VRprofessor

I have managed to get a few SL minutes on my i5-2500k desktop. I started at NCI Kuula because there are typically lots of folks hanging around. I have no graphics card and am running on "med" default settings on the viewer version that was most current as of 1:30pm server time Jan 15, 2012 (I just updated to the latest version). Walking around I get 10 - 15fps Standing still I am getting 7fps. Resetting to "low" I am getting 10 - 14fps standing around and 15-18fps while walking around. Not great, but workable. In a fairly quiet sim, no other avis and a not too much stuff to rez I get 22-27fps with "low" settings and 15-17fps with "med" settings. My laptop with graphics card does better, I've gotten 50+fps with medium setting on this quiet sim, but I really don't feel particularly deprived running around with these frame rates. If I were a photographer or Machinima person I would probably be very unhappy with these fps rates. But for just walking around visiting and people watching, I'm content.

Some good news...my memory about the H series motherboards was incorrect, they do allow a discrete graphics card. You don't have to worry about that. The bad thing about off the shelf systems is that they often provide a power supply that doesn't support upgrading. For the longest time I was looking at an i5-2500k based desktop (the "k" series apparently has the better built in graphics). But no matter what I looked at, an entry level machine that could have stuff (like graphics cards) added later was going to need a power supply upgrade which pretty much wiped out any value associated with upgrading later. Going with the custom built was attractive, but the online folks have enough unhappy costumers that I was wary. The nearest local shop I could find for custom builds was even more expensive than the online folks...full retail on parts plus about 10%. I ended up buying parts from newegg and building my own. (Very similar to the kit whitestar linked to--that is a nice kit. You'll need to add the operating system and you'll want a DVD or Blu-ray drive to finish the build.) I'm happy with the result I got and if you go that way I have some tips the more experienced folks would likely find to obvious to mention. (It took me about 4 hours to accomplish what should have taken about 45 minutes--but I learned a lot. And the experienced builders I talked with thought some things were too obvious to mention, adding at least an hour to my efforts.) If I hadn't purchased a new laptop with a graphics card I wouldn't miss not having a graphics card in my i5 system. It is better for SL than my work desktop which has some sort of pentium and an HD 4650 graphics card. (I think my daughter's i3 laptop was at least as good as my work desktop when I tried it out. I'll have to see if I wrote down any numbers anywhere.) I agree with everyone who says "go sandybridge." I agree that nvidia is the graphics card to get. I disagree that you have to have to get a graphics card right away--unless you demand top notch performance. (Definitely get a graphics card as soon as you can afford one, but unless you are already used to really good graphics you won't miss it if you get a sandybridge based computer.) I like "build it yourself" but can understand why someone would be fearful of that--if you have any geeks you can call on in RL for some help you should try it once just to see how it goes.)

I was using a much lower performance computer to run SL. As others have commented SL doesn't run very well without the graphics card, but it runs. At the time it was all I needed. My goals in SL did not require particularly good graphics or frame rates. Having no experience with the higher frame rates I wasn't particulary bothered by the frame rates I was experiencing. I've upgraded both my computer and expectations since then---well, expectations started going up and so I needed a new computer to better meet those expectations. The real question is what sort of frame rates do you want/need in order to be satisfied? The beauty of the desktop is that you can upgrade. My home desktop is an i5-2500k with no graphics card. With low settings it runs at, for me, reasonable frame rates in moderately busy sims. I can run medium settings in sims that don't have too many avis running around. The i5 can often be found for about the same price as an i3 What I like best it is that in a month or two (okay 4-6 months realistically) I'll be able to buy a gtx560 (maybe better) card and I'll have both the CPU and GPU I need for pretty good graphics. The one thing you need to be worried about with desktops is the motherboard configuration. The sandybridge motherboards come in three flavors and if memory serves the "h" configuration doesn't work well with add-in graphics cards. The more tech savy folks should be able to tell you if my memory is correct or not.

In searching I found another RAMdrive software: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk I am fiddling with both this and Ramdisk to see if I can set them up to work properly with SL cache files. (I know it CAN be done, the question is whether <b>I</b> will be able to figure it out. Wish me luck!)

Alicia, thanks for the link. I'll be trying it out in the next few days. Jenni, in my case I am using 64bit Windows 7 on all of my computers, with varying amounts of installed RAM. I either have, or would be able to upgrade to, 8gb RAM in all impacted computers.

I didn't even think of RAM drive. That should work great for me....if I can learn how to set one up. Anyone have some simple instructions or a link?

I was just wondering what impact an SSD drive would have for caching and overall performance in SL. Any thoughts.

