Extreme framerate and texture loading problems

so I just picked up SL to take a peek around and hang out with some friends, and I seem to be having....problems.

In a completely deserted starting area, with no graphics-intensive terrain to speak of, I'm getting an average of 2-3 frames per second, and simple textures are taking well over half an hour to load.

System specs:
OS: Windows XP(5.1)
Memory - 3326MB Ram
Processor: Intel Quadcore CPU Q9300 @2.50GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
Driver: nv4_dps.dll, version 6.14.0011.8208, Updated: 2/18/2009

now...correct me if I'm wrong, but if this thing can render out a couple million polygon mesh with full raytracing, light distortion and subsurface scattering in a minute and a half, it shouldn't be having these kinds of problems with SL. =p

The one curious point is that Spybot seems to be picking up on SLVoice.exe as a malicious program, and terminates it. I think that might have something to do with it. However, even after I tell the programs to ignore the file, the framerate and download problems persist.

Anyone happen to have some ideas?
Thanks for your time!

Dude, you're running the same system as me. Awesome.
Anywho, SLVoice only handles the voice chat, I believe.

Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. If I can run it beautifully at max settings with that system, you can too

(That's the only technical advice I know lol..sorry)

Not sure why it does that, perhaps you have some other malware/virus infection.

SLVoice and it's associated dll's can cause what you wrote. If one of them is missing the system slows down to 1...2 FPS. However this only happens if parts of the voice application are missing. If you remove it completely it should run fine.

As your spybot seems to have killed some please try to delete the rest and see if this makes any difference. These are:

SLVoice.exe
vivoxsdk.dll
alut.dll
ortp.dll

This isn't the first post I've seen indicating that SLvoice can trigger a false positive with Spybot. I've never seen it happen first hand, though.

If you don't want to use voice chat, then I'd say do what Boy suggested. Just get rid of it. But if you do want to use it, reinstall SL, and then tell Spybot to ignore each of the files on Boy's list.

If that doesn't solve the FPS problem, I'm not sure what to tell you. You've got a good system. It should be running SL quite well.

Well, updating my drivers seemed to fix the framerate issues. However, the textures are still taking abhorrently long times to upload.
I've deleted the four recommended files to no result.
I notice over the past day of use, that the textures which loaded yesterday are still crisp today, and the program is picking up loading textures where it left off. It occurs to me that this may be a feature, not a bug, but it seems odd to me that you'd have to sit idle in an area for hours before you can actually see everything with clarity.

This is because every new texture is downloaded in realtime, and loads as soon as it can. When in a densely textured place, this can take a long time. There's no other way to have SL be SL but to do it this way, it would be impossible to keep up with new content and create new installers to have all objects/textures available.

If your connection is slow, this could be part of it, or it could be SL just being mean, as it is occasionally.

How long is 'abhorrently long'?

One thing you have to keep in mind...

You are coming at this from the perspective of someone who understands 3D modeling, texturing, and all of those principles.

90% of the stuff created in SL is made by people who have absolutely no idea what a framerate is until theirs go down - and then they like to blame SL and the Lindens for making such a crappy game. lol

End of the day though - quite often a texture you are loading is 1024x1024 (because it looks better!) when a 128x128 would do the trick. 512x512 seems to be the "norm" for most textures, even though most of them could be half that and still get the job done. So, at the end of the day, you're definitely loading at least two or three times and often as much as 10 times the amount of texture (RAM) as is really needed.

That said, SL also has many priority issues, as well. It is just as likely to decide to render something that is 128 meters beyond three grey walls before it loads the textures on that first grey wall in front of you. It also doesn't prioritize particles very well and - well, they keep working on it and tweaking it - but they have a long way to go in that area. (There's no mipmap or any support in that area either).

So - it's a little bit of both - a pretty good, but imperfect texture loading and rendering engine that is complicated further by people who don't really consider (or even understand) how textures really work and why it's important to take care of it. (You'll see on a lot of builds where someone has a high rez texture - unused on any visible face of the prim left on the back or edge of a prim you will never even see - that never got deleted due to laziness, forgetfulness, or just ignorance of the fact that that is actually an issue to consider.

Glad ya got the framerate sorted. I do doubt you'll be able to do much about the texture loading - though there are some places in world that handle it pretty well. (I spent L$5K on a really cool custom build - only to have to retexture the entire thing a week later because all the textures on it were at 2048 resolution - I might as well have just built it from scratch lol)

At risk of incriminating myself, my new character got ported to the Furnation starting area, where they have upward of two or three dozen screencaps of free furry-oriented avatars and accessories on display. I've spent a collective hour sitting in the courtyard troubleshooting, and maybe a third of them have rendered with any clarity.
Then again, in the building nextdoor there are another three dozen images devoted to dresses and clothing, with more shops down the road. All of them look to be quite clear - at very least 1024x, in spite of only being about half as tall as the avatar is.
It may very well be that the system is loading so slowly because of the sheer number of display textures involved. I suppose time will tell, won't it? =)

Thank you all for your thoughts and help, I appreciate it!

TIP - you can "wave your mouse" over things that you want to see (the stuff closest to you) and it'll prioritize those - usually. Don't have to do anything but it does sense where your mouse is (and rests) and will do its best to bring those in next. Thus if there is a specific texture you are looking to see - you can kinda "nudge" the system into showing you what you want.

moving your pointer over what you want to see does upgrade its priority so it loads sooner... but you sound like your loading slower than normal... it might be something to do with your internet connection. make sure you have the bandwidth slider in SL prefs up some... and if your not on a super fast connection.. well downloads of textures can be really slow.