Allie, I feel your pain! It has been a while since you posted, so I was wondering if you resolved your issue. I have a similar problem... rather, I HAD a similar problem - until it got progressively worse as time went on. It started off just as you described, but it grew to crash after a mere few seconds logged in to an area with more than just a few prims or avatars nearby. I won't bother with posting my system specs, etc. because it quite frankly does no good to put them here. What I will offer, though, is that I have put every setting possible (including from the Debug menu) down to their least demanding setting all at once. No help. I tried this even after I bought a brand new video card, power supply and tested every component in my system for a hardware problem and/or non-updated-driver. All up to date and working like a champ. Still, the SL crashes got worse. I have reverted back to the all-defaults-on-the-viewers (yes, I have tried at least a dozen different current viewers) settings and revisited all the suggestions I could find on the forums out there. The JIRA is also a dead end due to the premature closure of this issue on listings that address it - every last one without a valid solution. Of course it does not (typically) hurt to follow the advice of those who replied to your message, it is pretty obvious they did not read your entire post and it looks to me like none of them realized they made suggestions to try or check things you already have tried or checked into. So, any luck with anything? I'd love to know because SL has become a very solitary place for me since I can't go anywhere or meet with anyone. I can't even visit my own store anymore to do maintenance unless I am logged in using someone else's computer. So, on my lonely building platform, I can enjoy a high framerate with shadows, ambient occlusion, full anti-aliasing and depth of field. The minute (okay, the second) I go somewhere else, even with all those whistles and bells turned off, I crash.