AidenMoonfire

I may have been murky on this, but my improved results were on the OLD gtx 580. I ended up taking the gtx 970 back. I have since overclocked the CPU up to 3.84 Ghz, and increased the voltages on the CPU and data. The system is stable, as I I ran the prime95 test for several hours. The result is that at ultra graphics in a sim with a lot of mesh, I get 15 - 25 fps. I get 20 - 35 fps with the graphics set low. One time the fps went dramatically down. I cleaned out the main cache and inventory cache, and that brought the fps back up. Bottom line is, I canceled my order for a new computer. I'm not sure if bringing in a spiffy i7 5930 CPU and gtx 970 (the advantage of a gtx 980 seems to be minimal, by the reviews) would actually increast SL performance, and I'm not willing to try. By the way, the network speed is not a factor. My connection is up to 87 mgps, and task manager barely ever registers more than 5 mbps while playing SL. Thanks for your comment. I read your comments on the thread you started, and your experience pretty much mirrors mine, in that we don't really know what's going on.

First of all, I want to thank Mike Denneny for getting in touch with me personally and walking me through many of the measures that might contribute to my slow fps. He showed me a lot about using the performance measures in the Task Manager, including the clocked speed of the CPU versus the maximum, the network throughput, and the CPU usage. He also called my attention to the importance of tracking the temperature of the CPU and the system in general, which there are free tools for. I used coretemp and openhardwaremonitor, both of which gave me more or less the same information. Prior to talking to Mike, I had used the free version of PRTG Network Monitor, which showed me all the hop points between the Second Life Server and the sim I was on. It let me see there was not bottleneck point. What finally made the difference was two factors: 1) I thoroughly cleaned my computer. I took the graphics and memory out, blew out all the dust, wiped the connectors with a cloth (no cleaner, since I didn't have any) and replaced everything. This seemed to bring the speed up noticeably. 2) I did a totally clean reinstall as described by Firestorm: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_clean_reinstall . This involved not only uninstalling the program, but deleting all the folders it used, including the textures and cache folders. The only thing I saved was the folder with the conversation logs. After reinstalling, I got fps up to 40 - 45, which I hadn't gotten in months....and that was on the old card. So, I hope this information proves useful to someone.

To Ohjiro Watanabe, Mike Denneny Thank you very much for your suggestions. Drive C is indeed a SSD, and less than half full. I keep my SL application there. I excluded all the SL files from the Norton virus checker. I also cleared my cache, both inventory and regular. That didn't help on the fps. Here's what I did do. I rented an Alienware laptop gaming computer, installed Firestorm on it, and logged in. It got 40 to 50 fps. The network communication speed was the same as for my desktop, and I used a cable. The Alienware computer had an i5-4200 M CPU, 2.50 Ghz, 8 Gig ram, Windows 7 64 bit. Graphics was a Nvidia Geforce gt 750M. The screen resolution was 1366 x 768 I set my computer to the same resolution and did all the things you advised. It still got between 15 and 20 fps, at the lowest graphics setting, no shaders, and the lowest distance drawing. I can only conclude that the motherboard, and/or the CPU made the difference. I doubt if the gt 750M would match the MSI GTX 970 that I put in my computer. My motherboard had the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor (3210.77 MHz). It also had the PCI Express 2.0, while the gtx 970 uses a PCI express 3.0, but is backwards compatible. I tried to eliminate any issues of firewall compatibility or network speed by attaching both the computers to the same router by cable. I turned off the Norton firewall completely for several tests on my computer, and it made no difference. Also, I turned the hardware router firewall to its lowest protection for both computers. I don't mind getting a new computer, but I wanted to eliminate all the possibilities. It was jarring to me that replacing the GTX 580 with the GTX 970 made no difference whatsoever, but I guess the bottleneck was really the old AMD CPU, and the old motherboard. I would be happy to hear any other ideas. I tried to insert a snapshot of the graphics settings, but I'm not sure how to paste an image here.

I do a lot of shooting and fighting, so I like to have a relatively high fps rate. I've been pretty happy up until the past 6 months or so, when my fps dropped dramatically, at 8 - 12 fps. I figured it was because of my aging graphics card, gtx 580, and would be partially alleviated by a new MSI GTX 970 gaming card. I was surprised when the fps did not go up at all. I give details below, but I figure there must be some change in the communications protocol or precedure that resulted in the change. I'd appreciate any ideas on what might have happened. My connection speed is 85 mbps, up and down. I have a cable connection. I tried on Firestorm viewer, SL viewer and Exodus, all with the same fps. So, it's not viewer-specific. I turned off the firewall protection, went into SL, and had the same fps. Also, the Task Manager showed no other process running that took anymore than .4% of the cpu, while Firestorm took 22%. I get this rate in several sims, and I get 10 - 15 fps, while others get up to 100. I do have a motherboard that's several years old. CPU: CPU-PHE-II-955 AMD Phenom II X4 955 (3.2G/8M) OEM 800 Watts Motherboard: ASUS-131 ASUS M4A87TD Evo AMD 870/DDR3 CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor (3210.77 MHz) Memory: 8191 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit (Build 9600) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.4416 OpenGL Version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 344.16 RestrainedLove API: RLV v2.8.0 / RLVa v1.4.10a libcurl Version: libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1i zlib/1.2.6 c-ares/1.10.0 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.5 Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.41 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.6.0009.20030 Settings mode: Firestorm Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey) Font Used: Deja Vu (96) Draw distance: 128 Bandwidth: 1500 LOD factor: 2 Render quality: High (5/7) Advanced Lighting Model: No Texture memory: 512 MB (1) VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2014-12-13T15:18:52 Built with MSVC version 1600 Packets Lost: 3/18,393 (0.0%)