How Fast is Your Viewer?

[Coby Foden]

Viewer: Firestorm 3.2.2 (24336)

CPU: Intel® Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (3411.18 MHz)
Memory: 8169 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCI/SSE2
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

Graphics setting in viewer: Ultra
Antialiasing: 2x
Draw distance: 200 m

Frame rates depend a lot where I am and what I'm looking at. Generally fps is very good, around 30 to 50 even in dense areas. With shadows on I get around 15 - 30 fps; again depending a lot what I'm looking at.

Once I was in sim where I had very variable fps. When I looked out to the sea, only few things in sight on the shore and the sea with some scripted waves, I got insanely high framerate of 120 fps. I turned around 180 degrees and looked there, where there was a big stone textured building with lots of sculpties. The scenery had lots of trees, bushes and grass. The framerate dropped to a mere 5 fps. :smileysurprised:

Then again looking back towards the sea framerate jumped immediately to 120 fps. I turned many times around, and it was always the same. Looking towards the building, the framerate went down to a slideshow and looking towards the sea it went high again. Never seen this dramatic change in looking different directions, standing in the same spot. Something must have been badly designed in the building and/or the scenery there.

PS
Linden Lab latest beta viewer gives very similar results as Firestorm does. Phoenix mesh enabled viewer gives very similar results. What I noticed is that in Firestorm and in Linden Lab viewer shadows are better than in Phoenix.

[Triple Peccable]

FYI, I installed Viewer 3.2.4 today. Now I am back to pushing the video card to 95%, and getting 140 fps in an empty sim.

I am thinking the culprit was this: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2459

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Depending on your card the SL Viewer will turn your AA up to 8x. With the 560Ti I only see a small change in FPS with AA on verses off.

If you read the JIRA comments you'll see Runitia commented. The SL Viewer is using FXAA, which is much faster and handled by newer video cards. I'm not sure what older cards with newer drivers are doing with FXAA.

The change to AA 8x on each start of the viewer has been fixed. I'm not sure which versions of the viewer have the fix. The default now should be off or 2x. But, play with the settings to see which give you the best performance.

Also check your video cards settings in its control panel. Make sure they work well with your Viewer. See Graphics Tweaking for Second Life if you need help understanding all the options.

[Denny Cioc]

Second Life 3.2.4 (246439) Dec  8 2011 14:02:44 (Second Life Release) Release Notes

CPU: Intel® Core2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz (2393.99 MHz) Memory: 3070 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit Service Pack 2 (Build 6002) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562 OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v6.4.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Not Connected Built with MSVC version 1600 Packets Lost: 173/117,463 (0.1%)

 

Connection speed 4.2 Mbps

Ultra Graphic , AA 4x, Anisotropic Filtering, RenderVolumeLODFactor 4

In low-lag sim with Lighting and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion -> FPS 15-20

and without Lighting and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion -> FPS 20-25

[pallina60 Loon]

Second Life 3.2.4 (246439) Dec 8 2011 14:02:44 (Second Life Release) Release Notes

CPU: Intel® Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz (2806.4 MHz)
Memoria: 6136 MB
Versione sistema operativo: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Venditore scheda grafica: NVIDIA Corporation
Scheda grafica: GeForce GTX 470/PCI/SSE2
Versione driver Windows per grafica: 8.17.0012.8562
Versione OpenGL: 4.2.0
Versione libcurl: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
Versione J2C Decoder: KDU v6.4.1
Versione Driver audio: FMOD version 3.750000
Versione Qt Webkit: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Versione Server voice: Not Connected
Generato con MSVC versione 1600
Pacchetti perduti: 163/1.297 (12,6%) Informazioni

Connection speed 4.14 Mbps

Ultra Graphic , AA 4x, Anisotropic Filtering, RenderVolumeLODFactor 4
In low-lag sim with Lighting and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion -> FPS 35/37
and without Lighting and Shadows and Ambient Occlusion -> FPS 53/55

However, depends on what I'm looking at and if I do a ride on myself can vary by 20 points more or less, with or without shadows.

[Lance Corrimal]

There's no point in this unless we all measure the FPS at exactly the same place and looking in the same direction.

[VRprofessor]

"no point" is too strong, but you raise a valid concern--if we were trying to be scientifically precise we should have some standard sims to visit so that we are comparing apples to apples. 

As I see it this is a more of a casual exercise allowing some rough comparisons--and some potentially amusing discussion.   If folks want to be highly serious there should be some standard comparisons established.   Hmm, that could be fun.

