How do you buy a new Laptop and know it will run Second Life?

I've been having a unproductive conversation with one of SL's tech support staff. Seems SL has finally outgrown my current laptop graphics adapter. It was time to look at a new one anyway. Checking the SL Hardware requirements, every GeForce adapter they have listed is a legacy adapter according to NVIDIA. It's impossible to buy a new laptop with one of these adapters in it. The question I can't seem to get an answer to is...

How do you buy a new computer (in my case a laptop) and know it will be able to run Second Life? It seems a lot of the gaming class laptops have the GeForce 200 series in them. Does anyone have any experience/advice with current adapters (especially with Laptops) and Second Life?

Everything in the GTX 200 series is spec'ed significantly higher than anything in the old 8 or 9 series. The GTS 250 is essentialy a rebranded 9800 GTX or 9800 GTX+, depending on which one you get.

So to answer your question, everything in the 200 series is equivalent to or better than what's listed on the SL sysreqs page. They'll all run SL well. That is to say, they all SHOULD, according to the specs. I don't actually own one, myself, so I can't test. There's no reason to believe any of them won't work, though.

You might run into a minor issue in which the viewer will give you an erroneous warning that your 200 series card doesn't meet the minimum specs. This is only because not all of the newer cards are on its list. It doesn't actually mean your card won't work or that it's unsupported. It just means LL's been lazy about adding certain names and numbers to a particular text file. If it happens, simply set the viewer not to do a hardware inspection when starting up, and the error will disappear.

Out of curiosity, what laptops have you been looking at?

Any laptop that has at least a dual core CPU of some kind, 2GB Ram and an NVidia Chipset not less than the 8200. I recently tested such a device, and found it satisfactory for what I call "light" SL use.

This is the one I tested:

Recertified: COMPAQ Presario CQ60-210US NoteBook AMD Athlon X2 QL-62(2.00GHz) 15.6" 2GB Memory 250GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce 8200M - $399.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834107028

I run a laptop with a Nvidia 8600m GT(and it seems you can get these a lot in off the shelf lap tops ) and it blows the big rig with a 7900GT away!

I have ran one with a intel extreem 945 and 950 but its slow at best and not worth more than using for IMs

What ever you do get a fan tray for under it the Nvidia cards get HOT in lap tops

So far, looking at High End Dell's and Alienware. Also the Asus, which I don't know much about so I'm doing a little research on it. Everything is coming with Vista 64 bit, which makes me a little nervous. I may hold off for Windows 7, since I know it's based on the XP engine and not the Vista engine.

Thanks for the explination of how the new NVIDIA models align with the older models

Windows 7 is "Vista fixed" which makes it Vista base, not XP based. XP is on it's way out. Microsoft will not bring it back in any form.

And you're prejugdice against Vista is unfounded. It's a very stable platform....though it does have a lot of resource eating whiz bang features that a lot of people don't like (including myself). Those can be turned off, though it's not intuitive how how to do that. Windows 7, from what I've read, will make that easier and also be a little more efficient that Vista........but it's not XP rebuilt. It's Vista rebuilt.

Vista is very stable......it's better than XP by a pretty long shot. It had problems when it was first released......but don't you remember when XP was first released? It was an absolute mess conpared to Windows 98 SE.

Um, no, it wasn't. Really it wasn't.

The 200M series adapters for laptops have nothing in common with their desktop counterparts other than the name.

They'll run SL very fast, but they're really warmed over 8800s.

Dell and Alienware are far from the best deals these days, just so you know. My two favorite laptop makers are ASUS and Malibal. If you want something off the shelf, ASUS tends to offer the most bang for the buck, by a wide margin. If you want to customize, Malibal's workmanship is great, their customer service is good, and their prices are some of the lowest I've ever seen. Check them out at malibal.com.



Don't be nervous. Vista x64 is hands down the best operating system I've ever used. It blows XP and all previous versions of Windows out of the water. It's incredibly stable, and lighting fast. I've got three machines with it here, and they all run SL (and everything else) very, very well.

That said, any newly installed Vista is always a bit of a pain for the first few weeks, while it's learning how you use your computer. Certain things will appear to be a little sluggish at first, and you'll get a lot of "Are you sure?" popups here and there. But once it's got your usage patterns figured out, it really flies. Most early reviewers never got to use it that long, which is one of the biggest reasons it got such a bad rap in the beginning. If you do start using it, don't make the same mistake they did. Be patient with it for the first couple weeks, and then it will really blow you away with just how good it actually is.

