Good pc - Low fps

[Maliwolf]

Today is my 1st day of playing SL, but already seem to have problems.

System:

Win7

cpu: intel i7 950 (3ghz)

gpu: Radeon HD 5970

ram: 6GB

ati driver: 11.9(LATEST)

 

on LOW settings i get about 18 fps if im standing still, on ULTRA i get about 13fps. With my system i see no reason why i should have such low fps. When i move my fps goes down to 5 which is unplayable. If anyone has any ideas to fix this, it would be greatly apreciated.

[Gerrard Winstanley]

If you are in an are where people are constantly arriving this will happen for everyone, regardless of rig. Lowering Draw Distance to minimum in busy places is essential.

How is it when you go to a quiet sim?

 

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Maliwolf. Did you try to set your performance to lower (high or medium) under your Prefefences and Graphics tab? Does it makes any difference? Also have a look here about how you can make SL to run faster.

[Maliwolf]

high/medium makes no difference, and this happens on a quiet place and any other places.

[Thrayce Lanley]

Hi Maliwolf, welcome to SL!

Getting SecondLife Viewers to run up to our system's expectations can be more of an art than a science at times, so take comfort that the trouble you're having is nothing out of the ordinary.

Although ATI cards and SL viewers have a history of not getting along well, your card is well above the needed spec, and since your drivers are up to date, we can assume your GPU is not the culprit.  Assuming your chipset drivers are also current, we can almost completely rule-out a hardware issue in general.

This raises the question, and the answer many don't like to hear: have you tried clearing the list of apps running in the background when you start SL?  Try closing anything in the taskbar that might be using up system resources (AV, defragger, downloads, etc..) and see if that helps.  I'm running SL with all the eyecandy that KV can offer on 'ultra' with between 24 and 28 FPS with similar specs to yours, but it comes with the price of making sure there's nothing at all running in the background.

Gerrard has a good point; start with the distance slider at a modest 32m or 64m.  These are perfectly acceptable for everyday wandering in the virtual world; just crank it up for taking snapshots.

 LoveAngeL also has a good point.  Start SL with the 'graphics' slider at the minimum, and adjust settings upward until you have a comfortable mix of performance and eyecandy.

Finally, I strongly recommend (to help get around the difficulties of ATI/SL problems) that you do not use the AA built-in to the viewer, but rather use the hardware-AA in your ATI control panel.  This is especially important if you intend to use DOF (Depth Of Field).  There is a reason for this, and I'll go into it in-depth in an upcoming blog.

All that being said, you have an enormous number of people here, ready to help!

Cheers! 

[Thinkerer Melville]

My machine is not as powerful as yours, but similar.  The one advantage I may have is a Nvidea card, which is generally considered better for SL than Radeon

I genrally get 35 -50 FPS. 

Possible difference -- Under 

Prefs - Gra[hics- 

I am running at generally high but with (advanced) shadows off , lIghting & shadows unchecked and draw distance = 152.  I found that shodows cut my FPS in half.

THR

[Maliwolf]

i fixed it. I disabled VBO in prefernces -> graphics -> hardware. Im now playing at 40fps on ultra with a low draw distance.

[Valen Serpente]

Funny thing, I have a 2gig ati 6950 and got it working just fine with SL software AA, streaming VBO, the works.

What I had to do is uninstall the entire catalyst software package and reinstall the video driver ONLY, and everything runs smooth. No crashes and excellent framerate.

SL and some other games do not play nice with the catalyst software at all.

[Beautifulmind Halderman]

Wow, that worked perfectly. Nice finding!