Does SL actually run at minimum spec?

I was looking at the system requirements and have enough spare parts to setup a machine for my brother who wanted to try SL out. Will SL actually run on an 800 mhz machine on a g-force 2 etc?

I don't know if anyones tried it, but I wouldn't think it would run well at all.. I've got well above spec for everything but RAM, which is 256, and it doesn't run well.. Gotta remember to get more..

I had one of those when I started. I had to upgrade just after 1.2 came out. It was slooooooooooooooooooooow.

It may not run, but your avatar will probably stand in one place okay.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: The "Minimum Spec" system, as currently defined, is apparently what it takes to log on in an empty or nearly empty sim, and do only the bare minimum of functionality, without crashing the instant you log on. With the release of version 1.7, systems at or close to the posted minimum specification will have extremely poor performace.

My recommendation? Don't bother building a system that is close to min spec, if you want to play SL and enjoy it. Get the most high-powered combination of processor power, RAM and video card that you can possibly afford. It seems at the moment that having far more RAM and video cards that have much more on-card RAM are the biggest factors in making SL play well.

on a G4 733mhz had 256ram at one time now at 1gb

been my whole SL experience.

(man I need a new computer)

Actually, I differ with the opinion of some of the above posts, from my experiance, at least in the video card epartment.

I'm running a GeForce 2 Ti with 64 MB VRAM, and SL does not lag for me at all, except in busy areas like dances with 25+ avs or something. My framerate is nothing special and I don't have hardly any goodies on, but it's definitely playable. Of course the rest of my system is rather newer, but that vid card should work as long as it's the 64MB version. The rest of the computer... well... <.< >.>

All that said, it also depends very much on which items are underspec.

I've got 512 Mb of RAM, a 933 Mhz Pentium 3, and a GeForce FX with 128 MB of video memory. While I'd hesitate to say SL runs "well", I can pretty much handle any non-crowded area (i.e., my usual haunts) okay.

RAM is probably the number-one thing to look at, with the video card being number two. SL does make the CPU do more work than many programs, so you can't skimp quite as much as you might otherwise.

All that said, if you're going to go to the effort of putting a machine together, get at least something that's no more than a year or two behind the bleeding edge. Much like cars, the price of computer parts tends to drop pretty well after the initial introduction, and you might as well spend a little more for a system that'll handle anything you throw at it than skimp and be unhappy.

I thought I was lowballing it with my Mac mini (512M G4/1.42 plus 32M Radeon 9200).

My Thinkpad has a Pentium something at 1.2 GHz and 768M of RAM, but it has an Intel video chipset and even though it'll run the game the display is completely messed up. Textures are fragmented, the ground is just a bunch of rainbow patterns, ...

I actually recently picked up a macMini for music recording purposes and installed SL on it to see how it would perform. Visited the Welcome Area, and I could barely break 3fps even with graphics setting set to Abysmal. In no ways do I mean to sound like a snob, but playing SL in anything lower than 1600x1200 looks nasty, especially now that more people are creating things that utilize high-res textures.

I run it at my desktop rez - 1024x768. I don't have a huge screen; higher resolutions and I have to squint too much.

Is it of general consensus that even tho there are a variety of factors involved, the HOLY TRINITY of SL performance is in the:

1. CPU
   
2. Video Card
   
3. Memory
   

? That's a question, o yes. Proggies I usually see have a "MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS" and a "RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS".

I haven't been able to find the latter for SL... yet!

The weekend after 1.7 came out, I posted here about SL performance on my slowest machine, which is just above minimum specs. It was JUST fast enough to move and fly around. That wasn't bad, considering a good number of residents couldn't see textures that day. Not the best SL machine, but I was actually able to sit in on a recent gathering of 20-30 avs. No fancy scripts or animations, just a bunch of us seated.

I dont think sl can have a recommended set of requirements, their minimum is just that, but it really is the better you can get the more you can use in the client, so when they say 800mhz gforce2 or higher they mean as high as you can get etc

But at the moment i think weighing things up i think the program is more cpu intensive than graphics card intensive, i know mine is being limited by cpu on a 3500+ using a gforce 6800gt i can overclock the card and not see any frame rate increase at all but as soon as i touch the cpu i will see an increase, especially when its a heavy content/avatar area like the welcome area etc.

Hmm..
I have two comptuers I run side by side.

Computer #1:
Chip: 2.8GHz Intel
RAM: 1G
Video: Ati Radeon 9200, 256MB

Computer #2:
Chip: 2.26GHz Intel
RAM: 512
Video: NVidea GeForce4 Ti 4200, 128MB

And I have a high DSL connection.
Both of them run SL pretty badly for its graphic style in my opinion but I'm used to higher end games that don't have any lag at all. Which is the first thing I find odd about all this.
Both comptuers have AGPx8 also. BUT only #2 is dubbed 'worthy' to use the AGP support in SL.

That being said, the "slower" Comp. #2 runs SL much faster no matter what.
I assumed it was all about the AGP of course. But even when I take it off, Comp #2 still runs SL much faster than the seemingly faster #1 computer.
heh
Very strange.

Whats even more confusing is that we have a dang Xeon server with 3gigs of RAM and another NvideaGeForce4 4200 (@64MB). And IT can't run SL at all!
It logs in but the SL air seems made out of molasses.

The AGP issue is likely due to the ATI card in that machine. ATI and SL don't tend to play well together.

What OS is the server running?

P2

All computers run the same version of Winows 2000 and 2000 pro. The server has a chioce to choose which OS to run if its rebooted.
And I was thinking the same thing about the graphic cards. (Even thou SL says we can use ATI 8500 or above.)

In any case, I find it the same for a lot of other games with the exception of a small few.
The ATI runs only a few games better than the Nvidia. But the Nvidia has been more stable for just about every game we try. Even if the game plays worse on it, at least it doesn't go bonkers like the ATI does when it can't handle a problem.

And why the Nvidia in the server won't handle SL is beyond me.
I wouldn't think the memory on the card would be that big a difference.
Also to add to the confusion a bit more, the Xeon server runs other games, even on max settings, just fine.
Crazy stuff.