How to build a good SL capable computer

[Theresa Tennyson]

Piers, maybe you should look around for a used computer that has higher upgrade potential than your current one. Computers have almost no resale value and you might be able to get something very cheap with a more modern motherboard and upgrade it.

[Thrayce Lanley]

"I'd be reluctant to recommend the GTS250 right now. That is what I have and my performance with V3 code is horrendous. I have tried every optimization I have read about, changing settings for VBO, HTTP, Anti-aliasing, etc with virtually no effect." 

Hmmm...may be time to re-evaluate your OS setup.

I've been running the Zotac GTS250 ECO 1GB for a year now, and running Niran's viewer on ULTRA; shadows, 2x AA, DoF, SSAO, and NO avatar imposters.  This is full-time settings.  I'm getting 18-25FPS on the average, whether in a SafeHub or in an RP sim.

I've said this before, I read these "Viewer 3 slows my comp to a crawl..." threads written by people who have twice to three-times better hardware than I'm using, and I just don't understand it. Oh well...

On a sidenote, I'll add that for it's age, and iteration of GPU, Nvidia really pulled-off a miracle with the GTS 250.  The card just WORKS.  With everything, and quite well. 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Thrayce Lanley wrote:

"I'd be reluctant to recommend the GTS250 right now. That is what I have and my performance with V3 code is horrendous. I have tried every optimization I have read about, changing settings for VBO, HTTP, Anti-aliasing, etc with virtually no effect." 

Hmmm...may be time to re-evaluate your OS setup.

I've been running the Zotac GTS250 ECO 1GB for a year now, and running Niran's viewer on ULTRA; shadows, 2x AA, DoF, SSAO, and NO avatar imposters.  This is full-time settings.  I'm getting 18-25FPS on the average, whether in a SafeHub or in an RP sim.

I've said this before, I read these "Viewer 3 slows my comp to a crawl..." threads written by people who have twice to three-times better hardware than I'm using, and I just don't understand it. Oh well...

On a sidenote, I'll add that for it's age, and iteration of GPU, Nvidia really pulled-off a miracle with the GTS 250.  The card just WORKS.  With everything, and quite well. 

---

As I stated to Peggy above, i was probably wrong for singling out the card.  That came more out of the frustration of dealing with the issues. 

One thing that I HAVE NOT SAID is that V3 is junk.  And trying to decipher why GL4 is causing some people major problems even with better Cards and overall systems than I have has been a hair puller.

I took some time to read up on Niran's Viewer, installed it and gave it a spin.  While I did not get into the finer tweakings on settings, at low graphics I get no better performance than I do with Firestorm at High.

But reading both Nalate's blog and Niran's comments, you are almost in the category of the miraculous to be getting the performance that you state.

Nalate states:

"I take it that Niran is working on the graphics pipeline. He warns that this release will probably produce fewer FPS then the previous. This is because he has changed the shadow render to get better shadows. You can see the comparison photos on his blog. If I understand Niran the shadows produced in the SL Viewer on Extreme are equal to the Niran Viewer’s shadows on High. Niran feels the FPS lost is more than made up for by quality.

On High I’m getting 9 to 12 FPS with this version of Nirans Viewer. (Duo Core 2 6600@2.4 w/GTX560 Vista 32). On Ultra I get about 4 to 8 FPS. But, the shadows are awesome. In the image notice I’m in my little house. The ‘window’ transparency is high and I’m getting shadows inside the house. If I turn the window opacity up the shadows change."

Niran states:

" SL graphics have been held back for faaaaar to long, now as i can decide how they should look and how far they can get , i say just MORE , theres so much SL still can do which NONE of us has yet discovered , and im striving to get to those limits without care about Performance , screw performance , we will gain it anyway , weither it is through upgrading our System , luck or optimisations i or LL or someone else does...."

There is a balance between performance and for lack of a better term, graphics quality.

If people choose to sacrifice performance for graphics, that is totally their choice.  As I have stated, "It's Your World, Your Choice Of Viewers."  For me, I want a bit better on the PERFORMANCE side of things.

Overall, I would like to see improvement in both performance and graphics.  I am ALL for that.

Bottom line is this.  Your post makes it sound like those of us who are having problems are doing something wrong and that is far, far, far from the truth.  You've offered no help here, just criticism.  Unlike Peggy who has offered me some concrete suggestions to try.  For which I am very grateful.

We already knew that there are people who are not having any problems.  We didn't need you to come in here and tell us that.  If anything, I think you owe an apology for that post.

[Thrayce Lanley]

Whoa there...

First of all, as I read your response I realized that I made it sound differently than I meant to say.  For that, I apologize; no malice intended.  That being said, I was not implying that everyone else was doing something wrong, neither did I mean to imply that I'm "one of the miraculous few..."

In another thread along similar lines, I went into a little detail about the effect of Background-Processes, and this was more the point I was getting at.  Understand, I'm not shooting in the dark here.  I'm drawing off of fourteen years experience making a living upgrading, building, and (pertinently for this thread and others like it) tweaking systems for private businesses.

More often than nought, the end-user has umpteen-thousand things going on in the background, and this has a tendency (major understatement) to impinge on the performance of, among other things games, apps, and of course Second Life.

