Speed comparison

I had the opportunity this weekend to try SL on a faster Mac that was visiting me.

I have a 1.2GHz G5 Powerbook with 64MB of video ram, 1GB RAM.
The visitor was a dual 1.8GHz G5 Powermac. Same amount of RAM, same video memory.

I observed closely, running them at the same time on the same 2MB broadband, avatars standing side by side.

The G5 was at all times between 2.5 and 3 times faster in fps.

Activity Monitor tells me that SL maxes out my G4 CPU almost continually (boy it get hot), whilst the G5 never got above about 50% utilisation, with one cpu taking about twice as much as the other.

A typical situation would give me 8 fps (say) on the G4, and 22 fps on the G5.

But to achieve this the draw distance would be 128, all fancy options off, and a fairly empty outlook.

1.7 is definitely slower than it was, even with no time dilation. At each patch my powerbook is being edged further over the line into unusability.

And thats ignoring the crazy "treacle wading" with the occasional little jaunts down to dilations in the twenties and thirties.

In desperation I now run without any ground texture even, 64 draw distance etc etc.

I am thinking of selling all my SL land and putting the cash towards a faster computer. But I can't stomach buying another Mac now, since it will be obsolescent in a year when the Intel processors come in. PC's make me feel ill.

Anyone else in the same dilemma ?

I run on a 1.5MHz powerbook, 64meg card, with 1 gig memory. 1.7 is certainly better for me most of the time. On my own lands I find a considerable performance increase. Having said that I've also experienced some very bad time dilation all over SL periodically with no apparent cause ... until I looked at the fast timers and it's always spending time in the attachment updating. Even when I remove my attachments the timers show a stupid amount of time in that code ... Odd. A bug maybe ?

As for a new Mac, as I work on Macs I might get a G5 before an Intel. I'm more likely to buy a new powerbook though. l'll probably end up buying a cheap PC next year for SL alone but when I talk to my freinds in SL I see the PC users having the same problems if not worse most of the time.

A thread on the possible attachment bug

I'm so there....

I have a 6 year old g4. I spend 200 bucks on memory just to get out of permanent slideshow mode.

I'm thinking of getting SL off my mac and getting a minimum PC just to run SL.

Immediate issues are that I have photoshop for Mac but not for PC, adn don't want to split my internet across two computers.

New software should be made in "universal binaries" for a while. Supposedly all new software for intel will also have a binary for the IBM power PC chips, then like with OSX there will be software makers who DON'T make the universal binary quickly. So I'm not sure getting a new mac now mean it will be obsolute in a year. Maybe in 2 though!

Can anyone recommend a mid-range intel box for a mac user? Including OS?

Longhorn is out right?

Are you suggesting that dilation is a personal thing, responding significantly to our own individual attachments, Lauko ? I thought it was a server thing, the same for everyone in the sim ?

Actually to be more precise, after some hours of flying around last night. I think time dilation is caused by a seperate bug to the one I think I've found. The problem I can confirm is about very low FPS.

But I can confirm again and again that when I am suddenly for no apparent reason, down to 1 or less FPS, it's because the client is stuck in the attachment code ( as shown by the fast timers ). And it's not my attachments because I took them all off. It only happens when other AVs are in the sim. Someone else suggested there's a problem with llListen() in attachments, I don't know.

On the subject of dilation as I flew around SL last night:
Once or twice I encountered a sim with huge numbers of scripts and low dilation and that is what I would expect. But often I noticed time dilation coincided every time with my entry into a sim. ( I wasn't wearing any attachments other than a low prim hair ). I always saw massive packet loss which slowly faded as time dilation fell to near normal most times and then it was ok. So my guess is there's still something wrong with asset transfer.

Hi All
I run SL on Mac and Windows. The Mac is a PB G4 12-in with 1.5GHz processor, 768meg RAM. The windows machine is a Toshiba "media center laptop'" 17-in screen, 2.9Ghz Pentium, 768Meg RAM. Link is 1 meg cable. Tosh is about a year old and Mac about 6 months old. In my small survey, the Windows machine is usually faster, but not by much (usually less than 50% faster and occasionally not at all faster). My guess is the bigger screen size for the Tosh slows it down. Switching off fog and clouds seems to help. Settings are all low except for 128 metres distance and bump mapped avatars.

BUT neither laptop is that great to be honest. I'm pleased to hit 10fps. At places like the Edge, it's down to 2 fps. But then that's not specific to my machines: I met some people who had left the Edge to dance on private property, just to get a reasonable fps.

I have not used G5 macs or any desktop windows machine. The bigger Powerbooks have 128meg video ram and that should help too.

What I'm trying to say, Mac people, is: don't (necessarily) get Windows envy.

That what I found as the soution here on forum. May be i mised something?

I went here, to this formum, after conversetion with Live Help, he/she told me, that here I should try to find an answer!!!

So, probably me as Mac user couldn't find any solution. I will not by PC any more, I have been using it for years and just few month ago bought new Mac Mini 1.4 G4 512Mb.

I'm trying to play with all settings set to minimum. I have broadband 1.5mb connection.

Please help me to resolve my problem:

Very slow, bad FPS about, 2 and less, 5 on absolutly empty sim. RED package every time while i move, when i sitting and not moving anything and cam. , i goes down and became green.

I know Christopher Black contributed some ideas on this forum.
What about this?
I don't know how useful this is because I don't have Mac mini though.

Thank you very much!!

It realy helps me !! now i feel much better performance and improvement while palying ..


Shalom!