cykarushb

Ive never encountered anything like that. Ive had more people ask me about wanting to get furry avatars than ive ever had anyone go out of their way to insult me. Even spending a lot of my time around Social Island and NCI with all the newbies and people generally inexperienced with the community, i think ive gotten flak for my avatar maybe once or twice, and one of those times it was a certain someone whos notorious for ruining SI5, so i doubt even that was really too serious. Id say its probably vampires, because a part of their community is based outside of SL and basically just use SL as their game for it. So they dont really know how the actual SL community works. You get these inexperienced players that read some forums guide on being a vampire in SL and then do things like bite people without permission and generally be a nuisance in public places. And that gets them their hate, but im pretty sure thats a small minority of the larger group.

So I recently built a fun PC, an inverted sleeper. Old parts in a new case. And i wanted to see if it could even start SL. Technically its below spec, https://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/ SL says it needs a Geforce 6600 or better as a minimum. I have a 6200 which even in 2004 was very low end, display adapter type hardware. Also in this system is a 2.2ghz Northwood Pentium 4, 2gb of 166mhz DDR (not DDR3, not DDR2, DDR.), a 160gb WD Blue IDE hard drive and some other goodies. Downloaded the Obsolete platforms viewer for windows XP, lo an' behold: It started, it loaded, and it actually ran without crashing. Now im getting maybe 5fps on generally low settings in 1024x768, but its running. It is technically playable, a PC from 2004 can in fact still play SecondLife. And now i gotta wonder, how low can i go? Can a Pentium 3 really run SL like the linux system requirements say? Whats the actual minimum GPU requirement? Can i go to 423 Pentium 4's and run a 1.2ghz one? Whats the bare minimum i can get away with for ram? 2gb is actually a LOT of ram for a system from 2004, this should have something like 512mb to be "average", maybe even less. With more cut down versions of XP i could probably run SL on 512mb but i cant be sure. Whats the lowest end PC you have that can run SL? Computer stuff below:

You could go either way depending on how much money you want to spend and what else you do. Upgrading to an FX 8350, adding another 4gb of ram and replacing the 550ti with a newer card like a 1050ti or actually a GTX 760 goes for about the same price, would be a really nice upgrade for that system and it would only cost you maybe 120$ for a brand new 8350 (you might need the beefier stock cooler), 4gb of DDR3 is maybe 20 bucks (make sure to match speeds, 1333/1600mhz), and a 760 would be about 120$ on ebay used/sometimes new old stock, or a 1050ti being 140-160$. Of course there are a lot of other options that pair well with a FX 8350 out there such as a 750ti, 770, 780 or 950/960 at various price points. So lets say 300$ to upgrade if you potentially include something like an SSD or maybe need a PSU upgrade (you shouldnt, the 550ti already requires a 6 pin which will be needed to power a 760 but a 1050ti is lower wattage). Moving to an entire new platform, such as AM4 you can still save your case/psu/drives or whatever. You'll need the new CPU, motherboard and DDR4 memory. Id suggest a Ryzen 3 1200 or 2200g which are both a bit over 100$ on average. Any AM4 motherboard will do, the cheapest A320 boards are 40-50$ while some nice mid tier B350 boards are about 60-70$. A 2200g is an APU and will be beneficial if you dont want to use dedicated graphics for a while, the integrated Vega 8 graphics will perform a bit over your 550ti but doing this gives you more time to save up money for a nicer video card. I wouldnt buy a 10 series card right now because of inflated GPU prices, but something like ar GTX 970/980 can be found for cheap used and perform drastically better than the other above mentioned options. 8gb of DDR4 will however be 60-80$ because DDR4 is stupidly expensive. So youre looking at a 300$ upgrade, and that will be a dead end for the Am3+ platform, or about 300$ to move to a new platform WITHOUT a gpu, adding in a 760 or higher end GPU will add another 120$+ to that. The benefit of the new platform is that you have another stretch to upgrade in the future, on AM4 you could go from the relatively entry level R3 1200 or 2200g to an R5 1600x, or even R7 1800x if you wanted. Upgrade the ram to 16gb, replace a 760 with a 1080ti. Do that another stretch of years from now when those parts are cheap past gen components.

Optimization for Multithreaded CPU rendering of lighting. Mainly so people stop complaining about how X high end GPU only performs a little better than Y low end GPU because they have Z processor.

