Graphic Card Wont Run SL

Ok so my graphic card wont run sl. I have tried everything. Is there another option such as a viewer that I dont know about? I am not sure what i can do short of buying a new computer and that is on the list but I cant yet afford to buy a new one yet. So if any one has an idea about me being able to log in to sl I would be so happy. I am really starting to miss all the problems that I took for granted. You know the random crashes, the unableness to tp at random times for no apparent reason. Uploading pictures to have them error out and not getting the 10lindens back you know those sort of things.

Are you sure it's just your graphics card? Maybe list your specs, so we can help a little better. It's probably possible to upgrade just the one component that's destroying your SL capability, for far less than an entire new computer costs.

What sort of card are you using. There are 3rd party viewers such as Cool Viewer and Nicholaz that will run SL quite well on lower end cards. I have a ATI X300 and use the Cool Viewer 1.19.5 and it runs quite well.

I am at work right now once I get home I will let you all know what the specs are. I tried the cool viewer and still got the error message. I will let you know
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ok so I have found out what my problem is

NVIDIA cards that report TNT2 do not run sl. at least thats what the web page says.

now is there a way around this?

Ohh, wow. Is your computer around 9-10 years old? I'm out of my league for guesstimating what's runnable, sorry... but it does seem likely that you'd have to upgrade your entire computer to run current SL with any reliability, rather than just graphics card, judging by the age of that chipset. Maybe you could manage something with a low-end client, but it's still iffy at best, I think. For a comparison... the GeForce 6600, the lowest end nVidia card listed in 'minimum requirements' came out 5 years after that, and still has a lot of trouble running SL in its current state.

I'm sure someone with better knowledge on the subject will post, though.

well its my kids computer but I have to use it since the mother board died on my laptop.

This chart from Tom's Hardware Guide lists graphics cards in order of relative performance:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2387-7.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2387-7.html

You will notice that Nvidia TNT is the absolute very bottom of the list.

My *old* computer had a Geforce 3 Ti200, which is in the 5th group from the bottom, and that could *barely* run second life, on the very lowest settings.

My two year old *new* computer uses a Geforce 7950GT (12th group from the top), and has no trouble running SL on high settings, and a second monitor besides.

The reality is Second Life generates 3D graphics in real time for your screen to display, and that requires a decent graphics card or chip to happen.

On the chart, "discrete" refers to having a separate card with it's own memory. "integrated" means the graphics is part of the motherboard chip set and shares the main computer memory. This is slower for two reasons, (1) it takes away part of your main memory, which is also needed for SL to run properly, and (2) main memory is slower than dedicated graphics memory.