Second Life performance (or the lack thereof)

On my laptop, SL is totally unplayable. It is a 1.8GHz celeron, GeForce4GO, 256MB Ram. SL will consume all memory and use up an additional 250MB or so of swapfile. cpu varies from 10% to 95%. It seems to spend most of the time swapping to/from swapfile. Slow and very laggy.

On my desktop, it's better but still very very slow and laggy. 17.GHz P4, 384 MB Ram, GeForce2.

What kind of performance do others get? What are your system specs? On my laptop it's unplayable, and on my desktop it is still very slow and laggy.

Sl runs ok on my computer, and i'm only using Windows 98, 1.3g amd athalon, 256...and geforce 2

Memory KILLED me back when I had 256MB ram. Laptop hard drive transfer speeds aren't the fastest, so paging makes for BIG problems.

I personally recommend 512MB or more for anyone playing, and tell SL you have half as much memory as you really do to account for memory leaks.

I agree - swapfile is like 250MB and constantly thrashes. I'll try the current version on my desktop when they open up the worlds this afternoon, and watch swapfile size.

FWIW, video on my laptop is very nice. It's just a GeForce4GO, but it's still nice. Killer video, crappy sound....

This game is obscene (relative to other games) on two counts: bandwidth and memory.

Lacking in either will hurt your experience more than a lack of anything else.

I'm lacking in bandwidth too. Sometimes it just sits there and maxes out my bandwidth while nothing moves and nothing happens (220K/220K DSL).

Yeah... me, I shouldn't be lacking in bandwidth, but for some reason the T3 line at the university I'm at is only giving me aroun 50 KBPS, which makes things rather unplayable. Guess I'll have to add this to the growing list of games that can't be played on the net through the university here. Oh well... I tried...

That might be your problem... if you don't spend like 6000 to 7000 $$ canadian... on a labtop.. you are gonna get screwed. It's because they advertise as a 1.8 with a crazy vid card and ram... we... what ties every all down is SHIT, the MB. They go EL CHEAPO on the MB. so for the easiest example......

VID card => 6 inch diameter pipe
CPU => 6 inch diameter pipe
RAM => 6 inch diameter pipe
MB => 1 inch diameter pipe
*little edit as for the transfer data (swap) blam the HD... but the mobo does not help

so what happens when x3 6 inch pipes full of "information" come up to a 1 inch pipe... well waiting and that = lag.

*** SIDE NOTE That's the problem with upgrading to a HUGE CPU and a shitty vid card... everything is waiting ont he vid card... so this is just a side note.. if you ever upgrade your comp.. change these 4 things at ONCE!
*** END OF SIDE NOTE

I have a 1.2 gig, 768 megs O ram, and 64 meg GF2 and I can play SL pretty well. the only diffrence between your laptop and my comp is that my MB is a 18inch pipe. (rough example... but I think you get it)

The biggest difference is you have 768 MB ram. The crappy performance on my laptop is because I have 256MB and it spends all of it's time thrashing the swapfile. If I doubled the memory on my laptop, it would probably play SL better - not great, because a 220k/220k DSL connection isn't enough bandwidth.

A 1.8GHz celery on a crappy motherboard is still more then enough horsepower to play SL just fine. A GeForce 4 is likewise more then enough.

I have 2 serious bottlenecks - physical memory and bandwidth. No, there is a third serious problem - SL is not optimized for slower internet connections, or systems with lesser amounts of memory.

I have a 1ghz with 256 ram and a GF 2 32 meg in my house that plays SL in and OK manner... My connection is 150k/22k D\U

Hehehehehehehehe

1st: Celeron has less on chip chache which severely effects performance, You will get better performance from a 1.4ghz P3.

2nd: That "Geforce4Go" in your laptop is not a geforce 4. Unless your laptop is very new, very expensive (and I'm guess its not cuz of the celeron) and you have a Geforce4go 4200 instead of a 440 or 420. What you have is a slightly supped up GeForce2 MX - which is worse than a standard GeForce 2. How much video memory? I'm assuming 32.

3rd: 220k DSL is also going to cause a big performance hit in this game, seeing as everything is streamed. It is my understanding that they are still working on streamlining what data is sent, so this should improve. I mean EQ after 3 years of release made a couple changes that cut lag in half, so changes in that area are likely.

4th: Yes, increasing your memory will help a lot. A faster HD will also help a lot, I upgraded from my 4200 RPM 2mb cache HD toa 5400rpm 8mb cache and the performance difference was very noticable.

A Celery 1.8 GHz can't hold a candle to a P41.8GHz, but it's still plenty of horsepower to run Second Live.

A Geforce4Go is basically a souped up GeForce4MX - which really has no right to be called a GeForce4 at all.

So I got curious and ran the Q3 ocau_slayer benchmark. Not surprisingly, my Desktop ran almost twice as fast as my laptop. That is really really sad!

I hope that Linden plans on working on the bandwidth/memory issue. Otherwise, they will blow the majority of prospective buyers right out of the ballgame.

hahahahahahahahaha

Sorry its just the second part of that which gets me. I mean, if your having problems with speed/performance than the celery obviously isn't "plenty of horsepower". Maybe you think it should be, but thats a different issue.

And a GeForce4go is not a GeForce4 MX moded. Its a modified Geforce2MX. They took the Geforce2MX and added some laptop features (power control and TV out) to make the Geforce2Go. The GeForce4Go is a overclocked GeForce2Go with added anti-aliasing features, which still slow the GPU down too much to make worth while unless you are running 640*480 on a TV screen. Essentially: The 4Go is built based off the 2Go processor core which was built of the 2mx core. The 4mx core was also built off the 2mx but on a different design path which emphasized performance more than laptop features. A 4Go will get smoked by a GeForce2.

