Lag issue that I can't solve

[chewi2006]

I seem to be having some lag problems and I can't for the life of me figure out why. If you have an idea, please do inform, I've scanned for viruses, tried overclocking the cpu and gpu, using some smart ram thing to clear my ram of nonsense, defragged, messed with setting, disabled antivirus and firewalls, i can't figure it out. And don't say it's the GPU please, if I can play Battlefeild on the highest graphics setting online with no lag, then I'm positive it can handle second life. As for networking, I'm hardwired to a Router that's capable of up to 300mbps, and according to speedtest.net, a ping of 6ms, download speed of 32mbps (held around 32.5 the whole time) and an upload speed of 6mbps (also held slightly higher through the test). I can't figure it out, please help. It won't fully load any areas i go to and remain laggy through the entire time I'm online. My computer specs are as follows:

Motherboard- AsusP8P67 LE http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67_LE/

Ram- Kingston 4x2 (8gb) 1866mhz http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=747376&CatId=10

CPU- Intel Core i3-2120 @ 3.30 ghz http://ark.intel.com/products/53426/Intel-Core-i3-2120-Processor-%283M-Cache-3_30-GHz%29

GPU- MSI Radeon 6850HD Cyclone http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R6850-Cyclone-1GD5-Power-Edition-OC.html

HDD- Western Digital 2tb @5400rpm (if i remember correctly) http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=226472&CatId=8&SRCCODE=LSCMPUSA&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC1bELltzywCjC-d2CjCdwwp&AffiliateID=jo_pTdthTuc-AkuEBVXoOlApy1KGANtvlQ

PSU- Corsair TX750 http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7195038&CatId=2533

 

[Rival Destiny]

Have you been running in sl ok until now or are you using this puter for the first time in sl?  Also, what viewer are you using?

[Theresa Tennyson]

Second Life viewers are open-source cross-platform applications so they use OpenGL as a graphics language instead of DirectX, which is what most Windows games. Tweaks designed to maximize DirectX performance may actually hurt performance in Second Life. Many people have problems running the most recent versions of the Second Life viewer (Linden Lab 3.2.4 and higher, Firestorm 3.2 and higher, and Exodus) with ATI video cards. Make sure you've got the latest drivers and Catalyst version and try going into "Preferences"  - "Graphics" - "Hardware" and turning off "Use OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects."

If you copy the info in "Help" - "About Second Life" and paste it into a reply someone might see something else.

[chewi2006]

I'm new to SL, but a couple of the guys I live with have been on it for awhile. They tried a few things (including uninstalling Catalyst Control Center completely) and this morning it was still not working right. But lemme try what you said and we'll see what happens.

[Tyce Ansar]

Theresa's suggestion worked for me!!  I still have my bandwith set up to max though so I will try it at a lower setting.  If I don't saything about it after, then it worked.

[Tyce Ansar]

Well, its tolerable at lower bandwith now but I'll keep it up a bit, I have my bandwith set at 6200, so its normal for me.

[Rival Destiny]

Another discussion on bandwidth that may help:

 

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Technical/Can-Setting-Bandwidth-Too-High-Cause-Problems-For-SL/qaq-p/698136

[Tyce Ansar]

Based on what you just said, I ran the speed test in that thread and, based on my results, I had to set my bandwith at 300kbps...and I am running fairly smoothly (pictures hanging on the wall or avatars not-withstanding).

[Nalates Urriah]

To understand the bandwidth issues read this excellent article: Understanding the Maximum Bandwidth. You can look in Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection to see how to tell if the network is lagging on your side or the Lab's side. When the servers lag there isn't much you can do.

The specs you gave help a little. The ideal information comes from the viewer. Click Help->About before or after logging in. Paste that info in with any tech question asked here. It gives us the details we need to have any chance of knowing what is wrong.

I re-read the thread looking for what kind of performance your getting. I don't see it. You can look in How Fast is Your Viewer? - Second Life to see what others are getting with various hardware.

Right now SL is mostly slow. I would say the majority of people get 15 to 30 FPS. Linux people go faster.

Mac and ATI/AMD graphics people have problems with shadows.

There are 18+ brands of viewers and 3 operating systems used with SL. Without knowing where in the framework you are it is hard to say what type of performance you SHOULD get. Pop open the Viewer Statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1). If you have read the Troubleshoot Connection you'll know how to use some of the stats in the console.

You can get GPU-Z, a free program, to see if the performance is bottle necked by graphics processing or not.

I'll often be looking at 15 FPS with a 20% graphics load and the Quad cores running below 50% ... annoying.

You can press Ctrl-Shift-9 to open Fast Timers Console to see where the viewer is spending its time. Between Fast and Stats you should have an idea of whether it is fixable.

As someone said SL runs on OpenGL. The Lab ran into problems with new graphics drivers from nVidia in December. During January they were working on compatibility upgrades. Now they are fixing bugs (working on stability) and performance. You may not see an improvment until they more of the new code optimized.