GT 1030. Fits in anything, 30w can be powered by anything, good for low end PC's, pairs well with even ancient dual cores, performs like a GTX 750 which is plenty for SL to run smoothly in 1080p high settings. Without any other details thats all i can really offer you, in case your machine is low profile or has a limited power supply, thats probably your best option. Make sure you at least have a pcie x16 slot, if you dont then your options get really limited depending on what slots you do have. Theyre about 110-130$ due to inflated GPU prices, original MSRP was 70-80, but thats really not too bad for the performance. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137140 You dont need a 1060 or higher to run SL, you use those for when you want 1440p/4k, constantly maxed or on a triple monitor setup or something. A GTX 1050ti is a good choice for SL but you dont need even current gen hardware by any means, i play on stuff thats now 12 years old and its still nice and smooth. Even Kaby Lake HD620 integrated graphics play SL nicely.

Vega is going to be a terrible option, it was half baked and the workstation drivers are garbage. Vega Frontier has like 3 use cases where its better than even a 1070 for workstation loads. 56 and 64 arent much better Anything more than a 1050 can probably get you 1080p ultra at decent framerates. My roommate uses two Firepro W9100's and has a S9300x2 as a render compute card, shes putting triple digits in pretty much anything anywhere in SL at 1440p maxed with just one W9100 being used. If youre down for spending 1800 dollars on a GPU, the WX9100 would be a good choice. However unless youre doing the kind of work that really does need a card like that (she does CNC simulation), then you're better off with something like with 5100, its going to still give you pretty good performance for your workstation needs and hold its own in 1080p gaming. Workstation hardware actually tends to perform better than consumer stuff for SL. Because SL Is a giant unoptimized mess and its laid out more like a 3D workspace than a polished game, stuff like Firepro/Quadro cards with their workstation drivers can do better than their consumer performance tier counterpart. For example i have two Quadro FX 4600's (though SL doesnt utilized SLI), considered to be the workstation version of the 8800 GTX. The quadro gest me significantly better framerates than the 8800 GTX i borrowed from a friend. We tried this with newer hardware as well, a Quadro 5000 vs a GTX 580, where the 5000 blew the 580 away in SL by about 20fps on average. tl;dr -no vega because vega sucks for workstation stuff -you dont need high end stuff to run SL -best bet is probably the 5100, or 7100 if you want to drop more money on it

If you dont have another account on the laptop with admin privileges then youre kinda screwed tbh. There really hasnt been a way to reliably "crack" a password in windows since 98SE (where you could get in by trying to print the login page, which would open the print tool which would also bring you to the desktop). You can try a recovery USB for your version of windows to reset the accounts on there, but im pretty sure that without the current password it will delete everything and basically just leave a fresh install of windows on the disk.

CPU bottleneck. SL is very single threaded so it will quickly max your processor out and leave your GPU with less work to do. Its a bit more complicated than that to explain, but basically the better single threaded performance your CPU can do, the more of your GPU will be utilized. So if you have something like an i7 7740x which has an insane single thread benchmark score you would see more work being left to the GPU, leading to increased GPU usage, which doesnt meant better framerates, it just means that you wont maybe cap out your framerate, it wont drop easily. For example, i have 3 machines i can play secondlife on. One is an Acer Ferrari 3400 from 2004 but thats unrelated. One is my 2006 era workstation with a Core2Quad Q6600 and two Quadro FX 4600's. It is 12+ year old hardware, it gets the same performance as my current acer aspire with its i5 7200u and integrated intel HD620 graphics. Approximately 40fps on average in average complexity places with 10 or less people around on overall medium/high settings. However with that laptop what i can do is really crank up the settings without impacting my framerate too much, HD620 is about on par with one of those Quadros or an 8800 GTX. With the laptop i can start using advance lighting and the fancy water reflections and all that without losing more than maybe 10fps. While on the q6600 system if i do that, i drop to single digits. And this is because of the CPU bottleneck. The Q6600 has similar multi core/thread performance to the i5 7200u, but the i5's single threaded performance is drastically better, and the fancy rendering features like the water reflections and lighting are actually handled more by the CPU than the GPU. SO when the CPU is able to do it better, it wont impact the framerate as much, meaning your GPU handling everything else will be utilized better and will result in a better framerate. tl;dr, i know it sounds dumb, but its really the 3770k. SL is the only game where you're going to see that, the 3770k is plenty even in 2018 for anything else out there, and if it was 2012 still and you had a GTX 680, you would be seeing essentially the same kind of performance in SL, the game is just bad at utilizing multiple threads for certain aspects of the engine. And thats just because the game has been continuously built upon older versions from a time when dual core CPU's didnt even exist yet.

