Mac PB - 8600M GT - impossible performance

Has LL already a solution for the impossible performance for MBP with NVIDEA 8600M CT card??

My way around this has been running the sl Windows viewer on XP with bootcamp on my mac and this works very good.

But i would prefer if i could use the Mac version of the viewer. When i use the last mac viewer (1.21.6) with performance on LOW i get FPS rates around 2. Thus impossible ....

I tried the new parallels 4 and get similar low FPS .....

So please can someone update me on the status of this problem as it excists already nearly 2 years.

Will there ever be a fix????
Thanks


Seond Life 1.21.6

Systeemsoftwareoverzicht:

Systeemversie: Mac OS X 10.5.5 (9F33)

Hardwareoverzicht:

Modelnaam: MacBook Pro
Modelaanduiding: MacBookPro3,1
Processornaam: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processorsnelheid: 2.2 GHz
Aantal processors: 1
Totaal aantal cores: 2
L2-cache: 4 MB
Geheugen: 4 GB
Bussnelheid: 800 MHz
Opstart-ROM-versie: MBP31.0070.B07
SMC-versie: 1.16f10
Serienummer: W87520MLX91
Sudden Motion Sensor:
Status: Ingeschakeld


GeForce 8600M GT:

Chipsetmodel: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Beeldscherm
Bus: PCIe
Breedte PCIe-baan: x16
VRAM (totaal): 128 MB
Fabrikant: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Apparaatcode: 0x0407
Revisiecode: 0x00a1
ROM-revisie: 3175
Beeldschermen:
Kleuren-LCD:
Beeldschermtype: LCD
Resolutie: 1440 x 900
Diepte: 32-bits kleur
Ingebouwd: Ja
Core Image: Hardwareversnelling
Synchrone weergave: Uit
Online: Ja
Quartz Extreme: Ondersteund

SECOND SCREEN
SyncMaster:
Resolutie: 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
Diepte: 32-bits kleur
Core Image: Hardwareversnelling
Hoofdbeeldscherm: Ja
Synchrone weergave: Uit
Online: Ja
Quartz Extreme: Ondersteund
Rotatie: Ondersteund

as far as i know the 8600 problem was fix a looong time ago, most people are using them ok now... between driver updates in like OSX 10.5.1 and a SL update, all the major implayable problems with the 8600 was fixed...

are you sure you are going to the same sims when under Leopard and under Win?

I have pretty much the same MBP as yours (and same version of the viewer), and the difference in performance is there (i.e. win viewer works a lil better) but I rarely drop under 7 fps with the mac viewer.

O yes i am sure .... i get FPS between 2 and 4 with the mac viewer on LOW graphic preferences in the same sims. While the Win viewer goes easily up to 25 FPS. Are you sure the problem has been fixed MIssy?

Has anyone experience with parallels? Thank you

For best performance with the 8600M GT series, I recommend the following:

Make sure you've upgraded OSX to version 10.5.5. It is my understanding that the drivers were improved in this release, so it's well worth taking the time to check.

In the SL viewer, the first thing you will want to do is the geekiest. Press CTRL-Option-D to bring up the Advanced menu at the top of the screen. Now, click on Advanced -> Rendering -> Run Multiple Threads. This tells SL to use all of your processor cores. Once you've enabled that, press CTRL-Option-D again to hide that advanced menu (you won't ever have a need to mess with most of that stuff anyways, so may as well keep it out of the way). Next, quit and restart SL for that change to take effect.

Next step, you need to adjust hardware options. Cmd-P to bring up Preferences, then click on the Graphics tab, and click on the Hardware Options button. You should then see a slider for texture memory. Make sure that's set to no more than half of the total amount of video memory in your machine. For most people, setting to 128MB is ideal. If you run other programs at the same time (especially big graphics apps like Photoshop), you may want to set the number to a lower value. Close that dialog by hitting Okay.

On the main Graphics tab, tick the little checkbox marked Custom (if it's not already ticked). That opens up a tangle of additional graphics settings. Here are my suggestions on changes to make. Uncheck "Hardware Skinning" and "Avatar Impostors". Make sure that your particles slider is under 4096. If you're really having performance issues, you can drop that down to 2048 and still see plenty of sparkles, poofs, and flame effects. Finally the really crucial one... draw distance. I'll bust that into a separate paragraph, since it's worth explaining.

Draw distance tells SL how much stuff to draw. Imagine drawing a line starting at your avatar and then moving away in a straight line for the distance you set with that slider. SL then takes that number and uses it as a radius to draw a giant sphere around your avatar. It will then try to draw every prim and load every texture inside that sphere. The bigger the number, the more it has to load. If you hang out in crowded sims and clubs and stuff, drop this way down - 64. If you're on less populated sims that are highly detailed, set it to 96. Otherwise, 128 should be the most you really need to see. Most of your interactions and explorations are probably happening within a 20 meter radius, so even the lowest setting should be fine.

Once you've done that, hit okay to close the preferences dialog box. Now restart SL one more time. When you restart, it saves all those settings, and now if you should happen to crash, SL will be able to remember all the stuff you've just tweaked. You can continue to tweak the other sliders from here - adjusting detail levels as you see fit to get better or worse performance.

As an end to my long ramble, let me explain why I believe the crashes are happening. I think what's happening is that the SL viewer is overwhelming the video card. Normally when the drivers are working perfectly the program and the operating system work behind the scenes to keep that from happening, and at worst you just see lag within the game. But somewhere in the mix on the 8600 series, that is not happening properly. It doesn't matter whether you want to blame nVidia, Apple, or LL, the situation just is what it is right now. So by manually adjusting the settings, you can greatly reduce the amount of work the video card is getting thrown at it, and reduce the number of crashes you experience. It is expected that the 10.5.6 update will improve things on Apple's end in a big way, and the release notes on the 1.22 RC2 viewer seem to indicate that they're improving things for 8600M GT users.

Good luck!

Hi Trio,

Thanks a lot for your long text ... you surely worked a long time on it. Much appreciated.

i found everything and set it up ... and indeed with better results, i have FPS now form 3 to 15, averaging round 10 something.
But there is one thing ... do you have an idea why the slider for texture memory in the hardware options sets itself back to 48 each time after closing sl? I can set it to 128MB but only till i loggoff.

Thanks again for you time and efforts.
Jungle

Yes, I discovered that one recently. A user in another forum helped me figure out why that slider keeps bouncing (for different users the number is different).

In the Advanced Menu, choose Debug Settings. In the dropdown menu, choose RenderTextureMemoryMultiple. A setting of 1.0 means it can use a maximum of all your texture memory, a setting of .5 means it can use half, etc.

Please note, increasing this number could cause you to crash - so be careful, and be prepared to change the setting back if you run into problems.

Ideally you shouldn't use more than 50% of your total available texture memory. Because your computer is also running other things (whether that's a web browser, Photoshop, or just the desktop/finder.

So that uber-geeky debug setting acts as a limiter, and keeps you from accidentally going too far. If you change the slider to a number higher than the Texture Memory Multiple, it slides it back down. Hope that helps!

Hi there. I have the same MBP and experience similar problems. Also, if you look at post from yesterday on a different thread you can see I have found different problems altogether with the 8600M Graphics Card -- as in it does not render all the light sources in an area properly.