Strange behavior on Mac Pro + Nvidia 7300GT

I used to use my PowerBook G4 1.33 17" with ATI graphics & 64 MB VRAM for Second Life. I now have a MacBook Pro 1.83, also w/ATI graphics, w/128 MB VRAM. I am not seeing many issues, the Intel version is more stable, and my frame rate is many times higher than it used to be. Yes, there does seem to be a graphics memory problem, so I set it to use 64 MB when I have ripple water on -- seems to help. Even with the problem, there is no going back for me. This computer has spoiled me completely. If you have a G5 with a good graphics card, it might not make such a difference; from a G4, night and day.

With all the textures issues, I'm beginning to think that SL should throttle all the textures to a max of 512x512. Since SL designers are usually not game professionals, they don't know how to optimize. If it only impacted the owner, that would be one thing. But these textures impact us all.

Note that it is free to sign up as an online developer. That might be all that is required. (I haven't looked into this more.)

Ummm... LL throttled down sims to a max of 45 FPS several versions ago to try and improve overall performance. Reasons why and results are a whole other discussion thread.

Anyway, I have seen 60's and 70's FPS on my big ol' G5 Dual - but only at login, overlooking a void or on an empty sim, and BEFORE I touch anything. Even saw a brief moment of 90's once prior to the throttling down when logging into an empty sim.

The new Dual MacPro Xenon Quads are awesome. Definitely on my list. Enjoy your new Mac !!

It should be on one of the OSX installation DVDs that came with the machine.

I'll verify where it is exactly when I get home if you haven't found it by then.

-Z

Anyone had experience yet with the 64-bit Quad Xenon, Dual 3.0 Ghz Mac Pro with the ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) vid card?

I have had very solid performance on SL with the ATI Pro (256MB) Mac Edition card on my Dual G5. When I can't stand it any longer, I will upgrade to the top of line, but with the ATI card.

Any feedback on the MacPro with the ATI card would be appreciated.

Thanks.

E.

*waves at Brent

My bizarre problems with SL continue and my 3 GHz Mac Pro.

Basically, I can't run SL at all under OS X unless I throttle down my memory to 2GB (I have 4... has anyone noticed that even 4GB doesn't seem like enough when doing design work and multitasking a lot?). Anything over 2GB results in a Kernel Panic, usually pretty quickly.

(The panic is panic(cpu 3 caller 0x003A2287): getPhysicalSegment() out of 32b range... which with my basic research on the other information points specifically to a crash in the NVidia graphics driver)

Under 2GB, I can run it, but I run into all the pause problems mentioned earlier.

Interestingly, the game is also [much] slower under Windows... but I get no crazy "pauses" and such. It is just smoothly slow, if that makes sense.

I'm going to try the suggested fix in this thread [thanks for all your hard work Zorin!!] and see if that stops the Kernel Panics in full 4GB mode, but I doubt it.

I'll edit this post when I test.

I have an X1900 on order which I wonder will fix the problems or not.

By the way, I have tested every game I could get my hands on, even though I don't play games... Quake 4, Doom, Xplane, No Limits, etc. I played them on the Mac Pro simultaneously as I imported HDV video into FCE, ripped a couple of CDs in iTunes, downloaded a bunch of stuff, compressed an iDVD project, and had dashboard, mail, etc open. [damn this machine is fast!]

I had no problems, no crashes, nothing.

In Windows under Boot Camp, I ran Just Cause Demo, Flight Simulator X demo, etc at full speed and no problems.

The 7300GT is a half decent card, I am surprised to say, but it won't be able to run full rez like the ATI 1900 will.

Wow do I feel geeky now. LOL

POST TEST EDIT: The fix didn't do anything for me (in 4GB mode); SL caused a Kernel Panic instantly as it did before.

I wonder - do any of you Mac Pro users have over 2GB of RAM, installed in more than 2 slots? Am I the only one?

POST TEST EDIT 2: I tried the fix under 2GB mode, where I can at least get SL to run. All seemed fixed for a while, but over time as I entered places with lots of geometry or textures I started to get the freezing pauses again. They were only a few seconds long, and no "graphics chip error!" showed up in the log, but something was amiss.

On top of that, the whole interface in OSX slowed down while the game was running.

So I can say while this workaround does help those with 2GB, it doesn't fix the problems. At least not for me. And definitely not when I run with all my RAM.

LINDEN: Do you have a Mac Pro to test with? If so, one with 4GB of RAM? I find it odd that every OpenGL graphics program and game in the world I can get my hands on works fine, but SL causes Kernel Panics.

Hi again,

I reset my graphics card memory to 64 under preferences in the game, and now im not getting the freezing and graphics bugs, at all.

I don't understand why i have 256 memory on my graphics card but I have to set the preferences to 64 to make the game run smoothly.

Lean, how much RAM do you have?

I have 2GB ram.

Zorin, you are a genius. After downloading the Developer's Kit, I followed your directions and SL is now running smooth as silk. I was even able to turn on all sorts of features that I had previously turned off. Thank you for that awesome workaround. I get some minor flickering here and there, but no corruption whatsoever and no crashes.

Thanks again,

SamSam

Okay, so I'm a little new to Mac (had some experience but not enough apparently), what developer kit should I be looking for? I get my new Mac Pro today and I can't wait to try SL out on it

Thanks.

Parallels is having the exact same problem as SL with machines over 2GB of RAM. These two companies should chat.

Torley - these Kernel Panics haven't even made it to the known issues page, never mind the fact they are showstoppers.

Same with the freezes... one shouldn't have to run Xcode profiling apps to be able to play the game at all. There again.. no mention on the Known Issues pages, and I think I filed 3 or 4 bug reports myself.

Any idea what is going on?

