Performance Veiwer

[XShiloXwolfX]

Im interested to know if anyone knows of a veiwer that helps increase performance. I have a very powerful computer but i find it frustrating when i have to play on certain low details just to stay around 20 fps. Also, anyone know of a reason why public chat is extremely laggy? Once i open it up, i drop down to 9 or 10 fps until i close it.

Anyway I can drastically increase performance or is second life doomed to poor optimization?

SYstem Specs:

OS: WIndows 7 64bit

RAM: 16gb 1600mhz

CPU: Fx-8320 3.8ghz

GPU: R9 290 Stock Reference

Resolution: 1920x1080

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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XShiloXwolfX wrote:

Im interested to know if anyone knows of a veiwer that helps increase performance. I have a very powerful computer but i find it frustrating when i have to play on certain low details just to stay around 20 fps. Also, anyone know of a reason why public chat is extremely laggy? Once i open it up, i drop down to 9 or 10 fps until i close it.

Anyway I can drastically increase performance or is second life doomed to poor optimization?

SYstem Specs:

OS: WIndows 7 64bit

RAM: 16gb 1600mhz

CPU: Fx-8320 3.8ghz

GPU: R9 290 Stock Reference

Resolution: 1920x1080

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What id your graphics card?

What is your bandwith set to in SL?

What is your speed on a speedtest?

These are all things that can affect SL.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Second life is more or less "doomed". While it may not look like it, it is far more difficult to render than most high end games. Add to that the fact that pretty much everything needs to be streamed/downloaded and you'll have (relative) low performance on any system.

20 fps sounds very low though, I have a faster CPU than you do, an i7-3770k and a slower graphics card, a GTX670 and usually get 20+fps in a very laggy sim on ultra settings. On sims that aren't laggy, the fps will go as high as 100-200. SL seems to like Nvidia cards better than Radeon ones, so that might make a difference.

A good internet connection is crucial, not just your up- and download speeds. Also make sure your video drivers are up to date.

The public chat seems to be bugged, setting it to compact mode might help with the fps, it does for me.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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XShiloXwolfX wrote:

Im interested to know if anyone knows of a veiwer that helps increase performance. I have a very powerful computer but i find it frustrating when i have to play on certain low details just to stay around 20 fps. Also, anyone know of a reason why public chat is extremely laggy? Once i open it up, i drop down to 9 or 10 fps until i close it.

Anyway I can drastically increase performance or is second life doomed to poor optimization?

SYstem Specs:

OS: WIndows 7 64bit

RAM: 16gb 1600mhz

CPU: Fx-8320 3.8ghz

GPU: R9 290 Stock Reference

Resolution: 1920x1080

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Yep, sounds like the issue using "expanded view" (separators and icons) in chat. Clicking on the button with horizontal lines at the top of the chat window and selecting "compact view" should help, and this viewer fixes that particular issue:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/3.7.2.286708

[XShiloXwolfX]

"What id your graphics card?" DO you mean what is my graphics card? Or ID of the graphics card. it is labeled as GPU in the system spec list.

 

Bandwith set to 2000 k/bs

Speedtest: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3325613717

 

[XShiloXwolfX]

I have overclocked my cpu to 4.0 which brings the perfromance very close to your cpu. Ive also made sure video drivers are up to date and roll abcked from beta drivers since they were causing issues. Gonna try the compact mode for the chat, thanky ou for the advice and replies!

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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XShiloXwolfX wrote:

"What id your graphics card?" DO you mean what is my graphics card? Or ID of the graphics card. it is labeled as GPU in the system spec list.

 

Bandwith set to 2000 k/bs

Speedtest: 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3325613717

 

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I always love when someone asks for help then gets pissy.

Firstly, don't be an ass. It was a simple typo.

Secondly, you should never set your bandwith higher than 1500. You should also do a speedtest to one of the SL servers.  Try using one of THESE locations for an actual speedtest. Getting a result from your local ISP means nothing.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

Firstly, don't be an ass. It was a simple typo.

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I think XShiloXwolfX was simply confused by your typo, since the graphics card was clearly mentioned in the OP.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

Firstly, don't be an ass. It was a simple typo.

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I think XShiloXwolfX was simply confused by your typo, since the graphics card was clearly mentioned in the OP.

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I have never heard of a "R9 290 Stock Reference" Apparently that is a Readon card, which are notorious for borking out with SL.

@ OP Just because it is the newest and shiniest card, does not mean it will work with SL.

[Qie Niangao]

Well, yeah, but the OP doesn't complain that the graphics card craps-out in SL, just that it's slow. And it shouldn't be, really. Although the R9 290 is absurdly overpriced (the performance of a GTX 770 for a hundred dollars more than a GTX 780, all for the privilege of ATi's gawdawful drivers -- seriously, WTF?), still, it should be able to run SL well enough that nobody would bother posting about how bad it seems.

