FPS Comparison Between Same Viewer, Settings and Hardware in Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04.

[Corin Clary]

Here is my system in Windows 7:

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

Release Notes

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 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: 8.17.0012.8562

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

In Ubuntu 10.04 it is similar except the viewer is: Second Life 3.2.1 (244864) Nov 10 2011 18:33:25

OS Version: Linux 2.6.32-36-generic #79-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 8 22:29:53 UTC 2011 x86_64

Graphics driver: NVIDIA 290.10

I have found in Windows 7 only small amount of my graphics card capability is used. It has a power setting for 3d applications either for maximum speed or adaptive speed according to demand, in the Nvidia settings. When set at adaptive the memory clock hardly ever goes above 325Mhz and gpu clock at 405Mhz. The diferend grades are 135, 325 and 2000 Mhz for memory clock and GPU clock 50, 405 and 930Mhz respectively.

In Ubuntu 10.04 the memory clock and GPU clock mostly at 2000 and 930Mhz respectively. It runs much more smoothly in Ubuntu than Windows 7 because of this.

My graphic settings are set at the automatic suggested setting of high. I have also ticked a few more boxes like Ambient Occlusion, increased the sky setting from low to high and the trees setting from medium to high in both OS's

Why would Windows 7 seem to throttle back the capabilities of my graphics card Is it the drivers versions or something about the diffefent OS's or the viewer in the different OS's.

 Please shift this question to an appropriate area. During the writing and posting of this I had trouble seeing the link for areas to post and I hastily posted it at default area because of time getting late.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I'm not techie enough to know why but I can make a guess.  Windows 7 is much like Vista (actually, it's Vista fixed in many ways) and Microsoft, by default, turns on all those bells and whistles to make users go "wow".  All that pretty stuff take up resources and Windows will reserve those resources.......that will, naturally, limit what the OS will allocate for programs.  You can turn most or all of those "pretties" off and gain much of the resources back for your programs (probably not all though).  I can see a difference running SL with all the bells and whistles enabled and with all the bells and whistles disabled.......a significant difference, in fact.  I'm not sure you can compare the systems as long as one has the bells and whistles and the other doesn't.....can you even get both systems the same in that regard?

 

That's one guess.  Another is the platforms themselves.  Linux is built upon the old unix operating system and uses a completely different file system.  Windows 7 is built upon Microsoft's old NtSF system.....it handles code differently and, it's common knowledge, that it is not quite as efficient as Linux.  That's probably due to the different roots way back when.  Most Windows users (myself included) will concede the efficiency advantage to any unix based system.

 

And my final guess is Windows users out number both Linux and Mac users by a substainial margin.  Roughly 80% of all home computer users use a Windows based system.  There is a small portion of the population who have some form of disorder the compels them to invade other people's computers.  Some do it for fun, some do it to steal.........both are criminals.  Those people target the largest group of users.......and that is Windows.  Yeah, that group is broadening their horizons and taking shots at Macs (and probably Linux too) but the vast majority target Windows systems.  People are foolish to run any Windows system with Internet access without antik-virus, anti-spyware, and a software firewall ( know someone will come along and say they don't use those security programs and are just fine.......I say, good for you but I'll do it the way I feel safest, thank you).  The software necessary running in the background on Windows systems take up resources where your Ubuntu system won't necessarily need running.

 

Okay, those are my guesses.  Here's my experience with Ubuntu.  I had Ubuntu 8.10 on a computer I had a few years ago.  I really didn't have a problem with Ubuntu but didn't really use it that much.  Mostly because I'm much more familar with Windows and being somewhat lazy never jumped in with both feet to learn Ubuntu.  Plus many of the programs I use for both fun and other reasons just weren't available for Ubuntu.  I had SL installed on both systems........I never could get SL to run on Ubuntu (most of the time it would crash on me and if I didn't crash, it failed keep my connection more than a few minutes).  I wound up using Ubuntu mostly for GIMP.  GIMP ran at least twice as good on Ubuntu as it did on Windows (for instance, if I ran the map to cube filter it would take up to an hour to complete on Windows and with Ubuntu it completed in about 15 minutes.......depending on the siize of the texture and the complexity).  However, I got rid of Ubuntu after about a year...........I hate dual booting was probably the biggest reason.  I don't dislike the operating sytem.  I just find Windows, for all it's faults, much more to my liking.

 

And now a question.  What do you want anyone here in "Answers" to answer?  I mean what's the problem you are experiencing in Second Life that we can possibly help you with.  I actually thinks this topic is interesting and I'm not objecting to a discussion.  But this section of the forums is neither the proper place for this discussion nor is the design of the forum suited for such a discussion.  You can not comment (or "discuss") effectively in a thread you started.  All that you can use is the edit feature under options at the top right corner of the initial post or the permalink.......neither are very good to carry on a comprehensible conversation.    General Discussions or Veiwers section might better.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I don't think a mod will move it for you.  Just copy and paste it over here:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/bd-p/SLViewer

 

That's the viewer section of the forums......it seems to fit there best, in my opinion.

 

[Corin Clary]

I copied it over here:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/FPS-Comparison-Between-Same-Viewer-Settings-and-Hardware-in/td-p/1293739

in area suggested by Peggy.