Well you can get things to cool down for a lot cheaper than buying a new pc if this system performs decently for you. But make sure its a temperature issue first. It could still be something else. You CPU should operate within 30-50c and never get above 70c, 80-100c will eventually cause a shutdown. Your GPU should operate within 40-60c and never get above 90c. These parts were designed with coolers adequate for them, so if they're not maintaining proper temperatures it comes down to dust, airflow and thermal conductivity of the heatsinks. This can also effect the power supply if its particularly dusty, when a PSU gets hotter it gets less efficient, and therefore even hotter, eventually it cant put out the wattage the system needs and can also cause a shutdown. Go through a do a full cleaning, if it all possible blow the entire thing out with compressed air outside, or go over it all with a vacuum (some say this is a bad idea because of static, just do it on a hard floor and don't use a brush attachment).

Yeah, a 1080 will be fine, dont even bother with the system requirements page for this game, its really out of date. Hardware is very universal these days, you dont need to concern yourself about game compatibility. Really dont even bother waiting for a 2k series card, the pricing rumors that have been out are insane, 1000$+ for a "xx80", not even a ti. Also its a "tock" cycle for nvidia, dont bother buying into that generation because the performance boost will be minimal. Definitely not worth the cost over a GTX 1080 as prices are with cryptocurrency miners. And thats another thing, OP if you dont have the dosh to dish around, do not buy a 10 series card at all, the prices on pretty much anything more than the GT 1030 are all inflated and youre paying way more than MSRP. SL also really doesnt require super high end hardware to get a great experience, as @Parhelion Palou said, hes getting a good experience on ultra with a 1060. Older hardware is also going to be cheaper to find used, there are 980/980ti's on ebay for 250-450$, which perform similar to a 3gb/6gb 1060 and the 980ti performs similar to a 1070. Something like a 780ti would be similar to a 3gb 1060 and cost about 250$ (though you'd have to use older drivers, the current ones gimp the 700 series cards). Of coruse ignore all that if you dont mind paying nearly double MSRP for the 10 series cards.

This sounds like a heat or power issue. Especially if youre describing increasing frequency of shutdowns over time. Is your computer clean? Do you get good temperatures? Monitor your temps with something like Speccy to make sure your processor or GPU arent going full housefire mode. When hardware overheats it usually causes a bluescreen after hardware failure but can also just straight up shut off the PC. 4gb of ram isnt going to cause this kind of issue, if you maxed out memory windows would just start using the pagefile instead, and that would give obvious slowdowns but not shutdowns.

hmmm, sounds like a 5000 series radeon card to me, no doubt about it Also the whole "its ATI/AMD hardware causing problems" hasnt been an issue in over a decade. The reason that was a problem for SL users in the early 2000's had to do with the fact that ATI used to make all the dedicated graphics chipsets for consumer laptops, nvidia mobile FX Go stuff was on higher end laptops. For example my Thinkpad T42 from 2004 had an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 chip in it with a whopping 32mb of vram that struggled with games more advanced than Halo CE. So all these people didnt have bad hardware, they had just weak consumer hardware. And then it got blamed on ATI being bad because the people who didnt have problems had desktop Nvidia cards. The same issue is in that JIRA from 2012 where someone had a weak mobile GPU that compared poorly to Nvidias options. Ive seen posts on these forums about people saying AMD cards flat out will not work with SL. Which has just never been the case. And its because the userbase here is generally older and technologically stagnated in the early 2000's when this stuff was still relevant. Right now AMD and Nvidia are pretty much on par with performance tier options, price and driver stability. And honestly thats been the case since the 7000 series cards. I dont care how many posts a person has or how well theyre known, the information is plain and simple wrong. Giving someone wrong advice is worse than giving them no advice. Also unrelated but on the topic of toaster PC's, nobody should be running hardware so old it cant run SL, my computer is from 2006 hardware wise and runs this game pretty well, if someone has performance issues its beyond time to upgrade. My Quadro FX 4600's are in a single gpu configuration on par with HD 520/620 integrated graphics. Nobody should be running less in 2018.

Please tell me how this is somehow related to a graphics card from 2012 or really any other old AMD/ATI card that OP clearly does not have when they specifically stated having a decent cpu/gpu and being able to hold ultra settings.

no, no, no, no, no ,no just no god no stop doin that every god damn post about a bug someone pulls a JIRA from half a decade ago about hardware issues that existed for like 2 days This is a server issue, the server is not providing textures and you are seeing textureless objects, sometimes theyre pink, sometimes theyre gray. This has nothing to do with hardware, it is not about an AMD graphics card. Nobody is using the HD 5470 that guy in the notes is using, its unbelievably below minimum spec for this game to even start. OP's best bet is to clear their cache and let the server re-download all the textures it needs as you go through SL. And i swear to god if someone comes in here and says "clearing your cache is bad for SL" i will throw this PC into orbit and let it return back to earth through their roof.