[Corin Clary]

Your CPU runs at 2.4Ghz, the same speed as mine. The difference is yours is an Intel and mine is an AMD. Yours might also be a similar age to mine, in terms of how long it has been on the market. Mine abot 2005 I think. Can you get a better CPU for that masinboard socket. For mine I looked on ebay and the New Zealand trademe.co.nz because thats my location. I could not see anything on trademe. On ebay there was a few Opterons but they ran at the same speed although having double my L2 cache memory. I might not gain much for my money although I see Opterons are more overclockable. I tried overclocking my AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ 2.4Ghz. The multiplier could not be set any higher in the mainboard BIOS, only lower. I tried instead to increase the FSB only by 10Mhz to 210. My whole system became very unstable and crashed. The AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ 2Ghz I had before could be overclocked quite lot from only the FSB. The multiplier was locked I added another 40Mhz to the FSB to bring it to 240Mhz so with the 10x multiplier had 2.4Ghz the same as my present CPU. The performance seemed quite a bit better then than now probably because of the FSB running faster. Then I also had an older graphics card a Geforce 7950GT and half the memory at 2Gb. The system then did not seem much different from what I have now with a Geforce GTS 450 4Gb. It might have run even slightly better. I also had to spend money on a new power supply because of the graphics card upgrade. That was back in April so the SL viewer then might have allowed better performance.

I also play FlightGear 2.5.0 now and back before April at 2.4.0. It runs now at 17-60 FPS on high settings but whenever I get my aircraft into a lot of clouds the FPS goes way down. One of the developers told me this was not possible because clouds are much simpler in uniformity when they are covering a lot of the view. I agreed that it seems to go against logic but that is what I experienced. He did not reply and I do not think anything was/will be done. I do not like it when developers refuse to listen to the lower order of life I hope this is not to general.

[Corin Clary]

My hardware:and viewer.

Firestorm 3.2.2 (24336) Nov 27 2011 17:05:37 (Firestorm-Release)
Release Notes

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+ (2411.11 MHz)
Memory: 4095 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTS 450/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.6658
OpenGL Version: 4.1.0
RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Phoenix
Viewer Skin: firestorm (grey)
Font Used: Deja Vu (96)
Draw distance : 128
Bandwidth : 1000
LOD factor : 2
Built with MSVC version 1600

About 6-21 FPS if I am moving my avatar the FPS drop low. When I stand they go up a lot in comparison. My internet connection is ADSL and quite a lot is at low speed around 152kb/s. That might have quite a bit performance drop because new objects have to be downloaded before they are rendered. Not just a CPU on the older slower side.

[Nalates Urriah]

To provide a scientic analysis... you are correct.

But, most people are not going to take the time to change all their settings to match a test standard or visit a common location and run tests. Second Life is supposed to be fun rather than tedious.

So, this is a casual collection of easy to provide information. As we see more and more informatin a pattern becomes clear. It works somewhat like chaos math predicting the pattern of a lawn sprinkler. Eventaully all the water drops form a consistant pattern.

However, if you would like to set up a rigorous scientific comparison, feel free to start a thread and link to it from this one.

 

[Perrie Juran]

So I have had a little bit of fun comparing viewers, screen shots following.

My system:

CPU: AMD Processor model unknown (3000.09 MHz)
Memory: 3328 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTS 250/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 6.14.0012.8558
OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.20.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8j zlib/1.2.3
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.4.0.697, Runtime: 1.4.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1
Vivox Version: Unknown
Packets Lost: 2/48570 (0.0%)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Now I know the 250 is not a high end card.  But the differences in how these viewers run is astounding.  I chose a fairly busy SIM to do my tests, Junkyard Blues.

 

Linden Lab Official 3.2.4    5.3 FPS

Firestorm Official V3,2,1    10.5 FPS

Phoenix 1.6 (with MESH)    16.0 FPS

Firestorm Beta V2,,,,,         19.3 FPS

Now if you were me, which would you use?

 

SL 3.2.4

 

Firestorm 3.2.1

 

Phoenix 1.6  (with MESH)

 

Firestorm Beta (pre-mesh)

[Monica Balut]

Firestorm 3.2.2 (24336) Nov 27 2011 17:05:37 (Firestorm-Release)
Release Notes

You are at 286,899.0, 264,941.0, 61.2 in Sekmet located at sim9771.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.45.105:13003)
Second Life RC LeTigre 11.12.12.246583
Error fetching server release notes URL.

CPU: Intel® Core i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz (3207.31 MHz)
Memory: 12280 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 480/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0
RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: V3
Viewer Skin: starlight (original_teal)
Font Used: Deja Vu (96)
Draw distance : 128
Bandwidth : 2000
LOD factor : 4
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 0/76,352 (0.0%)

 

Graphics set to High.  I disable AA and AF in the viewer and have my video card override that natively.  Lighting and shadows disabled.

