... maybe old video cards?

I spend a lot of time on my laptop and thus not on SL - because my laptop has an older series Radeon chipset in it. I know the box comes up and says that you need all the fancypants features of some card made after 2002, but I'm wondering: is there any way to just stuff it past? I'm one of those weirdos that finds most of the textures being turned off and 3FPS totally OK if it's the difference between go and no-go. Obviously buying a new laptop is not an option for me, and upgrading the chipset is also not an option. Is it that you just can't fit enough data + framebuffers into the 8mb on the card? Or do you use extensions that aren't emulated in software? If it is just a performance thing, I would love a hidden option to let me run it anyway. Anyway, thanks for a neat product and all you do.

If its based on the Radeon 7000 series or older, it won't work. If its at least an 8500, it will work.

I get that - it's 7000 based. The real gist of my question was, is it a technological limitation, ie it just won't work? Or is it more a 'this is going to suck so bad we won't let you do it' feature? I suppose only a Linden can really answer that.

I would probably reckon that your radeon 7000 would cry if it were exposed to SL. My radeon 9000 does, and it's supposed to be "modern".

there's alot of newfangled doohickeys that SL uses that just aren't supportred with 7000's.



LF

I think there's a bit of PR involved as well as techincal limitations in turning people away with outdated video.

I think perhaps in some cases It's better to deny someone access altogether than to let them in and experience terrible performance.

Because no matter how clearly you state the specifications people will still complain about SL that "it's slow" and therefore "it sucks".

It's probably better to turn people away who don't have the computer horsepower, (who may return another day when they do) than to let them in now and give them a very bad first impression.

Clarification:

I've personally tested SL with a number of different video cards. My Radeon VE (7000 series) card does not work at all with SL. On the other hand, the 128mb 8500LE will work with SL, but I had to turn down video settings and run at 800x600. I could probably up the resolution if I was running with a faster processor that the 1.1 gig Thunderbird Athlon in that computer.

I'm running SL on a 2 year old Apple PowerBook G4 667Mhz with a 32MB ATI Radeon 7500. Performance isn't stellar, but it's usable. Avatar rendering set to Normal, Terrain Detail on Some. I'm well off the official "supported" spec, but I'm cool with the performance.

See, that's what I'm wondering. I really don't mind 3FPS if it means I can use SL on my laptop ... and I seriously doubt there's much difference between the 7500 and the 7000.

I occasionally get 3fps on my GeForce FX 5600 with 256mb. Usually, it's when I'm in a crowded location with my graphic settings very high. High FPS in SL is about 25fps, so, getting 3fps on a 7000 is probably impossible. You'd be lucky to get 0.1 fps.

I know that the 7500 has issues with SL -- a friend of mine tried to play SL, her laptop (PC, not Mac) has that card, she couldn't get it to run well. I asked a Linden, and I was told that the 7500 simply can't do things that SL needs.

Huh, I'm seeing 25fps out of a mildly overclocked 5200 (so mildly i still have the fan power unhooked for silence) when in relatively open space. I guess I sort of assume that low details settings are better for me than high detail - I'd rather have the frames than the shinies.

Framerates in SL are affected by a number of variables. My fastest computer has a GeForce FX5600, 128mb. In most of the world, I have to set draw distance to 128 if I'm running with the other video settings all the way up. However, in Tethys, I can set draw all the way to 512, and it runs smoother than the 128 everywhere else.



I know very little of Macs, but I guess comparing a Mac with a 7500 and a PC with the same card is like comparing apples and oranges. I could never get my VE past the log in.

fwiw

My Radeon Mobility 7500 is getting Basic FPS hovering around 3, Sometimes it pops up a little higher. It's using about 85% of the CPU and is one of 51 process currently running. I might be able to squeeze a little more if I killed some of those processes.

In the Advanced pane I'm seeing Sim FPS at 415 and Physics FPS at 45. I have no idea what that means.

This is still a beta version on Mac OS X, and I've heard that it hasn't been optimized for the Mac yet and that I may see a speed bump in 1.3. Typically the first thing you want to do is get your program to run, then you work on getting it to run fast.

While it must be great seeing SL on the latest hardware, I'm glad they aren't prohibiting me from using it because I don't meet the minimum hardware requirements.

t&l

SL will not run on video cards with out at least a modicum of geometry acceleration.. old ati rage's (what the radeon 7000 effectively is), nvidia tnt's, anything intel, older matrox cards, and anything kryo, need not apply

Just fwiw, I know that SL will run on the Intel Extreme graphics. It has to have everything turned down, and it is still slow, but it runs.

My laptop used to be able to run SL until the updates (I started in Dec.)
After a few updates, it still let me log in but I couldn't move right. IE I could turn left and right but I couldn't more forwards. I'd get about 4-5 fps. This is a Toshiba Portege 3500 with who knows what graphics card. I know it's only got 32 MB ram and I doubt it's AGP. It's their first tablet they made, so it's not the one with the GeForce in it (bastards, I really coulda used useful graphics acceleration). Oddly enough even though I can't even run 3d screen savers well, I was able to run SL until the updates killed it.

If you're able to turn but not move, you may be experiencing connection issues, not video issues. Turning appears to be handled client-side, while moving forward is a server-based action.