Anyone tried NVidia BFG 280GTX 1 Gb PC PCIe?

I've been running 2 ATI 3800 cards for a year now and am tired of waiting for SL and/or ATI to get it together. I get better performance on my much lesser laptop.

Wondering if anyone as tried NVidia's BFG 280GTX 1 Gb PC PCIe card yet and, if so, what has your SL experience has been like with it?

Your human eyes can distinguish up to a maximum of about 25 FPS. Hard medical limit . Forget what any review or opinion writeup tries to tell you. That's what your graphic card needs to deliver, unrelated to lag or texture loading or anything else. Do you think you need that expensive card for that?

NVIDIA is not much better with sl, i am using it with vista .. and its giving me hells ... i donno which is the problem, nvidia or second life

Honestly I'm just looking for the absolute best video card(s) to run SL on. I took the advice of my trusted local computer company to build me a smoking machine for 3d games when I bought this. And it is a smoking machine, everywhere except SL. The problem seems to be the video cards.

So what I really should be asking the SL community here is this:

What is the best video card (or pair of cards) for running SL at this current time. If money is not an option and factoring in driver issues etc. What would you buy?

Well, for SL it is only Nvidia. Screw ATi. How far up the ladder you want to go is your decision. But honestly there is not much to gain in performance from a 8600GT up .

I want to have 1G on the video card or cards.

I can get a BFG 8500GT 1 Gb PCIe from my fav local place for $129 (Eastern Canada). They also have BFG 8800GT OCX 512Mb for $239.

Would I notice any difference between 2 ofthe 8800GTs and 1 8500GT? Not sure what the difference between PCIe and OCX is.

the problem are not graphic cards ... the problem is that sl is not compatible with ati nor nvidia, i have the best gamer laptop with a good graphics cards from nividia .. and second life is runing like hell .

Sorry to divert the thread slightly from the video card question, but I feel obligated to address this myth whenever it comes up:


Absolutely not true. Human eyes do not operate in terms of frames. There is no "hard medical limit". Physically, you're just as capable of observing a thousand FPS as you are of observing one FPS.

In various parts of the world, it is a commonly held misconception that the numbers 24 FPS, 25 FPS, and/or 30 FPS are somehow related to eyesight. In truth, these numbers are nothing more than the speeds at which TV and film operate in different countries. PAL and SECAM TV's display 25 FPS, NTSC displays 30 FPS, and film operates at 24 FPS. These speeds have nothing whatsoever to do with eyesight.

The reason for the PAL/SECAM and NTSC numbers is simply a quirk of physics with respect to electricity. In countries that use PAL or SECAM, the electricity operates at 50 Hz. Laws of physics serve to dictate that interlaced picture on analog TV's will display at half the frequency of the electricity powering the TV. If your electricity goes at 50 Hz, then your analog TV will run at 25 FPS. That's it.

In countries where NTSC TV is used, the electricity operates at 60 Hz. The exact same math gives us a display speed of 30 FPS.

Film, which is operated by geared mechanisms, totally independent from electricity cycles, could operate at any speed. 24 FPS became the standard for completely arbitrary reasons.

None of the above has anything whatsoever to do with the speed at which our eyes operate. It's not possible to measure how many frames an eye can discern per second. That's simply not how the biology of eyes works.

The question of how many frames are needed in order for playback to look smooth is entirely different. That has more to do with how our brains work than how our eyes work, and again, there's no simple answer. It's not just the number of frames over time that matters. The content of the actual imagery within each frame has as much to do with it as the speed at which they're shown.

There are many factors that affect our perception of playback as smooth or choppy. Lightness, darkness, contrast, color patterns, etc., all play a significant role. The single biggest factor, though, is motion blur. If motion blur is present, playback (even very slow playback) can look smooth to us. If it's absent, playback will look choppy. There are no exceptions.

So what is motion blur? An easy way to explain it is this. If you were to film a train whizzing by, and then look at any particular frame as a still image, you'd see a blurry mess. The details of the train would appear stretched across the page, in whatever direction the train was moving in. But play all the frames in sequence at the right speed, and all of a sudden the blur disappears, and your mind perceives a focused image of a moving train. It doesn't matter whether the playback is at 20 FPS or 200 FPS or 12 FPS. As long as it's played back at the same speed it was filmed at, and certain conditions are met, it will look good. Even single-digit FPS can look convincing under the right circumstances.

