iBook G4 1.2Mhz, What are your settings?

Hi,

Let me start off by saying I'm pretty new to Mac's and OSX. I'm currently running an iBook G4 1.2Mhz Panther 10.3.9 with stock 256MB ram (This will be upgraded to 768 or 1GB this weekend.)

I've found that in SL I get severe lag at times and at others almost nothing. I've set everything to as low a possiable. Is there anyone else using the same equipment that's found a good combination of settings for SL to give at least some nice graphics and useable performance? I understand it's never going to run like a dual G5 with 2GB of ram but it seems like it should be able to handle SL just a little bit better.

It is not just the computer it is the bandwidth as well. It is also the game itself. A sim can lag so bad one cant move, even if it's late at night, you are the only one online, and you have the best machine in town.

As far as impact on performance... bandwidth, memory, and graphics chip are the important ones of course and if you have an iBook, the only thing you can really change is the memory, so you are already doing all you can really.

That being said, I run on two macs that are roughly similar to yours (one is slightly better and one is slightly worse). I change no settings. I use the default.

Others will post with more about the actual settings I am sure as I have seen such advice posted lots of times. In my experience however, it makes little difference to change the settings unless you change them "up" like turning on bump-maping or something.

That will kill the whole experience dead.

I understand that the video card leaves a lot to be desired for SL. What you're saying is that this is more an issue with the SL software/servers(sims) rather than my hardware (for the most part)?

It's the nature of the beast. Streaming 3D content especially textures means even the best graphic card cannot possibly be used optimally. The more memory you have the better, I would advise going for 1 gig. I run on an old 1.5GHz Powerbook with 1gig ram, I like to use 2 monitors as I do a lot of scripting in XCode and with this setup I experience on average between 10 and 25 fps, often this can drop as low as 6 or 8 if there are many local AVs (or even 1 with curly prim hair ). I've noticed when many people are online ( ie when the bulk of USA players is online ) server lag and ping times increase massively, at these times I occasionally see ping times of 10000ms or more.
An iBook is not the greatest machine for SL, neither is a Powerbook like mine but I've recently used a very highly specced PC and the difference in game play was very small.

Basically a fast internet connection, a fast processor and lost of memory seem to be the most important factors for SL. Frankly I think a super dooper graphics card is almost irrelevant as SL doesnt seem to use 50% of the features they provide anyway. GFX cards are designed to be fast with specially optimised games which cannnot include SL by it's very nature.