck at macOS Ventura now (unless I take a chance with OCLP) and OpenGL has been deprecated for several years now in macOS. I'm considering getting a MacBook Air at some point for my non-Second Life workload, and installing Linux on this machine to hopefully make it a better performer for Second Life.

[Jackson Redstar]

10 hours ago, Rick Nightingale said:

Seems they've improved efficiency a lot since my GTX 1080 then; perhaps another reason I should consider upgrading. Mine can certainly help keep a room warm, and overheat it if we get a warm summer spell; unfortunately very rare for the last 10 years. Previous to that, there were times over the summer I couldn't bare to run the PC during the day because the room just got too hot and that was with a GTX 960 in the previous rig.

Idle, with Firestorm minimised and just this web browser up, the GPU is at 52W. This is it at the fair about 30 seconds after TP'ing in. I saw a peak at 137W while turning around.

 

Yes the RTX can be more efficient and run cooler - but this is why also is a good Idea to set a FPS limit, no need to for the GPU to be cranked at 100% all the time. I keep min at 32 fps, more than enough for a smooth experience in SL when everything is going good (that is with the shaders and shadows on)

[AmeliaJ08]

19 hours ago, Rick Nightingale said:

Seems they've improved efficiency a lot since my GTX 1080 then; perhaps another reason I should consider upgrading. Mine can certainly help keep a room warm, and overheat it if we get a warm summer spell; unfortunately very rare for the last 10 years. Previous to that, there were times over the summer I couldn't bare to run the PC during the day because the room just got too hot and that was with a GTX 960 in the previous rig.

Idle, with Firestorm minimised and just this web browser up, the GPU is at 52W. This is it at the fair about 30 seconds after TP'ing in. I saw a peak at 137W while turning around.

Efficiency has definitely improved but... the newest GPUs in the same sort of class as the 1080 was pump out an equivalent if not more heat. They get more performance per watt but the wattage only seems to keep going up... an RTX 4080 is a 320W card! an RTX 4090 is a 450W card and was originally designed to be 600+W but efficiency took a nose dive so they limited it. There's even 1000W BIOS's available for it and the chip can handle it. A kilowatt!

The GTX 1080 is a 180W card for reference

Still though with the latest high power cards it's often worthwhile setting an aggressive power limit, they will still do plenty of work per watt and certainly more than previous generations did.

 

 

 

Edited April 27 by AmeliaJ08

[AmeliaJ08]

On 4/26/2024 at 6:25 PM, Istelathis said:

I wanted to get a nvida 3060 with 12gb of vram, for AI tasks but settled for the 4060 with 8gb.  I plan to upgrade that next year, along with possibly getting a set of meta 3 goggles for some VR play.  

The 4060Ti with 16GB VRAM is honestly the most interesting 40 series for me, I haven't been able to play with one yet but it almost seems like the spiritual successor to the venerable 3060 12GB in the sense that people said it has too much VRAM but we all know there's no such thing. Just a middle of the road card but for whatever reason they gave it tons of lovely VRAM.

They seem pretty rare though, only handled the 8GB versions so far.

 

 

[Rick Nightingale]

35 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

The 4060Ti with 16GB VRAM is honestly the most interesting 40 series for me

That's what I'm looking at mostly, if I do upgrade. My usual supplier has plenty in stock of all the usual makes. I need to do a lot of research before dropping that kind of money though, on all of it. My knowledge was reasonably good... ten years ago when I built my last big PC and worked in the industry. Since then it's been practically non-existent.

So far, my shortlist looks like this:

• MB: MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max
• CPU: Intel 14700KF
• GPU: 16GB 4060Ti; the quietest running one I can determine
• RAM: 96GB DDR5 6400 (2x48GB)
• Storage: 2TB NVME for OS, 4TB NVME for bulk processing (some of the stuff I do can use it). Already have 64TB on NAS in my loft rack for actual data.
• Monitor: Dell U2724D - arriving next week due to current monitor failing
• PSU: to be determined when I finalise what it needs to power
• Cooling: Need to think about that. Currently have an enormous (15cm cube) CPU heatsink with home-made ducting and multiple, quiet Noctua 140mm fans directing air throughout the server-size chassis. I don't like noise and the PC lives in the living room now instead of my 'office'. Could do with a smaller case too though, for that reason. I once planned a liquid cooling system in the loft, above the office, using a header tank, central heating pump and heat exchanger through the external wall. Even put the pipes in but never got it finished due to stuff that went on.

Edited April 27 by Rick Nightingale

[AmeliaJ08]

24 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

That's what I'm looking at mostly, if I do upgrade. My usual supplier has plenty in stock of all the usual makes. I need to do a lot of research before dropping that kind of money though, on all of it. My knowledge was reasonably good... ten years ago when I built my last big PC and worked in the industry. Since then it's been practically non-existent.

So far, my shortlist looks like this:

• MB: MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max
• CPU: Intel 14700KF
• GPU: 16GB 4060Ti; the quietest running one I can determine
• RAM: 96GB DDR5 6400 (2x48GB)
• Storage: 2TB NVME for OS, 4TB NVME for bulk processing (some of the stuff I do can use it). Already have 64TB on NAS in my loft rack for actual data.
• Monitor: Dell U2724D - arriving next week due to current monitor failing
• PSU: to be determined when I finalise what it needs to power
• Cooling: Need to think about that. Currently have an enormous (15cm cube) CPU heatsink with home-made ducting and multiple, quiet Noctua 140mm fans directing air throughout the server-size chassis. I don't like noise and the PC lives in the living room now instead of my 'office'. Could do with a smaller case too though, for that reason. I once planned a liquid cooling system in the loft, above the office, using a header tank, central heating pump and heat exchanger through the external wall. Even put the pipes in but never got it finished due to stuff that went on.

Sounds like a hell of a machine. I'm surprised more haven't jumped on the 4060Ti 16GB, it's basically the 16GB 3070 that everyone wanted and Nvidia denied.

That and the only other way to get 16GB and an Nvidia card is a 4080 which is ludicrously expensive.

 

[examining]

290 euros initially and another 250 for repair of the case cover when it fell down some day.

[AAngel Braveheart]

Cyber Power about £1400 squid

Firestorm 6.6.17 (70368) Dec 10 2023 18:36:33 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700KF CPU @ 3.60GHz (3600 MHz)
Memory: 65479 MB (Used: 536 MB)
Concurrency: 8
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4355)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8192 MB

2 SSD £100

,2 Backup External drives, £300

Water- cooled heatsink + £80

Faster RAM replaced, £110

 

Plus a cabled DSL at 355 / month

3D connexion mouse £ 120 for filming the dance routines we do

Logitech Ergonomic Mouse £70

Gigagbyte Keyb. £90

Sound core speaker £60

V-Moda headphones £120

Adobe Video editing software £130

Neo Luminar, £80 + subs

SL Premium Plus £££

Flickr Pro subs ££

 

and a back up ASUS ROG Gaming Laptop at £1222

 

Simples!

[Rick Nightingale]

6 minutes ago, AAngel Braveheart said:

3D connexion mouse £ 120 for filming the dance routines we do

One of the best input devices ever for camming around; also Blender.