Second Life Forums Archive - Better graphics card, worse framerates.

Felix Oxide

Registered User

Join date: 6 Oct 2006

Posts: 655

09-12-2008 16:15

I just bought a new computer and while the graphics card is much better with all my games, it's performance is actually worse with SL now than my old one.

Here are my specs as SL reports them:

CPU: Intel Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon (0.25 micron process) with external L2 cache (2260 MHz) *Sl is reporting my processor wrong, it is actually an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz

Memory: 4093 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 9600M GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2
Second Life 1.20.15 (92456) Jul 18 2008 10:58:42 (Second Life Release)

My older computer had a GeForce 7600Go in it and it got better framerates in SL but was terrible with other games. Now I have the complete opposite happening.

What happens is for some reason avatars cut my framerate in half. I am not talking many, just one will cut my framerate in half and if i move my camera it gets severly choppy. It is fine if I am alone though. Any ideas what is up with this?

Osgeld Barmy

Registered User

Join date: 22 Mar 2005

Posts: 3,336

09-12-2008 17:45

did you change your display settings any

SuezanneC Baskerville

Forums Rock!

Join date: 22 Dec 2003

Posts: 14,229

09-12-2008 18:26

What kind of computer is it? Brand name and model number, that is.

What version video driver is it?

What are you graphics settings in SL? What is your draw distance?

Have you updated the drivers on your new computer?

_____________________

-

So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them.

I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

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http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03.

Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard,
Robin, and Ryan

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Beezle Warburton

=o.O=

Join date: 10 Nov 2006

Posts: 1,169

09-12-2008 18:49

8400 is a slower card that a 7600.

nVidia - first number is series, other numbers are grade, so you have a 400 grade card in the 8 series vs a 600 grade card in the 7 series.

_____________________

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
-- William Shakespeare

Warburton's Whimsies:
In SL
Apez.biz

Felix Oxide

Registered User

Join date: 6 Oct 2006

Posts: 655

09-12-2008 19:51

Yes even with all my settings on low I have the same issue. My old 7600Go was able to run SL between mid and high with some tweaks to the graphics settings in SL.

-The computer is a HP Pavilion dv7-1020us.

-Driver is ForceWare 175.53, which currently is the latest available from HP for this model notebook.

-even with all the settings in SL turned down I get the same terrible choppyness and low framerate anytime my camera is panned over other avatars.

-all drivers seem to be current according to what is showing as available at the HP website.

My OS is Vista Home Premium 64bit. I have tried running SL as an administrator with the fancy window options turned off. Also tried in compatibility mode for XP sp2. Nothing releives the issue with being able to render avatars without a significant drop in framerate.

SuezanneC Baskerville

Forums Rock!

Join date: 22 Dec 2003

Posts: 14,229

09-12-2008 21:36

You could try varying the Avatar Rendering options in Preferences , Graphics, and Mesh Detail, Avatars.

Might try the Enable OpenGl Vertex Buffer objects in Hardware Options.

This is just grasping at straws.

You might check to see in the nVidia site has other drivers to try. I wasn't able to find your exact model's drivers on the nVidia site.

I do see that nVidia has a ForceWare 177.79 at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_177.79.html but to find that I had to ignore the M at the end of 9600m. I don't know if that is the proper latest driver for your system or not but I'd suggest searching nVidia.com your self.

I did notice that the nVidia page http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9600m_gt.html happens to mention SL as something greatly improved by the 9600m.

Is this one of the systems that has a discrete video card along with an onboard GPU?

_____________________

-

So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them.

I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

-

http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03.

Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard,
Robin, and Ryan

-

Felix Oxide

Registered User

Join date: 6 Oct 2006

Posts: 655

09-12-2008 21:42

Unfortunatly Nvidia does not provide drivers for laptop versions of their cards. They make you go to the manufacturer of the laptop for any updated drivers. As far as I know this system does not have discrete graphics. It is the Nvidia card with 512mb of dedicated memory.

I guess my next stop will be HP support, however I doubt they will care if my laptop can play SL or not LOL.

SuezanneC Baskerville

Forums Rock!

Join date: 22 Dec 2003

Posts: 14,229

09-12-2008 22:37

Google searching for your laptop model and "second life", or your 9600m and "second life", and such patterns, might yield something. Sometimes there will be an owner of a similar model who is also an SL user who has asked on a forum somewhere and gotten a useful answer.

If HP has a forum for such discussions I'd certainly post the question there.

There is always a chance that a different version of SL viewer might perform differently, a previous main viewer, a release candidate, or a third party viewer such as the Nicholaz viewer.

Currrent LL versions of SL are at secondlife.com/downloads

Googling

"second life" wiki old versions

Will get you to the old LL versions (only the latest few are likely to work without fiddling).