There is an official SL page that is dated and gives minimum graphics hardware requirements. I found it rather useless as the graphics cards seem to change often and the numbering convention for NVIDIA changed a few years ago. What I think I know is that the first digit or two is the generation/model year and the last two digits are the model number. So a 460 is one generation older than a 560 but they fill the same niche in the product line. Anyway...I ended up browsing mutliple threads here and a few elsewhere to come up with the following: SL is based on OpenGL and NVIDIA generally handles OpenGL better than Radeon, but both will work. A friend recently got a high end Radeon card and had to do a fair amount of stuff to get it working right with SL. I did update the drivers for my NVIDIA card when I bought this computer, but otherwise did nothing and have not had any trouble. There are more requests for help on these forums with Radeon based graphics cards than there are for NVIDIA, but neither is problem free. The bulk of problems seem to be related to drivers. Apparently neither NVIDIA or ATI get their drivers right for SL users without some tweaking. There also seems to be some issues on SL's side, but I don't understand why that would be. Notebook computers like to turn off the graphics card for power saving. I did have to tell the operating system to always use the graphics card with SL. (Not sure if it is just my computer or a common feature on notebooks, but I have an indicator light that tells me whether I am using the graphics card or intel graphics.) What I do not know about is how much SL performance improvement you get going from say a 560m to a 580m. I notice that the price jump is several hundred dollars and the selection of computers is much smaller. Whether you get a good bang for the buck I have no idea. I'm still hoping for someone who is crazy enougth to purchase multiple GPUs and try them out in the same box so that folks can start to get a sense of how traditional graphics benchmarks translate into SL performance. I am also uncertain as to the benefits of super-high fps rates when a monitor is running at 60hz.

I am running an i7-2670m with 8gb RAM and a GT550m graphics card. I tried it out on default ultra settings at an empty NCI sim and was getting about 25fps. I went to a busier nci sim (kuula) and got around 15-20fps. Nvidia's website shows a benchmark score for the 550m of about 5000, with the 560m @ about 10,000 and the 580m @ about 16,000. (http://www.geforce.com/Hardware/NotebookGPUs/geforce-gt-550m/performance) No idea how the benchmarks translate into actual SL performance, but hopefully this helps you out.

Like I said, I have enough freebie clothing that it will take me a few hours to rez and try everything on. Freebies are no problem. If you find me online I'll take you on a quick tour of some freebie shops. You can landmark the spots and go back later for serious shopping. (Edit...found this link to several freebie areas in another thread: http://www.sl2go.com/Freebies.htm That should get you started on your shopping spree. I see that there is a menu with interest headings on the left side of the page. Guessing you can find interesting places to go by looking there.) Don't worry too much about misrepresenting yourself. I much prefer a young, good looking, avatar to something more realistic. I have had conversations with women who I am fairly sure are not young, but their avatars are young and attractive. I also met one very pretty young woman who's profile indicated that she was actually a man. Be who you want to be. And if you really want to look more like yourself you can edit your avatar's shape. I use primarily text chat myself, but if you are having a conversation with one person voice is (to me) much nicer so I would vote "yes" on getting a microphone. Just remember some people dislike voice as much as some people like it.

A number of the newbie regions have folks hanging around that will chat with you and/or answer questions. I've been to 3 or 4 and found the folks nice enough. I intially stumbled into Kuula and have met some nice folks there. The destinations tab will bring up several choices for you--go with whatever seems most interesting to you. I've only had minor problems with creepers hitting on me or trying to recruit me so I feel pretty good about wandering around in new places just to see what is there. In your profile put a 1-2 sentence summary of what you are looking for in life/conversation/whatever then go searching for places that sound interesting. I went looking for NPR Science Friday in SL (gone, but there is still an interest group with a designated spot) and found a nice person who wanted to know more about what I was up to. She is now one of my friends. Be willing to say "hi" to someone if their profile statement sounds interesting. Don't be put off by conversations that are not all about you. Many folks will carry on 3-6 conversations at a time. (3 is my absolute upper limit and feels a bit crazy) These conversations are often pretty laggy. I've found it fairly common that folks won't notice a "hi there" opening IM for several minutes. Once it took someone over an hour to notice that I had spoken to them because they were involved in building something. Personalizing your avatar by, well, personalizing it with new cloths or a modified look gives you a sense of ownership. It also gives you something to do while you are waiting to meet people. I am not really a shopper, but for some reason I really enjoy hitting the freebie stores and loading up with stuff--especially clothing which I walk right past in RL. Right now I have enough stuff to keep me busy for a couple of hours just organizing my inventory and 3-4 hours worth of clothing to try on.

The first looks best to me. The favorites bar may need to be reconfigured as a pull down menu.

I do have some stuff to post in the performance thread. Just thinking about adding some more information....one of the benefits of multiple computers. But I suppose I could post separately for each computer. I found my daughter's i3 laptop after my last post. Downloaded SL and played around for about 10 minutes. Initial graphics settings were "high" which resulted in terrible lag even in a relatively quiet area--around 6fps. Resetting to "low" moved that to around 20fps. Not great by any definition, but not awful. In a busier sim---20 or so avatars and plenty of stuff to look at--performance dropped to 6-10fps depending on the direction I was looking. The same sim with my i7 with 560m graphics card running is 20-25fps as a comparison.

