Sturm Baran

So I got the Gigabyte Gaming G1 card in, which is an nVidia GTX 970. Now I am getting excellent results in SL! When pointing my view toward a group of 15+ avatars huddled in a small area, my framerate drops to about 12–15 fps, and that's with graphical settings on *Ultra*. A far cry from the 30+ seconds per frame on the lowest graphical settings that I *was* experiencing. Now, it does seem to "halt" from time to time, seemingly pausing everything for a few seconds as it's downloading models & textures, but it no longer locks up my entire computer like it did before; I still have mouse control and can do other tasks while I wait. So thanks again for everything, Bas!

Excellent stress-testing, Bas Curtiz. Since FRAPS eats up about 10 fps, then I can safely assume that your actual framerates were about 20-30, which is good enough for me, especially in such a crowded area. And since I'll be getting a current-generation GTX970, which is about 25% faster than the GTX770, I should see a bit more framerates than what you were getting. Sounds to me like the decision has been made. Even on my older hardware, the GTX970 should work well. Now I just need to make sure that my case and PSU will accomodate it before I make the purchase. Thanks, Bas Curtiz!

I have been experiencing some truly awful framerates in SL (full disclosure: I use the Firestorm viewer). In fact, it's gotten so bad lately that it has to be measured in seconds per frame instead of frames per second. This typically happens in regions where there are ten or more other avatars within my view, or close to it. If there are twenty or more avatars in view, it can get down to about 30 seconds per frame. And it doesn't just slow down Firestorm, either; my entire computer (Running Windows 7 x64) halts--even the mouse cursor! And sometimes, when it finally gets to a usable point, a window pops up telling me that Windows is running slow and recommends to turn off Aero effects (which don't make a difference, of course). Flushing the cache and restarting the viewer can help for a little while, but it doesn't take long before it just gets really bad again. The kicker? This happens even when the graphical settings are on the bare minimum! Okay, some tech specs about my system. It was a pretty good gaming machine when I built it back in 2009, but clearly SL has changed since then. CPU: Intel Core i7 920 (2.67 GHz) Mobo: ASUS Rampage III Extreme Video: ATi Radeon HD 5870 RAM: 6 GB HDD: 80GB SSD boot-up drive, several spinning-platter HDDs for games & programs. I have a decent pool of money I can dip into for upgrading, but I'd rather do only a minimal amount right now; I'm still considering just building a new PC altogether in the near future. My thought is that the first thing I should replace is the video card. I don't mind purchasing a $375 nVidia GTX 970, which seems to be the new hotness as far as bang for the buck is concerned. The question, though, is: will that get rid of this intolerable slideshow that I'm currently experiencing? Or is the fact that things seem to get better after a cache flush mean that I need a bigger/faster hard drive? Or more/better memory? Please help me to know what I should be spending my money on most here. Thank you.