Low perfomance regardless of graphic settups

Hi.
My spec is.
Nvidia 8500GT (I know lam3)
GF drivers 190.62
amd dual core 64x2 4000
2 Giga Ram

And I running Sl at 20-10 fps FPS
With:
water reflection-off
weather shaders-off
Aniso and AA -off
VBO -on

visibility distance until bellow 240 doesn't make a difference in fps.
Bump mapping, shaders and resolution 800x600 or 1280x1024 doesn't affect fps either

I thought that my graphic card is to blame but for some reason setting graphics all to low doesn't affect my fps at all.
I searched forum and read that my dual core processor can give me this issues and setting affinity to one core can help but forcing SL to work on one core trough nhancer or task manager or turning multithreading off didnt help either.
Amd dual core optimizer is installed.

Any ideas what should I check else?

Set your draw distance to 128 meters or less. Higher than that will choke your graphics adapter.

Activate the Advanced in SL menu by pressing CTRL-ALT-D, it'll appear next to the Help menu at the top of that screen. Under Advanced, go to Rendering, and there check "Run Multiple Threads". That should help a little.

Drawing distance setted to 64m without gain a single fps.
Run multiple threads gives me something about 3 fps.

One thing makes me wonder my graphic card is pretty weak but in that particular case its not to blame because even lowest settings with resolution 800x600 didn't give me a single fps.
Which mean the problem lies somewhere else the only thing that comes to my mind is processor.
So is my processor is too weak or it is because game doesnt support dual core?
Or my spec is too weak in overall?
And I am not talking about official system requirements because according to official system requirements i can play even crisis on medium

Think your processor is fine for SL. Try resetting your modem and/or router......that helps with weird connection problems sometimes. Another thing to try is using my driver for my 9800GTX+.....your card is listed as one the driver supports.

I know it's an old driver, but I know it works.......and the newest driver is not always the best to use (though they usually are.........just not in all cases for every computer setup).

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_x64_185.85_whql.html

I checked and the driver is also good for Win 7 32 bit.......you didn't specify so I searched for both OS's.

Well my case its not a matter of connection problems.
Even Lag monitoring shows that it is not connection or server.
About drivers nvidia release drivers in large packs like 100 mb in which case drivers suit for wide range of GF cards or in small packs like 20 mb but for particular card.
Unfortunatelly I dont like drivers from 18x series because of very bad graphic quality, antialiasing problem quite bug in some games and lack of compatibility with nhancer.
I installed 169.21 I tried every drivers nvidia released and this was always the best but this time didn't help in SL.

Still puzzled.

The CPU is not the problem, SL works fine with multiple cores.

Do you have any other CPU hungry programs running in the background?

Nope I don't have anything cpu hungry running in the background.
If there was something like this I am pretty sure it would have effect also in others more resource demanding games.
The thing that is puzle me is.
I can have everything maxed out including the resolution 1280x1024 except draw distance, water reflection, simple shaders and still get 20 fps but when i reduce everything to minimum and resolution to 800x600 I can get 16 fps its looks like fps have few to do with graphic settings and graphic adapter :/

Try going to 4000 meters high and check your FPS. If it jumps to 45 or more then I'd say it's just where you are on the grid that is causing your "problem". The problem is in quotes because 20 FPS in SL is probably what most people get most of the time. Plus the 8500GT is not really that great of a card for SL........midrange in the 8000 series. The 8600 will run circles around that card (there's that much difference in performance).

It appears the current nVidia drivers are the 195 series, not the 18x ones you say don't work well.

If you haven't tried anything but the years old 169.21 driver with Second Life you might try using the latest driver.

So it appears to me, at least.

I'm surprised there was no performance difference running the draw distance down to 64 meters. I'm wondering if there's not some kind of driver problem.

Make sure your motherboard and other peripheral drivers are updated.

If your motherboard has integrated video, make sure it's disabled.

Try completely removing the Nvidia drivers and reinstalling the latest ones.

You are running some version of Windows, right? This isn't some wierdo Linux in a virtual machine on Solaris box or something is it? Windows is updated? It's a PCI Express graphics card, not PCI?

I'm the one who mentioned the 18*.** drivers. The OP stated in his initial post that he's using driver version 190.62. Which is not the most current either. I mentioned 185.85 because that is the driver I use and I know it works well with the 9800 cards and his card is listed as supported too. If it does not work for him then that answers that suggestion.

I have no idea where 4000 meters are but when i flew to the very clouds my fps jumped to 30 and when i get into the clouds my fps fall to 18 due to fog (I have turned off atmosphere shaders but there is still low quality clouds)

The problem especially noticeable when everything is loaded.
At first i get like 35 fps when more objects appear fps get lower to 30 when there is few ppl its still playable at 30 but when there is like 10 ppl in front on me fps get to 15.
Also if a lot ppl on island my fps is low no matter do I see them or not.

Agree when i was buying my computer couple years ago i know nothing about graphics cards and all this tech stuff so i just said to the vendor "Give me something good" too bad I forgot about relativity...
Since most ppl get something about 20 fps i think I will assume that is the limit of my computer especially that I already tried a lot.


Performance hit appear only if it above 200 m.
Maybe because I am new to game i was only on "Help Island" and few islands where wasnt much objects maybe if i go to some place highly populated draw distance on 64 will be the only option.
My system is windows XP SP3
My card is PCI express, 169.21 is drivers of choice because they give me the best fps especially when compared to newer drivers.
When I am reinstalling drivers I always clear remnants after older drivers with "driver cleaner" and ccleaner.

I guess its just my computer not good enough.
I need new anyway

The 8500 is not a powerful card, but should be OK if you set everything to low. You said the network is not a problem, but can you give more details on your connection type and pig/packet loss info for SL?

FPS doesn't change at all when I set all settings to low.
Connection is xdsl 1MB (hopefully I am right if not sry I am not really into computer spec)
Upload in SL setted to 250 I think its proper value since my upload speed is 256 kb/s when I was monitoring lags only sometimes I get like 600 ping but it is rather rare.

Riesen are you inworld now? If so I'll log on and send you a tp to my platform at 4000 meters.

After comparing performance during game with other players it appears that despite all strange behaviour my fps is not much different than their.
Conclusion everything is normal.
Thx for everyone willing to help.