I'm running windows 7 on an i5-2500k with the onboard graphics--SL in Low works well and medium works, but is laggy in heavily populated areas. I've tried SL for a few moments on an i3 based laptop with windows 7, low graphic settings--it was a bit laggy, but not awful. I suppose around 15-20fps in an relatively unpopulated area. Have you checked your SL graphics settings? It is possible that your old computer had a graphics card?

Might be better to follow the military's lead and buy a bunch of PS3s--not sure how they get them working together, but if you can add one or two units at a time it is considerably easier on the pocketbook....and the first couple of dozen should work with your wall outlets.:matte-motes-silly:

I am going to semi-naively point at the graphics card. I ran into someone a couple of days ago who said they were getting about 4-5fps using the same graphics card. I did a quick search of the forums and found some discussion of problems related to that card. (Sorry, pushed the wrong "reply" button. This was for CP, not Theresa.)

"... a flying Totoro..." If I google this will I get an answer or should I just ask here?

"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.

I want to thank everyone for the suggestions. The time to play is still a couple of days away, even though the computer is right here in front of me. Very frustrating having to wait, but now I have pages to open and suggestions to try once I have some time. How are folks getting those hardware reports I see pasted into various threads? Not sure anyone will care about what I find, but since I asked for help it seems only fair to report back. Figure I should include the hardware info as part of my report. Thanks again, VR

For the first time since I started in SL I am going to have some time to fiddle with graphics settings beyond switching between low, medium, high, and ultra. For many of the graphics settings I am not sure what they do or how much of an impact they have on performance or subjective experience. Any suggestions on where I can start learning about the impact of various settings? Any personal thoughts?

I'm speculating, but I would expect that SL is a bigger program now than it was a couple of years ago resulting in a larger memory and computing load on your computer. As CPU and GPU power grow and become more readily available software grows to fill the available capacity.

@Peggy Paperdoll: Thanks for putting the pieces together for me. It helps clarify the bits I didn't have fit together in my brain. I've been especially confused by the change from thousands to hundreds. In defense of my geeks, the advice they gave me came back in my pre-SL days when the most taxing graphics I used were home video and bejewled. @ Aveline Stein: The "50's" is what I have been looking at. I don't do any other graphically intense gaming and my desktop handles SL medium settings pretty well with the onboard graphics. (i5 processor) I hope that with even a modest graphics card I'll get a noticable bump in performance at medium and may be able to run on high. I am satisfied with any frame rate above 24fps. @Sparkle Lytton for a lot of things your computer is really quite good. But as computers become more powerful software expands to make use of the extra power. In my experience the "minimum" software configuration for all software is very liberally defined--yes, the software will run on that configuration, but only every-other tuesday between the hours of midnight and 3 am.) My old desktop had 4gb of RAM, a 2.0Ghz processor, and a modest graphics card (HD 1750, perhaps) and that would lag with even simple games (bejeweled) if I had itunes playing music. Your system isn't that much better than my old one and I expect that SL demands more of your computer than it did even a year or two ago. @whoever cares: I did find a good price on an i7 laptop with a 550m graphics processor over the weekend. It should arrive by thursday. It isn't a desktop with high end graphics, but it should be a big improvement over my pentium T4300 with no graphics to speak of. I'm anxious to find out!

did you say "new laptop?" Very rare to find a laptop that can be upgraded with a graphics card. If I misunderstood and you have a desktop, a new graphics card is a good option.

I run on multiple computers and have started trying to pay attention to what is going on. Right now I am on a 2.1ghz Pentium with 3gb of RAM and SL runs, but only just barely. I end up with a crashed viewer (both SL and Firestorm) every 40 - 50 minutes. Even worse, it hangs so completely I have to reboot to get out of (and back into SL). I think this is pretty close to what the OP is running and it is fairly painful, but it works. In a machine with 4gb RAM and newer processor and modest video card I run acceptably well in low and okay in medium. (This is a work computer and I'm not going into the office to look @ the specs, but it is spec'd out as an office work machine, not a gaming machine.) Not great, mind you, but I can move around without too much jerkiness and I haven't had a viewer crash yet. So far I have learned that SL immediately grabs about 700MB of RAM and can run up to 1GB...so OP's 2gb is going to be pretty marginal. The suggestion of adding memory is a good one. I'd go for 2gb rather than just one....but that's me. I can't figure out the video card numbering system yet, but my local geeks have me shopping in the $70 - $100 range, assuring me that something in that price range will help (in my desktop...this laptop has no chance and is being replaced).

Thanks all. I suspected that the 540M wasn't going to be all that and I was going to have to consider something like the 555m. Given my budget I think I am going to have to back off on my expectations a bit or save up a while longer.