I'm using a PPC Quad with 2.5 gigs of RAM and a 256 meg nVidia GeForce 6600. My machine freezes all the time but eventually comes back after a few seconds or more. We're talking the ENTIRE OS! I can't even move the mouse. Even my network/cpu/disk/memory monitor apps freeze and then show flatlines over the time that stood still.

I'm not saying there aren't problems specific to a particular configuration, but there are some fundamental problems with the SecondLife Mac client no matter how RAM is configured, what card you have, or even your brand of processors. Hopefully the folks at LL can invest the resources to correct this relatively soon.

I'd like to comment that if the whole OS is freezing up, while SL may be causing it & should stop doing whatever it is that's causing it, it's really an OS problem to me. Nothing should have the ability to lock up the OS like that -- at least nothing run at the user level.

Sorry folks, I was on vacation. I'm reading through this forum now to see what we can do. I'll keep you posted!

We have two Mac Pros that are both used for building. I'm going to commandeer one later (they are both busy building right now) and try running Second Life on them.

One question: is the client actually crashing and are crash logs being sent?

That's just it; it doesn't crash. It just freezes, textures get corrupted, the renderer goes insane (as demonstrated in my screenshot) but the client never actually crashes.

Luskwood is a good place to repro. Zoom in on one of the new lynx avatars so the 2048x2048 and 2048x1024 eye textures load. Wham! Freezes, textures corrupt, useless until you restart.

-Z

Uh. 2048x2048 *shouldn't* be a possible texture size. We downsample textures to 1024x1024 . I'll check this out in more depth.

Brent,

FWIW, I have a castle kit I purchased. When I select some of the textures, the selector reports dimensions of: 1024x1024, 2048x1024, and 2048x2048. If I can supply any information about them that would help, let me know.

We're working with LL the best we can on this: if we need to reissue the avatars, we will-- The textures were not uploaded in any funny way, they were just uploaded with the plain-jane client; no LibSL, no SLProxy, or anything like that.

I dont know if this is limited to textures of that size, with alpha? (2048x2048x32?) ... I have a Mac Pro / 7300GT at work, and I can give it a try there, too.

I also have a PC with a 7300GT; no problems there, so it looks driver related...

In any case, if this is not 1) resolved, 2)deemed beyond texture limits, anyone who bought one will get an updated av. We'll push out the updates, so nobody should have to do anything except stop wearing the ones that are causing problems.

We're working with LL the best we can on this: if we need to reissue the avatars, we will-- The textures were not uploaded in any funny way, they were just uploaded with the plain-jane client; no LibSL, no SLProxy, or anything like that.

I dont know if this is limited to textures of that size, with alpha? (2048x2048x32?) ... I have a Mac Pro / 7300GT at work, and I can give it a try there, too.

I also have a PC with a 7300GT; no problems there, so it looks driver related...

In any case, if this is not 1) resolved, 2)deemed beyond texture limits, anyone who bought one will get an updated av. We'll push out the updates, so nobody should have to do anything except stop wearing the ones that are causing problems.

I don't wanna speak for Brent, but it looks like the problem has been located, and we're making changes on our side - as well as LL making changes on their side - to resolve this.

Note it certainly wasn't only "luskwood stuff". It also does appear to only affect a few configurations in very specific combinations.

When the client Kernel Panics, no crash log is being generated. I do get a panic that looks like this:

"Fri Sep 8 15:09:19 2006
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x003A2287): getPhysicalSegment() out of 32b range 0x1439c4000, len 0x1000, class IOGeneralMemoryDescriptor"

The CPU and the addresses are often different.

If I am in 2GB mode and just the program crashes, I get:


Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x04ba3000

(again, the addresses are different)

That's not true for others with over 2GB. The client crashes, or more frequently, the whole thing kernel panics.

Lots of postings seem to narrow this down to one of three things:

1) An SL problem
2) A problem with the PAE mode used only on the Mac Pros
3) A problem with the 7300GT card (ATI's seem fine?)
4) A problem with the OS build included on earlier shipments of the Mac Pro. I have 8K1079.. to quote from Macintouch:

"[Neil Lee] Here's something strange - it seems there are at least two different builds of OS X 10.4.7 that are included with shipping Mac Pro machines.
We (Cocoatech) have been trying to track down an issue with Path Finder where it crashes on launch when run on the new Mac Pros. After reporting this to Apple they confirmed the issue and said it was due to a bug in the OS that they said they would fix in an OS update (the rumoured 10.4.8?). We've been waiting with bated breath to get our hands on a Mac Pro ourselves so we could do some of our own testing.
To our surprise, Path Finder ran with no problems on our Mac Pro (3GHz, 3GB RAM). After much troubleshooting to try to narrow down what the difference was between our machine and other Mac Pros that exhibited this issue we discovered the installed OS on our Mac Pro is a newer build.
Our customers that have been having this problem all seem to be running Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8K1079. Our Mac Pro, which runs Path Finder just fine, is Mac OS X 10.4.7 build 8K1124.
I'd be interested to hear from other Mac Pro owners what OS X build their machine is running. To see the build number go under the Apple menu to "About This Mac". When the About This Mac window appears, click on the version number just under the Apple logo and it will change to show you the build number.
Obviously Apple caught this issue (albeit a little late) and has updated their factory OS X image. But how many machines out there got the old, "buggy" version?

[We wonder how many other products are getting hurt by this bug. Our first-day Mac Pro is running Build 8K1079, and Software Update is making no change in it. -MacInTouch]"

Anyone in forums I have seen who isn't having a problem at all with SL has the later build, an ATI card, and 2GB of RAM.

Well, I have 8K1079 here. Figures!

Hopefully 10.4.8 will fix this bug. If there's a genuine problem, and it's not the 2048x2048 textures, folks shouldn't have to update their stuff.

-Z