Except for extremely high end phones the hardware just isnt there yet. The iPhone X's APU is just now on par with low end integrated graphics on i series processors. Similar to HD4000 though overall performance including the CPU benchmarks is similar to that of a Kaby Lake mobile i5 7200u. The absolute highest end phone performs graphically similar to the integrated graphics from 2012. Or similar to a GT 330m for anyone who cares about that metric. Performing about half as good as an 8800 GTX, the closest performing card to my Quadro FX 4600 which is pretty much the minimum for 1080p medium/high settings nowadays, and about the same as a GT 710, which is the absolute minimum to even get playable results in 720p. And the phones are so non-standardized that getting software to run across iOS, android and windows mobile is difficult and time consuming. Phones and tablets arent there yet.

There is still the obsolete platforms viewer, but its far from having been updated in a very long time. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers It wont support bento, there are no current viewers that will still run on XP that support bento. If you XP era laptop can actually run SL at all, just install Linux and use the modern linux viewers. Takes like 20 minutes tops to download the lubuntu iso and slap it on a bootable usb with rufus.

time to revive this heres my toaster with its new second quadro fx 4600 only to discover my motherboard doesnt support SLI, so i have a really nice physX/compute card now, lel

I recently bought a 480$ (after tax) Acer Aspire 15" with an i5 7200u, 8gb of DDR4, 1tb 5400rpm HDD and intel HD 620 graphics Its really not anything fancy at all, it performs on par with my extremely budget desktop. General medium settings for 40-50fps in 1080p, 20-30 with lots of people around. Anything really with HD 620 will be graphically enough for a pleasant SL experience, the mobile dual cores HD 620 is on are pretty much all the same and all perform better than my Core2Quad Q6600 that i use in my desktop, especially in single threaded performance. So really anything with a 7th gen i series mobile processor and integrated graphics will give the performance youre looking for.

Oh, and extra, if youre going to 8.1 from an older version of Windows like 7 or XP, you may not like the tiles. Install a program called ClassicShell (http://www.classicshell.net) to get a regular start menu. This also works on windows 10 for those who dont like the metro start menu.

As for 8.1, yeah, with no issues. I use 8.1 as my main OS with no problems at all. If you have 8.1, its already the "fixed" version of 8. As for the hardware in that laptop, you may or may not have a pleasant experience depending on how you view your performance in SL as "playable". The 4500e is on par with an ivy bridge mobile i3, and the gpu is slightly better than HD 4000. So you're basically just on the line of even being compatible with SL, I don't think you're going to see great performance. @KarenMichelle Lane on Windows 8.1 on older hardware, that's what I do and its fine. Dell Precision T3400 with a Q6600 and FX 4600, 8gb of ram, Designed for Vista with an XP option, runs 8.1 no problem. Even vista era laptops with mobile core2duos and all that will handle 7/8/8.1 or 10. You get into "technically it can" with old hardware and new operating systems when you put 8 or 10 on something from the Pentium M era

Currently not much, I'm just at a hotel.

Trying out some different avatars.

Ran out of upload room, big images, heres what it looks like with the shaders off. Theres better detail in the lighting, glows, things are more vibrant. Its like the advance shaders just made everything kinda dull.

Something I've noticed as I've been playing around with this new laptop, turning on things from Atmospheric Shaders and below can sometimes actually make a place look worse? As in it loses a lot of color and the edges get so blurred out that everything seems to blend together. Everything else i have on is below. Example, im on general medium/high settings on the LL viewer. No depth of field, heres what this scene looks like with Atmospheric Shaders on:

My 450$ Acer Aspire with a mere i5 7200u and intel HD 620 graphics would contest that. 30-40fps on medium/high settings in popular places. ALM drops that to 20-30 but can rise in less populated places. For the sake of portability, which i need now with my current job, 450$ for this kind of performance is pretty great. It outperforms my budget desktop by a fair bit. You dont need a laptop with a mobile quadcore and a 1070 to get decent performance in SL. *sniffs air* Smells like 2003? I caught a faint whiff of pogs and pokemon cards. Wifi and mobile connections are just fine for a game like SL today. I always play on wifi with no issues and im currently playing via a tethered 4g LTE connection which is still 30mbps down and 15mbps up with 2ms latency. Also screen size has nothing to do with resolution, i have a 7" 720p monitor and a 23" 800x600 CRT, big screen, low res, looks awful. Small screen, decent res, looks ok. Most phone screens are now 720p or higher, flagship smartphones (besides apple) are 1080p/1440p+. Dont spread misinformation you got off ancient resources from the early days of SL, they do not apply at all anymore.