As for the memory reqs blowing people out of the game:
1) Memory is cheap. I can get 512mb RAM for $120. Anyone with 256 already can upgrade for $60.

2) EQ, the most popular MMOG currently, has a minimum req of 256 but you can't turn on all the character models with less than 512. And they claim over 420,000 active accouns. So a 512 min req will not hurt them, if that is what they need to go with.

As for bandwith, yeah its a bit of an issue, but I think SL can be a game that people get bandwith for.

I have a Sony 1.8 ghz P4 desktop with 512 mb of RAM, a geForce4 TI 4600 on cable. It's still slow. I have never seen better than 20 fps... ever.
Last night there were lots of hiccuping spots and one invisible avatar. You can say that performance isn't a problem, but you can also say that the sky is green. It really doesn't matter what you're running. There is just too much crap out there.

>>Sorry its just the second part of that which gets me. I mean, if your having problems with speed/performance than the celery obviously isn't "plenty of horsepower".<<

What makes this obvious? Cpu is not the only thing that can cause performance problems. In my case, I've stated repeatedly that with only 256MB of ram, SL uses 250MB or more swapfile and churns the hard drive constantly. This indicates that the problem is quite likely not enough memory, and the performance problem is caused by excessive swapfile access. It has very little to do with cpu speed.

<<I have a Sony 1.8 ghz P4 desktop with 512 mb of RAM, a geForce4 TI 4600>>

I believe the key issue here is memory. You have 512MB memory. I bet that SL uses a minimal amount of swapfile on your machine?

>>What you have is a slightly supped up GeForce2 MX>>

I think you are mistaking this for the GeForce2Go. The GeForce4Go is the NV17M. It is built on the NV17 core that is found in the GeForce4 MX product line. It is built on a .15 micron process. It supports LMA II, which is a (big) feature of the GeForce4 product line. It also has VSA and VPE. It doesn't include the nfiniteFX-engine, but it does include full AccuView Antialiasing. There is nothing GeForce2MX about this puppy - it's a beast of it's own - one step above the GeForce4MX and one step below the GeForce4.

I run a P4 2.53ghz with XP. I have always had fair performance with some jerky flying & lag in busy sims. Since I started playing in Jan I have made two upgrades to my computer that have helped a great deal.

First, I had 512ram and I added another 512. That alone made a big difference. This upgrade for me has made the game boot faster and fixed the "out of memory" problem when idle for long periods.

The other is, I had a GeForce 4 MX 64mb video card. Don't be fooled by the first part alone "GeForce4". I swapped it for another GeForce4, the Ti4600/128mb and I now see things in game that I didnt see before (the crackles in the ground for one) and it for the most park fixed the jerky flying issue. The MX was sufficient but WOW the Ti4600 is like turning a plain ole bowl of ice cream into a banana split with all the fixin's.

I know that upgrading may not be possible for a lot of people and Im sure the Lindens know that not everyone is going to have a high end machine so I'd say be patient if you can. The game is improving all the time. The Lindens do listen and are responsive. We just need to give them all the data we can so they have something to work with.

I hope so
I don't hear the disk swapping when I travel long distances or teleport. It never complained about memory or anything. It's just kind of choppy visually. (Never had a problem with the sound.) I just want it faster.

I do know the Lindens read these threads. Being a software developer myself, I can appreciate the challenges they must be facing

At this point I believe that I have two bottlenecks: memory and bandwidth. I'm not sure how much each contributes to the overall problem. I do believe that if you don't have enough memory then it probably doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have. Your swapfile will churn and churn and churn. I'm going to try to double the memory in my laptop, and see what kind of difference that makes. I suspect that at that point I will then run into bandwidth issues. SL is still laggy on my desktop with 384MB ram, but nowhere near as bad. It's totally unplayable on my laptop. It's playable but irritating on the desktop. I need more memory and bandwidth <sigh>....

Now if they can just fix that damn flying off of the end of the world bug Why does it always happen at 10:05 PM, when I can't reconnect to the world? LOL - lucky me

hmmph, all you youngens complainin' bout per-for-mance issues. why, I remeber back before we had these fancy version numbers and attachment points. Back then, people had no problem getting by on 5 frames per second, now-a-days, people just sem obsessed with speed. pfft, reckon before release them there lindens will have this world chuggin along like a deisel locomotive.

B "ol' dude" BC

fps? What do you mean fps? What is fps?

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front
door. There is a small mailbox here.

>go north
North of House
You are facing the north side of a white house. There is no door here, and all
the windows are boarded up. To the north a narrow path winds through the trees.

I have no idea what this new fangled fps stuff is.....

I confess, I'm only an old-timer in terms of SecondLife.

if ((costoflaptop < 5000) && (whatAMAstated == FALSE))
{
laptop = suck for 3d gaming;
}


if (costoflaptop > 5000)&&(whatAMAstated == TRUE)
{
laptop != suck for 3d gaming;
}

Susan, I just don't see why you are telling us that we are wrong, when you are being slowed down by the computer you are playing on. I mean, if you are having a problem and we tell you 99% what might be going wrong, and then you tell us we are full of it... well don't ask next time.

Nexus, I'm not quite sure what planet you are on. Or maybe we just don't speak the same language? Where am I telling you that you are full of it? I do, however, disagree with you, but I don't recall coming right out and telling you that you are full of it. Don't be so quick to get your feathers ruffled. It's only a game, fer cryin' out loud!

As I read back through these threads, I don't see where I'm *asking* anyone what the problems is. I'm *telling* you what the problem is. I'll tell you again. The problem on this machine is:

1) Not enough memory
2) Slow hard drive

mobo/cpu/vid are secondary, and are not very likely to cause significant performance issues.

I can go on and on, but why bother?

OK, you are full of it. Do you feel better now?