I want my AGP back!

Now that AGP has been disabled for everyone, I have to suffer lower quality.

My AGP was working just FINE on my 17" Powerbook with ATI card.

What's so difficult about giving people the option of having AGP on? If you want to disable it, make it off by default with a warning to Mac users.

What are you talking about? I still have AGP graphics.

AGP was disabled on Macs with ATI cards.

Is this why my avatar never rezzes completely and so many things suddenly look fuzzy?

So on Macintosh, ATI AGP cards operate in PCI mode now? Can you point me to the readme or FAQ that describes this?

1.4.4 release notes

I don't think that's quite it. If the SL client detects an ATI card it automatically disables AGP acceleration. I don't think there is a "PCI mode"

The frustration with this is that some of us were able to get AGP acceleration to work in full screen mode and now we don't have a choice.

Please bring back the AGP option for ATI cards! I'm averaging 5-6 fps on my brand new 15" Powerbook. I got that much on my old G4 iMac that didn't even meet all of the minimum requirements.

My Powermac G5 with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro runs the game at about 13-15 FPS with AGP turned off. I'd still like my AGP, though. It would make the framerates way better.

Yeah, it should at least be an option. Off by default's fine, and if the detection mechanism changed the Preferences UI to indicate indicated that toggling it on could cause all kinds of stupid things to happen, it'd allow people to conciously make the choice.

1.4.4 really screwed a lot of things up, didn't it?

Still want my AGP back.

We should get a discount, being still technically Beta users ... who ever heard of paying to beta test!? AGP AGP AGP AGP AGP

Yeah! Or a free t-shirt, or land, or 3 months paid membership! Give us something, or give us AGP (fix it please)!

Oh look another update, and my AGP is still disabled.

Make.

It.

Optional.

Have it off by default, but give me the CHOICE to turn it on.

I upgraded my GeForce 32 MB to an ATI Radeon 9000 128 MB, expecting to see a huge gain in speed - only to find that SL runs slower because AGP is disabled.
Please bring back AGP! My frame rates are poor! 6-7 fps on a good night.

Huh. My dual 2.0 ghz Powermac G5, with a Radeon 9600 pro OEM edition with 64 MB VRAM pulls about 15-18 FPS average. You have a bigger VRAM card than me, it should run faster. Any other system specs?

/me covets Goshua's rig!

Has anyone noticed that the display settings sometimes reset ? I had my video memory reset to 32 MB for no apparent reason. I had been running really sluggish and didn't know what was wrong, took a trip to the prefs to drop my draw distance and I noticed it. Mac Beta really needs to get fixed I'm thinking about using my bro's PC (i actually saw the cool water ripple effect on his machine!) for a while, but he has some nasty virus right now, LOL. Guess it doesn't suck to be a Mac user, eh?!

Goshua, can you see the ripple effect in SL ? I've wondered if it works at all on our machines.

You have a 9600, while Ech's system only has a 9000. Regardless of texture memory, your card has a much, much faster GPU. That's not even really important, as SL is CPU-bound, even on the Mac. If Ech upgraded from a 32MB card, his/her system is likely of comparable age, so probably a single-CPU G4, maybe 1Ghz or so. Your computer just kicks its ass really, really badly.

Yeah, ,my setup isn't nearly as fast as Goshua's.

1.4 GHz G4 w/ 2 MB L3
768 MB RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 128 MB
2x Display
Cable internet (~3.0 MB/s)

It's an older computer, but hey - I played SL on my roomie's computer, an HP laptop with an Athlon at 1.5 Ghz, and it was way, way faster. Plus, with my old grahpics card, I could use AGP, and SL was much faster with AGP acceleration. So, let's hope the folks at SL update the software as soon as Apple resolves whatever issue is going on.

P.s. - i'm a "her"

Actually it would be nice if they would update the software for those of us who weren't having problems in the first place!

"I'm sorry sir, we're going to have to limit your car's speed to 30mph because the guy down the street kept breaking down."

Okay, first I'd like to say LL in NO WAY condones what I'm about to tell you guys. I figured this out on my own. LL, don't sue me

Legal mumbo jumbo outta the way ... I figured out how to enable AGP for ATI on a Mac. Only those who know for sure their AGP was working should do this.

Warning, it requires a bit of digging in the application package itself, so if you screw up just download a new copy of the viewer.

Locate the Second Life application and Ctrl-click it to get the contextual menu. Choose Show Package Contents. All Mac OS X programs are really just fancy folders the system shows as applications. Dig down to this file: Contents > Resources > featuretable_mac.txt

Open this file with a text editor. Make sure it stays in plain text format or you could seriously hose your system! At the very bottom of the file you'll see this:

//
// Disable AGP completely on Macs, since 10.3.4 totally $!@#='s it up.
//
list ATI
RenderAGP   0   0

Change those 0 0's to 1 1's and you're good to go Save the file, close the scary application contents package and fire up Second Life. Click Preferences and lo and behold the check box ain't gray no mo'!

I'm in nooooo way responsible for what you do with this info. If your system blows up no whining to me.

I accept vehicles and scripts as tribute

If this works you can come to my shop and have a free item of your choice!

Now I gotta wait until I get off work.

Taun you're a genius! Thank you. My brand new PowerBook now gets up to 12 fps.

Note: This only works in fullscreen mode. I crash just as before in window mode.

Also, I read that the new G5s should be shipping next week and they may have 10.3.5 on them to go with their ATI RADEON 9600 XT video cards. Usually when Apple does this they realease the new system for everyone else within a week or so. I bring this up because Robin Linden said, "It's our understanding that the bug fixes are in 10.3.5 and we're just waiting for the release."

Aww shucks, twern't nothin' Just glad I could help !!! Just be careful with this and if you get the "hey wanna send a bug report to LL about this" box DON'T SEND IT! LOL.

The hack is persistant so if you find you crash too much and want to reverse it just change the 1 1's back to 0 0's and save the file. This will re-permanently disable AGP on your machine. Use the hack with care!

I gotta explore those package contents more often! Great work Taun!