Performance - what should I expect??

Hi,

I'm on my SL trial at the moment and I'm only averaging about 10fps (usually around 7- and also the controls are extremely unresponsive - it can take 1-2 seconds for keypresses to actually do anything and I keep over-compensating! I want to love SL but it's getting really frustrating!!

My system specs are:
Athlon 2600+ XP
1GB 333Mhz DDR RAM
XP Pro
GeForce FX 5700 (128MB)
1Mbit Cable Broadband (NTL - I'm in the UK)

I am running in 1024x768 and have tried turning all GFX options off - it doesn't seem to make much difference and I would have thought I could afford to have most options on with this spec system?

What sort of performance should I be expecting? Any pointers on how to improve performance would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Niomir Rebus

From your specs, your system looks like it should run SL without a hitch. However, because of your location, there could be a slew of network problems between you and the Secondlife servers.

Try running a ping on secondlife.com.
To do this:

1. Click Start
   
2. Click Run
   
3. Type "cmd" without quotes.
   
4. Once the command prompt window opens, type "ping secondlife.com" w/o quotes.
   
5. Wait for the ping to finish running.
   
6. Right click the command prompt title bar.
   
7. Select edit.
   
8. Click Select All.
   
9. Right-Click the command prompt title bar again.
   
10. Select edit.
    
11. Click Copy.
    
12. Close the command prompt window.
    [/list=1]
    
    Once you've done this, create a new reply to this thread, select the "Enhanced mode" bubble on the side of the reply entry box, click the "#" button, then paste the result into the reply. Once this is done, click the "Close All Tags" button (has a little red X on it) and submit the reply.

Good question - i'm on the Mac beta and am still having the same issues you mention most of the time inWorld.

Sigh...

Hi Christopher, thanks for the quick response!

Results are:

Pinging secondlife.com [66.150.244.131] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.150.244.131: bytes=32 time=215ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.150.244.131: bytes=32 time=197ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.150.244.131: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=47
Reply from 66.150.244.131: bytes=32 time=189ms TTL=47

Ping statistics for 66.150.244.131:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 189ms, Maximum = 219ms, Average = 205ms

Doesn't look like too much of a problem there I don't think?

Hmm, right, looks good. Try one other thing:

Instead of typing "ping secondlife.com" in the command prompt, type "tracert -h 99 secondlife.com" without quotes, and post that back here.
==Chris

Ok heres the trace:

Tracing route to secondlife.com [66.150.244.131]
over a maximum of 99 hops:

  1    <1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.2
  2   103 ms     9 ms    39 ms  172.22.71.254
  3    49 ms    16 ms    39 ms  nrth-t2cam1-a-ge-wan34-102.inet.ntl.com [213.104.142.9]
  4    14 ms    22 ms    56 ms  nrth-t2core-a-ge-wan61.inet.ntl.com [213.106.255.37]
  5    28 ms    76 ms    33 ms  nth-bb-a-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.109]
  6    38 ms    78 ms    53 ms  nth-bb-b-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.118]
  7    51 ms    86 ms    58 ms  pop-bb-a-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.14]
  8    17 ms    53 ms    45 ms  so-7-0.hsa2.london1.level3.net [212.113.14.129]
  9    82 ms    17 ms    83 ms  so-4-0-0.mp2.london1.level3.net [212.187.131.125]
 10   181 ms   129 ms   142 ms  as-0-0.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net [4.68.128.106]
 11   209 ms   169 ms   201 ms  so-0-0-0.mp1.sanfrancisco1.level3.net [209.247.9.117]
 12   207 ms   202 ms   161 ms  so-10-0.ipcolo1.SanFranciso1.Level3.net [4.68.112.234]
 13   185 ms   173 ms   260 ms  gw-level3-sfo.internap.com [63.211.143.18]
 14   212 ms   266 ms   166 ms  border5.ge3-1-bbnet1.sfo.pnap.net [63.251.63.10]
 15   211 ms   188 ms   304 ms  arachnid.lindenlab.com [66.150.244.131]

Trace complete.

My fps does appear to have improved a little - maybe it's cos I've got more stuff cached now? If that's the case hopefully it'll level out in a while!

It looks like your problem stems from your high ping time to SL's servers. You can try playing around with the network settings in your prefrences (try setting it for 100kbps, then 500kbps, then try jostling the numbers around manually) to see if it helps. Other then that, Im afraid I cant be of much more help

==Chris

I'll have a play and see how it goes - thanks very much for your help anyway Chris!

His ping is fine.
Niomir, check that the chipset drivers for your motherboard are installed. It can make a dramatic performance difference.

Well, my singing is real bad, and my acting is worse. And my in the bedroom performance is private thank you very much.

Consider lowering video card mem (in preferences in SL) one notch, if it likes to be REALLY slow in some places.

COnsider defragmenting your system drive that houses the cache. you can gain a huge performance amount from doing this.

If you get ahold of a tool like "Perfect Disk" , (and others), they can in-place defragment your cache file in under a few minutes.

Heh, s/he said 'get ahold of a tool'.