Mac Pro w/8800 GT

I tried SL at the Apple Store on the new Mac Pro 8-core 3.2 GHz w/NVIDIA 8800 GT (512MB VRAM). I have to say, SL ran verrrry smooth. And that was only taking 30% of the CPU, with Guitar Hero III and Photoshop open in the background O.O

Well, one would HOPE SL ran good, after all it's a $4800 computer.

But anyway.

I did notice when going to a complicated Linden-land sim that the FPS dropped to below 10 FPS. I still think that SL has some real performance issues compared to most other games with the level of graphics complexity.

Remember to set the graphics memory in Second Life to half of what you actually have. This is the primary cause of these framerate drops. Mac OS X uses a lot of graphics RAM and if Second Life uses all that it can, everything will slow down.

LL really needs to fix this in the client; everyone thinks Macs suck for SL because of this problem. the true bugs with crashing on Nvidia and such have already been fixed.

I have tried this technique of doing the 1/2 of VRAM, but it never makes a damn bit of difference.

I suggest that it's just a meaningless rumor.

It doesn't have to be as much as half-VRAM if you're using Windlight, you can set smaller increments now, so I've set mine 32mb below maximum and it runs great

Anyone on a Mac who isn't running Windlight needs to have a pretty good reason not to, as it kicks ass

there are good reasons to not run windlight on the Mac... like, if i disable all the extra stuff and make it look exactly like the normal client, I still only get 50%-75% the FPS. Enabling all the extra cool stuff, like atmospheric shaders, and its basically unusable in most all areas.