Niran's Viewer running 'miraculously' on my GPU on the ULTRA setting with everything enabled is not the result of a standalone-factor, nor the result of up-to-date hardware, but rather the combination of proper drivers for ALL hardware (not necessarily the latest up-to-date, in Nvidia's case), making sure that ALL unnecessary services are STOPPED, having NOTHING running in the background, my drives constantly defragged (I use a separate drive for the cache--on another SATA channel the readtimes improve), etc...

Now, I of course realize that not everyone is a certified tech, and neither should anyone have to be to enjoy SL.  That being said, not every user knows how to shut-down EVERYTHING in the background or to set thier system up for maximum gaming performance without spending 1K on new hardware.  

As I've said in other threads, there is always the case of Joe User with his WalMart e-machine, who wants to run SL with all the eyecandy while he has WoW, Messenger, Roxio, Word, and VLC all working hard at the same time; this is Joe's prerogative.  If he wants to run his system this way, he's welcome to do so.  What bothers me is when Joe decides that instead of shutting-down some background stuff, he'd rather BLAME LL and thier coders for the viewer being so laggy and slow.

That was more my point, rather than trying to sound snotty or bashing anyone.  Sorry for any misunderstanding; I was merely trying to contribute to the thread.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Thrayce Lanley wrote:

Whoa there...

First of all, as I read your response I realized that I made it sound differently than I meant to say.  For that, I apologize; no malice intended.  That being said, I was not implying that everyone else was doing something wrong, neither did I mean to imply that I'm "one of the miraculous few..."

In another thread along similar lines, I went into a little detail about the effect of Background-Processes, and this was more the point I was getting at.  Understand, I'm not shooting in the dark here.  I'm drawing off of fourteen years experience making a living upgrading, building, and (pertinently for this thread and others like it) tweaking systems for private businesses.

More often than nought, the end-user has umpteen-thousand things going on in the background, and this has a tendency (major understatement) to impinge on the performance of, among other things games, apps, and of course Second Life.

Niran's Viewer running 'miraculously' on my GPU on the ULTRA setting with everything enabled is not the result of a standalone-factor, nor the result of up-to-date hardware, but rather the combination of proper drivers for ALL hardware (not necessarily the latest up-to-date, in Nvidia's case), making sure that ALL unnecessary services are STOPPED, having NOTHING running in the background, my drives constantly defragged (I use a separate drive for the cache--on another SATA channel the readtimes improve), etc...

Now, I of course realize that not everyone is a certified tech, and neither should anyone have to be to enjoy SL.  That being said, not every user knows how to shut-down EVERYTHING in the background or to set thier system up for maximum gaming performance without spending 1K on new hardware.  

As I've said in other threads, there is always the case of Joe User with his WalMart e-machine, who wants to run SL with all the eyecandy while he has WoW, Messenger, Roxio, Word, and VLC all working hard at the same time; this is Joe's prerogative.  If he wants to run his system this way, he's welcome to do so.  What bothers me is when Joe decides that instead of shutting-down some background stuff, he'd rather BLAME LL and thier coders for the viewer being so laggy and slow.

That was more my point, rather than trying to sound snotty or bashing anyone.  Sorry for any misunderstanding; I was merely trying to contribute to the thread.

 

---

Apology accepted. 

I understand what you are saying about the person who 'doesn't want to shut down all the background stuff..'  That can get irritating when they insist that they shouldn't have to in order to run SL.  And while I don't always agree with everything LL does, I try not to just blindly point my finger.

Whatever the glitch is that is causing my problems I have not been able to overcome it.  I've submitted JIRA's, Talked with Devs, Talked with others who are more knowledgeable than myself, tried A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H.  All to no avail.  I am one step away from reformatting my computer...something I really, really do not want to do. 

So yes I am a little frustrated and apologize for reacting so strongly.  I've put too many hours into this problem that I should have been simply enjoying SL.

Right now all I can hope for is that a program update corrects the glitch.

Thanks.

[Piers Llewellyn]

It's really starting to sound like I just need to start over from scratch. Not sure what I can do yet, but with that said, here's a summary of what I have right now:

ATX case with RaidMax RD-350w powersupply

AOpen AK77-400N Socket A motherboard- I was once told that this was the biggest bottleneck of my system due to the board's slow bus speed, but I could be confusing something else.

AMD Athlon processor- can't remember speed. One I have that's not installed in anything is an Athlon labeled AXDA1800DUT3C. Seems like the other installed processor might be more powerful, but I can't remember.

4GB RAM- I can't remember the RAM spec as they're a couple of years old. Seems like they were in the midrange of prices for what I was buying.

NVIDIA NV-18 series graphics card- the only other identifier I can find on it are the characters 02948-V1

CD/DVD RW drive

Maxtor ATA/100 200GB hard drive

Xubuntu

Sounds like the important thing to do now is get a good, fast motherboard and processor, then focus on new graphics.

[leliel Mirihi]

Looking at the specs I'd say there's nothing worth while in the whole machine. I'd suggest you keep this one for a little while and save up to buy a new machine all at once. If you won't be able to buy a new machine soon and want to upgrade this one to hold you over I don't recommend it, but your only option is to replace the video card. You have a GeForce 4 MX440 which is not all that great. See if you can get and old AGP card from a friend, buying a new or used one isn't worth the price.