Googling

"second life" wiki alternate viewers

will get you to the wiki page with third party viewers.

I looked in Jira .secondlfie.com and didn't see anything pertinent, but maybe you will do better than I did.

Oh yeah, if HP has any older drivers that support your graphics system you might try that.

Also, I do wonder about SL misidentifying your processor, why that is and what if any effects that might have on SL behavior.

There are other drivers that might need updating, bios and such things as that.

_____________________

-

So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them.

I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to

http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne

-

http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03.

Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard,
Robin, and Ryan

-

Roan Truss

Registered User

Join date: 10 Feb 2006

Posts: 6

09-12-2008 22:51

Ok three things.
1: Make sure your power options are set to high performance in the control panel.
2: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ these guys mod the newest drivers so they will install on any laptop, I have never had an issue on my laptop.
3: Make sure that inside the settings of the video card you do not have it set to slow down the video card when your on low power. I noticed one day mine had clicked its self on and I got crap FPS. When I set the power back to full every thing ran great.

Oh also My desktop system is a E8400 and Sl thinks its a 3.6 Ghz P3 and my laptop is a core 2 duo centrino and it thinks the same thing. I do not think Sl knows how to ID some of the new intel processors.

Suzy Lannock

Registered User

Join date: 11 Sep 2008

Posts: 1

09-13-2008 02:33

On this subject..........

I'm not sure just how much difference VERY high hardware has on SL framerates.

I have a Core2Duo CPU 2.4Ghz and a Nvidea 8800GTS graphics card.

I overclocked my CPU from 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz and it made zero difference to my SL framerate.

I also reduced the screen res from 1600x1200 to just 800x600 and again it made zero difference.

Both of these changes SHOULD have made a dramatic change to my SL framerate speed.

So, I can only assume that once you get to a certain point the SL viewer is running as fast as it can do.

I still don't quite understand this but those were the results I had. Perhaps someone else can explain it more?

Felix Oxide

Registered User

Join date: 6 Oct 2006

Posts: 655

09-13-2008 13:33

Roan,

My power options are set to high performance. I did notice that there is no option to adjust the power options in the Nvidia control panel. HP must have removed them. Now that I think about it, I have never heard my card's fan spin up, so I bet it is using some sort of stepping for the GPU. I will have to contact HP about this and hopefully they will help me get the ability to override it. I am betting this is the issue. Thanks.

