should I overclock?

Ok, I haven't exactly advertised this information, but I've been honest about it whenever anyone has asked me.

My system is only 500mhz (although it reports itself as being 498mhz). When I signed up for the beta, I honestly thought I'd have a new system (at least new mb and processor) by the time I actually got invited to participate. Then some 1st life stuff jumped up and slapped me on the face, and now I don't know when I'll be able to upgrade.

So I'm wondering -- would overclocking help? Specifically my narcolepsy and/or the packet loss issue? I'm a little nervous about doing it -- if my system gets fried I'll be in deep doggydoo, not knowing when I can replace it, but I'm thinking about it, and would appreciate any advice.

(And I'd *really* appreciate it if Santa would bring me a new board and processor <S>

I would voluntarily bow out of the beta until such time as my system met the posted minimum requirements, but I feel that I have something to offer SL, so I'm not going to say goodbye unless I'm asked to do so.

#!

about sticking around - Thats up to the Lindens But I say heck if you running at thatspeed thats vaulable info for em

About Overclocking - Id have to know more but when you say 500Mhz my first reaction is no it prolly wont help. Most systems that overclock well are the newer MB Bios's and CPU's , video cards etc. By the way are you sure its only 500Mhz? thats not a CPU speed I remeber them turning out ( but heck there have been a lot ) Overclocking is a very limited way of getting real performance - Its fun for the hobbiest to get 2 or 3 % more speed from a CPU or Video card - some times up to 10 or 15 but thats really quite rare, and the whole system doesnt get that much faster, just one component. To get real impressive results from Overclocking (like over 25%) youd spend more on cooling then you would on a new MB and cpu .

Shebang - Don't go, we need you to make (second) life complete.

Overclocking is rarely helpful. As others have noted, the processor speed is just part of the equation. Issues like type of memory, bus speed, and video card make a big difference.

If you find that Second Life runs acceptably on your machine, feel free to continue playing.

If you felt like spending a small amount of money to improve your in-game experience, we run pretty well on GeForce 4 MX cards, which can be had for about $70. I wouldn't recommend buying a fancier video card because the rest of your system would slow things down.

James

Haney: *sniffle* Thanks =) I've decided I will *not* leave of my own accord, because I'm having way too much fun despite the little problems.

Orrey: Thank you-- the info you provided is extremely helpful to me. I'm not going to overclock. I'm going to upgrade bits and pieces as soon as I can. And yes, I'm positive it's only 500 mhz -- it's an Athlon AMD-K7, but it reports to most applications as 498 mhz :/

James: Yes, SL does run "acceptably" -- the narcolepsy is a very minor annoyance (I'm sure it bothers other people much more than it does me). The packet loss issue in certain areas is tougher to deal with -- other than simply staying out of those particular areas. As long as I stay in my safe areas, I'm fine (albeit asleep =)


Thanks, guyz =)

#!

The other thing that will make Second Life perform better is to have 512 megs of RAM. We happily use what memory we can get.

James

Good point, James -- I don't have 512, only ~384 (can't remember; converted from 392688kb) -- but I do have my system set to a minimum and maximum of 2 gig cache.

So I played with the settings in SL tonight.

Started at 56k connection and 65m view, and worked my way up to DSL and 128m view. *No* packet loss problems, even in the welcome area -- and none that I noticed at the Trivia party at Jessica's! Weren't many folks in the welcome area any of the times I popped in, but there were quite a few at Jessica's... although checking my notes I see that I did actually crash there.

I did crash quite a few times, and I have notes on some of those, what I was doing, etc... the auto-reporter did send in a couple of reports.

But! NO Packet Loss Issues tonight! I was on for most of the 6 hours =)

#!

I don't think that all your issues are related to the speed of your computer though. I have an AMD 1600xp and GeForce3 TI video card and still experience significant lag and crash usually once a night. So I think that there is some significant tuning the Lindens have left.

Also, as said before I don't think that overclocking will solve your problem. Plus you shouldn't be overclocking unless you have replacement components. If you don't have money to do an upgrade I'll venture to say you won't have money to replace any hardware that may get fryed.

There's also an direct proportion of of overclocking and additional cooling. The more you overclock, the hotter the CPU gets, so you need more agressive cooling (water, big copper heatsink, more case fans, etc) to handle the heat, or you will end up killing the CPU.. Sure, there's a range where you can overclock and not have to do anything, but as
Timothy Fairchild said, unless you have replacement components, I wouldn't suggest risking it.

not going to overclock, that is. From what y'all have said, and what I've read since I first asked, it doesn't appear that I can safely gain enough additional oomph anyway.