 

Looking out the window in my house at ground level, I get about 80 FPS. With Lighting and Shadows I get about 15 FPS.

 

Jumping to my skypad at 3800, I get about 100 FPS without Lighting and Shadows.

[161488303349]

Second Life 3.2.4 (246439) Dec  8 2011 14:02:44 (Second Life Release)

CPU: Intel® Core i3 CPU       M 330  @ 2.13GHz (2128.07 MHz)

 Memory: 3063 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GT 230M/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.9036 OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

adsl ping to Los Angeles: 155. down: 9.95. up: 0.68 (speedtest.net)

hardware- anistropic: off. anti-aliasing: off. vbo: on. txture memory: 512

mainland home. sunset. main agent: 1. child agents: 3  

gfx prefs: low. ktris drawn: 102. fps: 58

gfx prefs: mid. ktris drawn: 110. fps: 53

gfx prefs: high. ktris drawn: 158. fps: 46

gfx prefs: ultra. ktris drawn: 736. fps: 16

[Alicia Sautereau]

You can`t say how fast a viewer runs cause of the 1000 settings, i have mine on ultra with shadows and all the stuff enabled

Think this will say more, even tho i`m only running at 4.5ghz 24/7, this was a benchmark run

tinypic

pic 2

 

[Chris Mammoth]

CPU: AMD Six-Core Processor (4040.26 MHz) SSE Support: SSE2

Memory: 32764 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 580/PCI/SSE2

Card is the 3GB version and mildly overclocked. The Processor has a very aggressive overclock but is stable. Memory is running stock no overclock.

Singularity Viewer everything maxed out only thing not used is Global Illumination.

Quiet sim i easily hold 44+ FPS

Busier sims i drop in to the mid 20's FPS

As a Comparison my older system is a Dual Core AMD (3 GHZ), 8GB RAM, Nvidia 9800gt and it would average 40+ quiet areas and 12 or less in very busy areas with GPU-Z showing insane load on the GPU.

These are all using Singularity Viewer.

 

*edit to add.... draw distance normally around the 200m mark*

 

[PromisingBoy]

> Linden Lab Official 3.2.4    5.3 FPS

> Firestorm Official V3,2,1    10.5 FPS

> Phoenix 1.6 (with MESH)    16.0 FPS

> Firestorm Beta V2,,,,,         19.3 FPS

 

I'm so surprised about these figures since i'm currently troubleshooting why my firestorm is slower than my SL viewer.

These aren't scientific measurements, but SL viewer 3.2.8 gives me the expected 20 fps range (say, between 12 and 40). Firestorm 3.3.0 seems to give me similar frame rates, maybe a few frames less, but after a while drops down lower and lower until I have to relog. Which is unfortunate because firestorm is richer in functions and partly with more efficient user interaction.

 

Switching off shadows (or other eye candy) seems to help, but seriously, whithout them it's no fun.

Workstation runs an i7 @ 3500, 8 GB RAM, GTX 560Ti, nvidia binary driver 295.20 for Linux 64 bit, 4x AA, 1920x1080. I am already crippling my desktop when running SL (ie. switching off TwinView and the compositing window manager) in order to improve frame rates.

edit: not sure if it's relevant, but the biggest bottleneck is my slow DSL connection which offers 768 kbit downlink / 128 kbit uplink, and typically 300 ms pings.

[Perrie Juran]

---

PromisingBoy wrote:

> Linden Lab Official 3.2.4    5.3 FPS

> Firestorm Official V3,2,1    10.5 FPS

> Phoenix 1.6 (with MESH)    16.0 FPS

> Firestorm Beta V2,,,,,         19.3 FPS

 

I'm so surprised about these figures since i'm currently troubleshooting why my firestorm is slower than my SL viewer.

 

These aren't scientific measurements, but SL viewer 3.2.8 gives me the expected 20 fps range (say, between 12 and 40). Firestorm 3.3.0 seems to give me similar frame rates, maybe a few frames less, but after a while drops down lower and lower until I have to relog. Which is unfortunate because firestorm is richer in functions and partly with more efficient user interaction.

 

Switching off shadows (or other eye candy) seems to help, but seriously, whithout them it's no fun.

 

Workstation runs an i7 @ 3500, 8 GB RAM, GTX 560Ti, nvidia binary driver 295.20 for Linux 64 bit, 4x AA, 1920x1080. I am already crippling my desktop when running SL (ie. switching off TwinView and the compositing window manager) in order to improve frame rates.

 

edit: not sure if it's relevant, but the biggest bottleneck is my slow DSL connection which offers 768 kbit downlink / 128 kbit uplink, and typically 300 ms pings.

