A quick question before I get too far.

Hi, everyone. Before I get too far into this whole SL thing I think it's important that I ask this. Sometime last year I was forced to quit SL due to technical issues with the updates that Linden Labs was forcing everyone to get. At the time, if I remember correctly, Intel graphics chips weren't supported by SL at all, and as the updates rolled out SL kept causing my computer to crash. Just today, however, I decided to have a look at SL again and I see the Intel 945+ graphics cards are compatible with SL now.

So, out of curiosity, I decided to give SL another go. Now, I am not the most computer savvy person in the world. To get right to the point, I need to make sure that my graphics card is, in fact, compatible. When I opened my computer's device manager and found my monitor it says, under properties, 'Plug and Play Monitor on Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family'. Again, I'm no computer wiz, but if I'm reading this right SL ought to work, correct?

Thank you in advance for your time and any answers that you furnish.

You've identified your monitor (sort of), not your graphics card.

For your graphics card, go to Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Adapter. That will give you your graphics card.

If your monitor is identified as just 'plug and play monitor', you may want to see about installing drivers for your specific monitor.

But trying SL is free. Why not try it and see what happens.

in device manager it should say the chip of your display adapter under display adapter also..
it does mine..

Ah, okay. Following those steps it says:

Chip Type: Intel(R) GMA 950

Second Life does not, as far as I know, scan your chipset against a list of accepted or rejected graphics cards. Your experience with an integrated graphics solution such as yours will suck, possibly hard. But you should at least be able to get in and move around.

I have an Intel 915/910 adapter in my laptop. I don't have to much trouble and I haven't crashed in a long time.

950 you should be more than fine

Alright. Thanks for the assistance, everyone.

Why not just try it and see? It won't blow your computer up......either SL will work OK, or work badly or not work at all.

I hope SL does work OK for you - good luck!

Actually it blew mine up.

Yeah, me too. There really should be "required equipment specs" on *fans* for SL--especially for laptops. At the very least, every fresh viewer install should have a pop-up tell us to blow the dust bunnies out of the case.

Yep, my lappy overheats somethin' fierce on SL- especially the newer viewers. Some people have good luck with laptop "cooling pads" which are USB-powered platforms with fans that the laptop sits on. Awful for battery life, but I reckon most laptop users are plugged into AC anyway.

Everytime I download the newest version of SL, it tells me that my hardware or graphics card(or whatever..cant remember at this point)...but it says my system isnt compatible with SL. But..it still works just fine!!

just give it a try...ya never know..lol

Mack

Yeah, I think there's even a command line switch you can add to your SL shortcut to turn that off. It doesn't really mean anything.

Actually, the moniter is ON Mobile Intel(R) 945GM so yes, the video adapter is the Intel 945 and is currently supported. Valkyrie is 100% correct.

Actually it does. Thats why it displays the "Checking your Hardware" when you first start up. There is a file in the SecondLife Directory which contains what hardware is or isn't supported, it's called 'gpu_table.txt' Here's a sample of it:

But it doesn't prevent you from running the game. That's just for triggering the warning, right?

Yes, I guess I missed something in the thread. It doesn't prevent the viewer from running, but there's a good chance if the hardware isn't supported, it may freeze or crash.

I have a notebook that runs an Intel 945 and it's fine. It's not good for texture-intensive places but it works.

ETA: I run Nicholaz viewers. The official one ... good luck.