As suggested, switching to the compact version of chat should make a night-and-day difference, so maybe that's all that needs fixing. (The CHUI should never have had the expanded version as default. Yeah, it's all pretty and stuff, but both useless and just unbearably laggy.)

I agree that such a high bandwidth setting is unlikely to be doing anybody any favours, and can easily cause trouble. On the other hand, making better use of whatever bandwidth you get is a win, and right now nothing comes close to the Lab's HTTP Release Channel viewer, 3.7.2.286708 (what I'd name the current "Performance Viewer" of the thread title).

[EDIT: Oh, heh, the same RC viewer also fixes the expanded chat lag. I should have read Theresa's post more carefully!]

[Nalates Urriah]

I am surprised no one told him/her how to get the machine specs and version numbers we need to have any idea of what is happening.

Get the Specs

Open the viewer and open HELP then ABOUT... Copy and past that information into a post to provide hardware and software information so we can know what we are working with.

Example:

Second Life 3.7.1 (286557) Feb 11 2014 21:01:25 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

You are at 167.7, 5.2, 36.3 in Fishergate located at sim10460.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.51.166:13016)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fishergate/168/5/36
(global coordinates 464,296.0, 306,949.0, 36.3)
Second Life Server 14.02.03.286121
Release Notes

CPU: Intel® Pentium® Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz (1995.05 MHz)
Memory: 2030 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600) compatibility mode. real ver: 6.0 (Build 2900)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8600 GTS/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 6.14.0013.1407
OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.12
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 62/64,668 (0.1%)

Networks

Having a good internet connection is NOT the same thing has having a good connection to Second Life. Run through http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ to figure out whether or not you have a connection problem.

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Having a high spec machine does not mean you can turn everything in SL on high and get good performance. There are too many variables. Your router, gateway, ISP, and the connection path to the SL servers all have a say in what type of performmance you see.

Then there are the regions. Some are built in ways that drive performance down. No matter what you do when you hit one of those regions performance is going to suffer.

Draw Distance is the single biggest problem for performance. Maxing it will drag any computer to its knees, single digit FPS. Remember. The content in SL is made mostly by amatures. Its performance will be far less than video games built by professionals.

The amount of video ram you have is another factor. The texture download process cause a huge variation in performance when you first enter a region.

When you need to give specs on your machine, read this: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/Performance-Veiwer/m-p/2509231#M22978

Saves everyone grief and you get better answers.

To understand some of the settings we have available and what they do check out: http://blog.nalates.net/2010/12/17/graphics-tweaking-for-second-life/

I find most people get their best performance by setting the grpahics setting to HIGH and then manually increasing some to the settings to ULTRA values.

 

[XShiloXwolfX]

I was lucky enough to get the R9 at $350 before the miners got their hands on it. Im also very interested in the features that AMD is offering such as true audio, mantle and their gsync similair technology that will be coming soon. Love nvidia and my next card will probably be from them unless Maxwell turns out to be good in mining (so far its showing good results...damn lol)

Switching to compact version solved my issue with the massive fps drop when opening chat and I tend to like the compact version a lot more then expanded so that is a plus. What bandwith should I set it at then?

Thanks again tot hose who replied and cleared up the confusion between me and Drake.

[XShiloXwolfX]

Thank you for the response, I tweaked the settings as much as i could to get great quality at acceptable framerate from what im getting and not sure how much i can improve.

 

Specs:

Second Life 3.7.2 (286708) Feb 15 2014 05:59:39 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

You are at 102.3, 151.0, 2,000.3 in Furnication located at sim10407.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.51.57:13006)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Furnication/102/151/2000
(global coordinates 138,342.0, 346,519.0, 2,000.3)
Second Life Server 14.02.03.286121
Retrieving...

CPU: AMD FX-8320 Eight-Core Processor (4013.52 MHz)
Memory: 16282 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0010.1247
OpenGL Version: 4.2.12618 Compatibility Profile Context 13.251.0.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.12
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.5.0009.17865

Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 0/2,085 (0.0%)

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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XShiloXwolfX wrote:

What bandwith should I set it at then?

 

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I did give the answer to that question. You need to do a speedtest to one of the locations listed on THIS page. It does not matter what viewer you use, those are the server locations for SL.

THESE are my results to Dallas.

[XShiloXwolfX]

I should have read it a little more carefully and previous posts. Thank you.