Better graphics card, worse framerates.
Felix Oxide Registered User Join date: 6 Oct 2006 Posts: 655	09-12-2008 16:15 I just bought a new computer and while the graphics card is much better with all my games, it's performance is actually worse with SL now than my old one. Here are my specs as SL reports them: CPU: Intel Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon (0.25 micron process) with external L2 cache (2260 MHz) *Sl is reporting my processor wrong, it is actually an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz Memory: 4093 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce 9600M GT/PCI/SSE2 OpenGL Version: 2.1.2 Second Life 1.20.15 (92456) Jul 18 2008 10:58:42 (Second Life Release) My older computer had a GeForce 7600Go in it and it got better framerates in SL but was terrible with other games. Now I have the complete opposite happening. What happens is for some reason avatars cut my framerate in half. I am not talking many, just one will cut my framerate in half and if i move my camera it gets severly choppy. It is fine if I am alone though. Any ideas what is up with this?
Osgeld Barmy Registered User Join date: 22 Mar 2005 Posts: 3,336	09-12-2008 17:45 did you change your display settings any
SuezanneC Baskerville Forums Rock! Join date: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 14,229	09-12-2008 18:26 What kind of computer is it? Brand name and model number, that is. What version video driver is it? What are you graphics settings in SL? What is your draw distance? Have you updated the drivers on your new computer? _____________________ - So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them. I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne - http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03. Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard, Robin, and Ryan -
Beezle Warburton =o.O= Join date: 10 Nov 2006 Posts: 1,169	09-12-2008 18:49 8400 is a slower card that a 7600. nVidia - first number is series, other numbers are grade, so you have a 400 grade card in the 8 series vs a 600 grade card in the 7 series. _____________________ Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. -- William Shakespeare Warburton's Whimsies: In SL Apez.biz
Felix Oxide Registered User Join date: 6 Oct 2006 Posts: 655	09-12-2008 19:51 Yes even with all my settings on low I have the same issue. My old 7600Go was able to run SL between mid and high with some tweaks to the graphics settings in SL. -The computer is a HP Pavilion dv7-1020us. -Driver is ForceWare 175.53, which currently is the latest available from HP for this model notebook. -even with all the settings in SL turned down I get the same terrible choppyness and low framerate anytime my camera is panned over other avatars. -all drivers seem to be current according to what is showing as available at the HP website. My OS is Vista Home Premium 64bit. I have tried running SL as an administrator with the fancy window options turned off. Also tried in compatibility mode for XP sp2. Nothing releives the issue with being able to render avatars without a significant drop in framerate.
SuezanneC Baskerville Forums Rock! Join date: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 14,229	09-12-2008 21:36 You could try varying the Avatar Rendering options in Preferences , Graphics, and Mesh Detail, Avatars. Might try the Enable OpenGl Vertex Buffer objects in Hardware Options. This is just grasping at straws. You might check to see in the nVidia site has other drivers to try. I wasn't able to find your exact model's drivers on the nVidia site. I do see that nVidia has a ForceWare 177.79 at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_177.79.html but to find that I had to ignore the M at the end of 9600m. I don't know if that is the proper latest driver for your system or not but I'd suggest searching nVidia.com your self. I did notice that the nVidia page http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9600m_gt.html happens to mention SL as something greatly improved by the 9600m. Is this one of the systems that has a discrete video card along with an onboard GPU? _____________________ - So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them. I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne - http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03. Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard, Robin, and Ryan -
Felix Oxide Registered User Join date: 6 Oct 2006 Posts: 655	09-12-2008 21:42 Unfortunatly Nvidia does not provide drivers for laptop versions of their cards. They make you go to the manufacturer of the laptop for any updated drivers. As far as I know this system does not have discrete graphics. It is the Nvidia card with 512mb of dedicated memory. I guess my next stop will be HP support, however I doubt they will care if my laptop can play SL or not LOL.
SuezanneC Baskerville Forums Rock! Join date: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 14,229	09-12-2008 22:37 Google searching for your laptop model and "second life", or your 9600m and "second life", and such patterns, might yield something. Sometimes there will be an owner of a similar model who is also an SL user who has asked on a forum somewhere and gotten a useful answer. If HP has a forum for such discussions I'd certainly post the question there. There is always a chance that a different version of SL viewer might perform differently, a previous main viewer, a release candidate, or a third party viewer such as the Nicholaz viewer. Currrent LL versions of SL are at secondlife.com/downloads Googling "second life" wiki old versions Will get you to the old LL versions (only the latest few are likely to work without fiddling). Googling "second life" wiki alternate viewers will get you to the wiki page with third party viewers. I looked in Jira .secondlfie.com and didn't see anything pertinent, but maybe you will do better than I did. Oh yeah, if HP has any older drivers that support your graphics system you might try that. Also, I do wonder about SL misidentifying your processor, why that is and what if any effects that might have on SL behavior. There are other drivers that might need updating, bios and such things as that. _____________________ - So long to these forums, the vBulletin forums that used to be at forums.secondlife.com. I will miss them. I can be found on the web by searching for "SuezanneC Baskerville", or go to http://www.google.com/profiles/suezanne - http://lindenlab.tribe.net/ created on 11/19/03. Members: Ben, Catherine, Colin, Cory, Dan, Doug, Jim, Philip, Phoenix, Richard, Robin, and Ryan -
Roan Truss Registered User Join date: 10 Feb 2006 Posts: 6	09-12-2008 22:51 Ok three things. 1: Make sure your power options are set to high performance in the control panel. 2: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ these guys mod the newest drivers so they will install on any laptop, I have never had an issue on my laptop. 3: Make sure that inside the settings of the video card you do not have it set to slow down the video card when your on low power. I noticed one day mine had clicked its self on and I got crap FPS. When I set the power back to full every thing ran great. Oh also My desktop system is a E8400 and Sl thinks its a 3.6 Ghz P3 and my laptop is a core 2 duo centrino and it thinks the same thing. I do not think Sl knows how to ID some of the new intel processors.
Suzy Lannock Registered User Join date: 11 Sep 2008 Posts: 1	09-13-2008 02:33 On this subject.......... I'm not sure just how much difference VERY high hardware has on SL framerates. I have a Core2Duo CPU 2.4Ghz and a Nvidea 8800GTS graphics card. I overclocked my CPU from 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz and it made zero difference to my SL framerate. I also reduced the screen res from 1600x1200 to just 800x600 and again it made zero difference. Both of these changes SHOULD have made a dramatic change to my SL framerate speed. So, I can only assume that once you get to a certain point the SL viewer is running as fast as it can do. I still don't quite understand this but those were the results I had. Perhaps someone else can explain it more?
Felix Oxide Registered User Join date: 6 Oct 2006 Posts: 655	09-13-2008 13:33 Roan, My power options are set to high performance. I did notice that there is no option to adjust the power options in the Nvidia control panel. HP must have removed them. Now that I think about it, I have never heard my card's fan spin up, so I bet it is using some sort of stepping for the GPU. I will have to contact HP about this and hopefully they will help me get the ability to override it. I am betting this is the issue. Thanks.

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Better graphics card, worse framerates.