And I know the Lindens know they have more tuning to do -- if they didn't feel that they did, SL wouldn't still be in beta =)

But there IS something to be said for "minimum requirements". My system just meets them for memory and video and bandwidth, and falls far short for processing speed. I consider myself lucky that I'm able to play at all.

I might be able to upgrade a couple of components around the end of January or so -- I'm going back to work part-time, and have been told to "shout if I need anything" by the boss. So maybe... but I won't overclock.

Tangent.... I've worked on/with lots of software and programmers (ok, I've worked *for*/with said programmers!), and quite a few of them have had an attitude of "beta testers? we don't need no steenkin' beta testers! that's what customers are for!". Those "quite a few" would have absolutely no hesitation formally releasing and charging for SL as it stands right now. I'm so glad Linden doesn't have that attitude. They know it's not quite ready for prime time.

I totally appreciate all the comments and advice to my query. I was seriously considering it, but y'all've most likely saved my humble little system from extinction =)

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Just thought I should post that the lag and ping issues as of yet arent entirely the users side.. I have a Pent 4 1.6 ghz , 512 meg of DDR ram, Gforce 4 TI 4200 128 meg video card, Cable connection, System running at 94% free prior to connection to SL .. and last night I experienced Ping in the area of 1500 to 2000 .. at one point my ping was 42000 (ouch!) Ping , to run nice should be below 200. So as you see My comp meets the standards ans still am having problems hehe..


wanted to add.. also that If I go to windows (while game is running) my system resources is now only at like 2% free.. so I do notice the game is sucking up all the resources.

Yup I have the same thing with SL sucking up my system resources. I have a beast of an Alienware Area51 (P4, 2.53GHz, 512MB RDRAM, Geforce4 Ti4600 w/128MB) and prior to SL I never used more than 3-4% no matter what all I was doing. With SL, 90+% is sucked up. I have found that if I start the proggies I want running in the background before I start up SL, I have better luck.

Could someone tell me how to interpret the stats like ping?

Thanks -
Kerstin

yah, SL eats system recources like I eat chinese take out. I dream of the day when I can afford to fit 4 gigs of memory into my motherboard, and watch as the program uses almost all of it. I think a devolper told me once that SL will take what it can get, and that makes me happy, because it means that there is a reason for me to have spent the money to build a fizzity fizast system besides makin MS word spellcheck like a pro.

as for ping, I'm gonna let one of our resident internet experts answer that, 'cause while I think I know the right answer - i'd rather not sound like a dumb know-it-all h4x0r if I'm wrong.

bbc

Ping as displayed in SL currently is a little different from pure ping in the command line sense. Ping is normally the time (in milliseconds) it takes the packets to travel from one machine to another (in this case, your PC to the SL grid at our Colo facility). Where our ping is different is that it includes frame rates in its calculation.

So, if you see a ping of around 200 msec reported in the Viewer, this actually breaks down something like:

Viewer FPS Delay (at 10 fps): 100 msec
Packet travel time to Colo: 50 msec
Simulator Agent FPS (20hz): 50 msec
------------
total: 200 msec

So, a 2000 msec ping means one of several things might be happening. 1) Packets are actually taking 2 seconds to travel to the colo (extremely unlikely, but possible -- you should also see the packet loss meter spiking red if this happens), 2) the simulator is getting slammed (perhaps someone's physics experiment has gone horribly wrong), or 3) the viewer frame rate has dropped to 0.5 fps or less (possible if swapping or if another process is grabbing the CPU).

The best approaches to decent frame rates are to not run any other applications with SL, to put as much RAM as you can afford into the box, then get a faster CPU, and then add a better graphics card. Expect the SL viewer to grab every last bit of your CPU because that is what we designed it to do !

Some general notes on setup: Shebang did exactly the correct sequence in playing around with draw distance and connection speed. Bringing in draw distance will have the most immediate impact on overall viewer performance. On older (GeForce 2 class) graphics cards, you will also see higher performance by running at lower resolutions.

Another note: if you are running Win XP, don't adjust the Disk Cache Size to greater than 200MB because Win XP decides to "help" with "performance" by loading the whole cache into RAM at system start (hence the big burp when you first connect in XP).

Hope this helps a bit!

Happy New Year's!
Cory