[Genesis Montagne]

Hello Shilo,

I know this is an older thread but I'm hopeful I can still be of help to you or others who have similar questions. I have a system with lesser specs than yours and regularly get higher frame rates than you listed. Tweaking SL graphics settings to get best performance can be difficult to figure out. I regularly get high frame rates in crowded areas by using these general theories when setting up my graphics in any viewer. FYI, as odd as this seems I regularly see better performance using LL viewer over Firestorm. My go to viewers are as follows Catznip for general use, LL viewer if I want great performance using materials/shadows and advanced lighting settings. Please note I am showing you higher quality settings as I believe your system is capable of using them. Less powerful systems should drop Shadows/reflections/Draw Distance/Object details and Sky quality to help with their experience

I set my graphics preferences as follows and they work well for me and countless others I have helped over the years. I'm going to use Linden Labs release viewer in this example but the settings will work in other viewers as well. The buttons may just be in different spots. I'll be going down the graphics settings from Left side to Right if this is helpful for you to follow along.

1. Enable Advanced mode under your graphics tab in preferences, you'll find that button on the bottom toward the right side of the preference window.

Left Side

2. I have nearly every option selected on the left side. All but "Depth of Field" (Not because it bogs me down, but because I don't care for it.) So to be clear I have Transparent Water, Bump mapping and shiny, Local Lights, Basic shaders, Atmospheric shaders, Advanced Lighting Model and Ambient Occlusion enabled. I believe your system is more than powerful enough to do the same.

3. I usually have Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled and Reflections set to Everything as well as Avatar Physics set to High. In the below screen shot I have lowered these settings to Sun/Moon and All Avatars & Objects in order to eek out additional fps.

Right Side of the Graphics Control Panel

4. Draw Distance: This is the NUMBER ONE killer of SL performance. It is also the biggest stressor on your computer system, CPU & Graphics Card. Just because you can set your draw distance to 512 or 1024 meters doesn't mean you should. If you are in a busy area, it is always best to drop your draw distance to something reasonable.

To give you an idea, I rarely bring my draw distance above 96 meters unless I am using an SL vehicle and need the additional view range to manage terrain/curves/obstacles. In many situations I keep it at 88 meters and up it only if I need to. SL needs to load every individual object in a scene separately and therefore taxes both the CPU and graphics cards accordingly. Learning to keep your draw distance in check will make your experience so much better.

5. Max. Particle Count. Particles can also be a stressor, Sims and locations with heavy particle use will lag a viewer. In fact, particles cause lag to the viewer and not the server as they are drawn viewerside only. Dropping the count down to the 4,000 or 2,000 range can also be helpful. Mine are set to much lower as at the moment I am in a particle heavy area and wanted to limit them.

6. The following settings can be left on high without sliding the bars all the way to the edge. Its hard to explain so I'll post a picture to show you what I mean.

Notice how Objects, Flexiprims, Avatars & Terrain are set to High but the sliders are not completely maxed. Its a subtle difference but every fps counts. You'll also notice that I have Trees turned all the way down. The tree setting is for LL Trees, not sculpted or mesh trees you see in 99% of SL. Very few people use LL trees and unless you are on a sim that uses them, this should just be turned as low as possible.

Additionally, you will see that my Sky settings are set to Mid. Sky is another setting which will greatly impact your performance. I only raise my Sky detail if I am taking pictures or enjoying a Sunrise/sunset/starry night and want the full effect of the situation. I would suggest you do this as well in order to obtain best performance.

7. Avatar Imposters should be enabled and will actually help your performance not hinder it. Hardware skinning I leave on as it has caused me issues disabling it. Avatar cloth is really not necessary, it was a neat feature not widely used particularly with sculpt clothing and I don't believe it works with mesh either and thus is not worth the extra horsepower.

Hardware Settings

8. Anisotropic Filtering I leave disabled, it even states in the viewer this will slow you down. If your goal is increased FPS, cut this as well.

9. My anti aliasing is disabled...if I do enable it I do not raise it past the base of 2x.

10. Enable Vertex Buffer Objects: Your card is new, so it should work ok even though it is an ATI which has had trouble with SL in the past due to their previously lax support of OpenGL. Much has changed over the years and ATI has vastly improved their support of OpenGL and I would argue is a better supporter of the Opensource community as a whole these days than Nvidia. Play with this setting with your Statistics bar open and see what performance you get enabled and disabled and use whichever works best. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Enabled will give you the best performance.

11. Max your texture memory as I'm sure your card has more than enough to spare.

12. A lot of comments on here mention your network speed. I agree with the advice you were given there but am doubtful that network speed is the cause of your drop in frame rates. Network speed would likely be responsible for slow loading and rubberbanding and bad sim crossings as well as teleport failures.

 

I hope this was at least a bit helpful to you. Please feel free to contact me in world if you have additional questions or would like to try some different tweaks.

Genesis