So why do computer simulations like SL and video games tend to look choppy at low FPS? Again, there are many reasons, but the most significant is the fact that there's no motion blur present at all. Without that, there's nothing to suggest to your mind that it should perceive the series of frames as anything other than the bunch of of stills that they really are. The only remedy for this is to play the frames so fast that you don't have time to think about what you're seeing.

How fast does that need to be? It depends who you ask. People who are experienced enough to be sensitive to such things (hardcore gamers, video professionals, digital artists, etc.) will often be able to tell the difference between, say, 55 FPS and 60 FPS quite easily. Those whose relationship with computers is more casual often will be pleased with anything in the high teens or above. Still others, whose only experience has been with underpowered hardware, will be just fine 10 or 12, if they've never known any different.


Another common misconception is that any FPS above your monitor's refresh rate will be imperceptible. In some ways that's true, if all you're doing is sitting back and watching. But if you're playing a game, the feel of 150 FPS can be totally different from the feel of 100 FPS. The visuals are only part of the experience. Audio cues, physical responses, etc., all come into play. The faster the whole program can operate, the more real the experience will feel.




By the way, if you want proof of what I said about your eyes being able to perceive a thousand FPS (and way, way more), try this. Get a digital stopwatch that displays thousandths of a second. Turn it on, and stare at the thousandths display. You'll be able to watch the numbers change, one by one.

The current SL client only recognizes 512MB if video memory. Even if that changes in future releases, I wouldn't loose any sleep over it.

The 512MB 8800GT is a much faster card than the 8500GT regardless of how much memory the 8500 has.

The 8800GT is a smoking fast card, and will run SL just fine on the ultra graphics settings. If you're in the habit of turning it up past that, like with 512M draw distance, or messing with debug settings ("rendertreelodfactor 8" in a forest of Linden trees...), you can probably bring any video card to its knees.

"OCX" is just BFG's lingo for overclocked. It runs a little faster than Nvidia's reference design. They're both PCIe cards.

If you do things like, say, machinima, fps takes a big hit. It's nice to start as high as possible because it's going to wind up lower in that case. Especially when running shadows. heh

If the current SL client only recognizes 512MB if video memory would you get any extra performance having 2 BFG 8800GT OCX 512Mb cards than just 1?

Would it matter if you liked using PhotoShop CS4 at the same time on the other monitor?

okay i have a 256MB ATI Radeon X1300PRO graphics card and it ONLY works when i restart my pc because i have sl running almost 24/7 yes its addicting to me....anyways when i do not restart my pc it takes me like 30-45 minutes to get sl to work the way i want it to.....um i came close to braking my pc because of sl or my graphics card and i didn't want to log in and out over and over...but anyways mine works only when i restart my pc.

Thanks Chosen, interesting read. May indeed be a misperception on my side. Heard that too many times and accepted it as a fact

Not exactly
2009-04-02T05:39:24Z INFO: LLDXHardware::getInfo: VRAM Detected: 896 DX9 string: 896.0 MB
It's more an "artificial" limit that was introduced recently to narrow down issues that cause crashes. LL recommends to set the graphics memory to 256MB and reportedly that improved stability.

From Ramzi Linden:
"In performance tests of the viewer, we observe it is actually counterproductive to allow textures to occupy too much memory, even if a resident's GPU might support more. Lots of allocated Texture Memory can cause the memory to become occupied by unused textures, while other necessary textures have no memory left to use; this will routinely slow down the performance, or even crash easily, especially when some other big applications are running at the same time. Many residents who experience crashes, have this value set at 512MB but found they can eliminate crashing by reducing the Texture Memory to a smaller value, such as 256MB."

I have an EVGA GTX 280 and it runs SL great along with a host of other games. IMHO SLI is a waste (unless you're into benchmarking or running over 1920x1200) and certainly not needed in SL so one good card should be just fine. The GTX285 is basically the same card but with a smaller die so theoretically you may be able to overclock it more. But I love my GTX 280.

My frame rates typically bounce around between 35-60 fps in dense areas and as high as 80+ if I look out to the water. Also keep in mind I'm running at 1920x1200 - a lower resolution should yield more fps - all other things being equal. Plus, I am running a qx9650 at 4ghz. I have the card slightly overclocked as well.

Your SL experience will also depend greatly on your CPU, not just your GPU.

And also RAM. SL eats RAM for breakfast, having 4 gigs would top off the cake, I just upgraded from two which I believe wasn't enough.