Also, keep in mind the 32-bit version is a different animal. Vista really needs more resources than 32-bit architecture can throw at it. It was built with 64-bit in mind. The only reason a 32-bit version exists at all is simply because most people's hardware wasn't yet 64-bit capable when Vista first came out. And that's the other chief reason why Vista got such bad reviews in the beginning. Most of the reviews were of the 32-bit version, so of course they were bad.

The user experience between the two versions is night and day. The 64-bit version really is fantastic. The 32-bit version is just barely functional.



I'm not sure where you heard that, but I can promise you you've been misinformed. Windows 7 is Vista with a few changes and additions. The old XP architecture is dead and gone. 7 is basically Vista 1.5.

In any case, I'm pretty sure any computer you buy now with Vista on it will come with a free upgrade to 7. So if it's 7 you want, you'll have it. There's no need to wait, if that's the only thing holding you back.




No problem. Glad it helped.

I thought it was Hated it....even thought of going back to ME!!! LOL. But it got pretty good once SP 2 came out.

No version of Windows 9x/Me was worth the CD it came on. I was a system admin and had to support users with NT3 and NT4 alongside 9x and as soon as we could get our games running on Windows NT 4.0 I got my whole family switched over from 9x and it was SO much better. Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows Microsoft ever shipped, XP was a bit bloated and spammy... basically Windows 2000 with a bunch of stuff bundled and an ugly new theme, but even so... compared to 9x? It's like comparing a mansion to a grass hut.

My most vivid memory back in the early days of XP was right after our IT department standardized on it, and insisted it ran great on machines with 128MB of RAM.

Ugh.

My vivid memory was that to get XP to run decently required a lot more computer than 95 did. The PC people in our IT department were really high on XP, and insisted it ran great with 128MB memory when we standardized on it.

Yeh, it did. Yu need a bigger plot for a mansion than a grass hut. It required more than Windows 2000 or NT4 as well. On the other hand, it was a real modern operating system. There's whole classes of ways Windows 9x could screw up that no version of NT did... and believe me, I saw them all.

And I still thought XP was crap

I got used to it......eventually.

I'm almost totally IT "dyslexic" in that I know only the very basics even after more years of using a computer than I like to remember. That's the thing - I use one but know almost nothing at all about the innards.

I've been logging into SL almost daily for several hours at a time for a year now with few problems ever. I'm using a Dell Inspiron 530 PC with Vista x 32, 3Gb of Ram, 2Ghertz Intel Core2 Duo, a Bus Clock of 200Mhertz and the, bit I'm really going to ask about, an Intel G33/G31 Express Chipset PCI graphics card. (Whatever all that means) I'm also still using the 1.22.11 viewer with FF3.

Now, I'm not sure what the value of all that is in IT useability terms but I've been thinking of upgrading my graphics card but purely because I do a lot of sailing and I can see right through the sea to the bottom. Everything else in SL seems to work perfectly and, in fact, after reading other people's problems here on the forum I think I'm very lucky and getting a pretty good deal all in all.

What I'm asking is, should I leave things alone or upgrade and go for a really good card? I've got slots for PCIe cards and I've been reading up about them but it all sounds a bit "double-Dutch" to me (with apologies to anyone from Holland). Is it worth it just to see the surface of the sea (which looks really great in other's photos) and will a new card actually cure the problem? If so, what would you recommend?

Many thanks in advance for all help which will be gratefully received.

You should be able to see the surface of the water with that graphics adapter. Under the Edit menu, open Preferences and go to Graphics. Check the box marked "Custom" and it'll show you a bunch of other options. Check the box marked "Basic Shaders" and see if that helps.

I think a better graphics adapter is worth it. It'll run SL faster, and make it look much better.

TY Milla.

Unfortunately everything under "Shaders" except for the "Bump Mapping" button is greyed out so I can't click on the buttons to make changes. The same goes for all the "Reflection Detail" buttons below that.

I followed advice from the forums, tutorials and and the Torley Linden "lectures" as far as possible for the other settings and although it's far from perfect it is very useable. I know it could be lots better though but I need to know that what for me will be a large expenditure, £50 - £80, for a new card will be worth it.

You say that a better card will also make SL run faster which would be a bonus indeed although reading other people's problems with rezzing I don't think I have too much to complain about except in "busy" areas such as mainland shopping precincts or jungly sims with loads of trees and undergrowth. Things tend to settle down eventually and I get to really enjoy my "second life". http://forums.secondlife.com/images/icons/icon7.gif