---

This is why I make no argument for or against any one's choice of viewer.  As I delved into my problem I was amazed by the varied results people were getting.  And not minor differences, but huge ones like mine.  So my position is use what works best for you, or as I phrase it, "Your World, Your Choice Of Viewer."

I do however agree with you, I think the Firestorm UI is the most intuitive there is.  Still, that is my personal preference.  After going through the learning curve with Firestorm other UI's just seem clunky to me. 

I've got a pretty decent internet connection,  10Mbps down,  1Mbps up.

 

[Aveline Stein]

Lance has a very good point. The only way the information recorded would be meaningful were if someone set up a testing booth on a sim, with markers for tester position, and scene framing.

Also screen resolution, Antialiasing and AF have a major impact on performance.

Tests would have to be done in mouselook, to remove disparities for rendering the testers avatar.

edit: of course statistics bar does not show in mouselook >.<

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Even then you have a poor comparison, just uhm less poor than the random tests.

Even though a simulator runs on its own core, it shares the server with others. So if they start to run wild, that will have an impact. Some viewers create cache issues for other viewers is my experience, so you'd need completely clean installs between tests. That takes up enough time to make the sim performance completely different. Next to the other sims on the server I mentioned, the entire grid can have a pretty big impact on things. Slow loading objects make my fps go down anyway. I can also imagine some viewers are more affected by low RAM, other more by low VRAM, others by CPU usage etc.... In other words, programs running in the background can have impact, temperature can have impact, certain combinations of CPU and GPU can have impact, all different on different viewers, it just never stops. I'm sure there are another gazillion things that make it impossible to get some sensible result out of all this....

This whole thread also would only start to make the least bit of sense when someone would take on the monumental task of comparing all the findings under all circumstances. This is pretty much impossible.

[ColorAnyOne]

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. System Model GA-990FXA-UD3

System Type x64-based PC Processor AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Adapter Description AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Latest Java, OpenGL, DirectX

Second Life 3.3.2 (258114) May 28 2012 06:48:21 (Second Life Release)

this is in the "I love the 80's" club, with about 10-20 dancers.  My avi is sitting.

After noticing that my Basic FPS were only ~ 15, and the Physics FPS were ~45,

Firestorm  Basic ~20-25,  Physics ~ 45

Catnip Basic ~ 22, Physics ~45

Did some registry modifications.   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938581.aspx

Pulled up Performance Monitor and all 8 cores were kicking.

Went to a snowy mountianside in Azere, with a wavy ocean behind it.  Basic FPS were ~75

 

[ColorAnyOne]

Went to Club Rez and turned up the magnification on my Resource Monitor and reset the Registry hack to Default.

My FPS dropped to ~ 12 with SL. Only two of the CPU's are even doing 40% and the Graphics Card is

only putting out, nominally.  Half of my CPUs are "parked".  25% of Physical memory is used.  Disk I/O is ~ 25%. Network load is ~ 100kbs/sec down on a ~5 meg connection.     Every Viewer setting is maxed out except AA which is set at 8.

[CrazyLaraCroft]

Firestorm 4.2.2 (29837) Aug 27 2012 19:20:05 (Firestorm-Release)

 

CPU: Intel® Core i3 CPU         530  @ 2.93GHz (2926.04 MHz) Memory: 3960 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.0697 OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

RestrainedLove API: (disabled) libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Vivox 2.1.3010.6270

Settings mode: Firestorm Viewer Skin: firestorm (grey) Font Used: Deja Vu (96) Draw distance: 96 Bandwidth: 450 LOD factor: 2 Built with MSVC version 1600 Packets Lost: 29/359,462 (0.0%)

 

in busy sims i get 0.8 fps-0.12 fps

in low lag sim i get 0.9-0.12

in mid simes i get 10.0-11.0

 

im upgrading my CPU from my I3 to an Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA
1155

 

and my Vdieo card GT 210 GPU to an

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card N660 TF 2GD5/OC

[Cincia Singh]

CPU: AMD FX-6100 Six-Core Processor (3322.2 MHz)
Memory: 8174 MB DDR3 1600
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 1GB DDR5
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.0697
OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: V3
Viewer Skin: firestorm (grey)
Font Used: Deja Vu (96)
Draw distance: 168
Bandwidth: 1500
LOD factor: 5
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 39/15,294 (0.3%)

In a club with 23 avatars fps = 34

In a region with 2 avatars fps = 80

[Ormand Lionheart]

With that hardware you should be getting almost triple that perfromance. Check to see if some of your cpu cores aren't "parked" and that the video card is running at "full power" mode and not being throttled by Win7.