I envy your GTX 280 and Qx9650, that's kind of my dream-ish system right now. I'd actually just get the regular 9650 and not the extreme, since I don't have 1000$ to dump on processors lol. Always wondered how good it'd do on SL.

But yeah, I'd say that a 512mb 8800GT would be fine for SL, but going overkill with a GTX 285 (Might as well get the 285 now) never hurts!

This should not happen anymore. A lot of memory leaks were fixed. I think if SL eats 512M after some hours of running this would already be a lot.

I can't speak about official versions as I don't use them. But right now I have a Cool Viewer running for half a day and it occupies only 150MB. You may want to check out some of the 3rd party viewers if your memory consumption is really that high.

But has anyone actually used the 250GTX or higher with SL?

I bought top of the line when I set up my machine last year only to find out that no, SL doesn't like ATI. This time I want a card or pair of cards that will allow me to run SL on Ultra without any performance degradation. I already have a quad core processor and 8Gigs of RAM. I get crappy performance in SL with frame rates rarely over 15. My lesser laptop gets way smoother performance in SL.

This time I'd rather not be on the bleeding edge. Someone has already mentioned that I could run SL well on ultra with a single 512Mb 8800 Nvidia. I'm asking if anyone has tried and gotten SL in ultra & good performance with any of Nvidia's newer cards? I've heard that some of the newer Nvidia cards are having serious problems in SL as well. I'd rather not go there. Been waiting a year for SL to fix the problem with the ones I have now.

So - what's the bestest Nvidia card that works really, really well with SL? And would 2 of them be better than one?

Currently I run a 8800 GTS 320mb, it runs SL well on Ultra minus the heavy water reflections. everything is okay, but I wanted some more speed, and there is some color issues with my current dual monitor display from the video card. But that was due to some rough crashing that happened long ago with power outages.

Today my Sapphire ATI 4870 is supposed to arrive. from what I hear Boy Lane has had major troubles with it, and has even coded a SL viewer just to improve performance on it. (Major Super Awesome Thank You in advanced!)

There is a great site to see across the board benchmarks, also has other PC component benchmarks: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net

On another note one of my friends has good luck with the Nvidia 260. Wish I knew before I bought my new card. Online you can find this card at tigerdirect.com for 180
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4329709&Sku=P450-0260
I have used Tiger Direct many times before and have never had a problem in 12 different purchases.

From what I also know the ATI cards should be much more compatible with SL this month, there release driver 9.4 that should fix most outstanding driver issues. there is also hope for the RC of SL 1.23 to have client side fixes.

One last piece of advice, whenever a new series of graphics cards come out wait atleast 6 months to upgrade to them if you plan on it. Driver issues are always outstanding with both ATI and Nvidia.

I'm pretty sure if your motherboard supports multiple ATI cards, it will not support multiple Nvidia cards.

Yeah the Q9650 is the best bang for the buck CPU ATM. I know plenty of people that are getting 4.0ghz and higher out of theirs. The only difference is that they don't have an unlocked multiplier so they are using 9, whereas i'm using 10 on my QX9650.

I'm using a GTX260 216 now, after I returned the 4870. It's running without a glitch. Previously I had a 8600GT which I bought after earlier problems (high crash rate with a X800) and this one also worked great.

I don't think it makes any real difference if you use a 8800 or 9800 or anything higher, there are other bottlenecks in SL (viewer, simulator, communication) that will impact your performance way more than a fast rendering graphics card.

Regarding ATi. It is not confirmed that upcoming Catalyst 9.4 drivers will fix any of the current problems. The only info about this came from Zen Linden who supposedly got a confirmation that ATI has identified an issue with compressed and uncompressed textures in their driver (VWR-12139). This does not mean an eventual fix will improve ATi's OpenGL performance which is not working properly since Catalyst 7.12.

Thanks BoyLane, exactly what I wanted to know.

I too have lost faith waiting for ATI to fix their problems. I don't feel confident that this problem will be rectified in the next version.

My system has an AMD Phenom 9500 2.20 GHz Quad-core processor and 8 GB of RAM. It is smokin in every application except SL, which I built it for. I'm pretty sure the problem is the video card. I think I will get the same card you have.

The one thing that seems to kill my performance everytime in SL is turning on water reflections. But I could do this on my old machine and I can still do this on my lesser laptop with a lesser nvidia card. Can you run water reflections without performance drop with your 260GTX card?

Haven't tried what the result would be if I switch it off. Nothing really noticeable I assume. Even no issues with the 8600GT.

I'm going to make the switch to the BFG 260GTX. Thanks for your help.