New computer - new SL experience!

Not a question but it's likely to get some answers!!

From RL I hear that I have been watched from a brand new quad-core computer and that the improvement in performance is said to be staggereing. On the old comp movement is often jerky, even with a 64m draw distance, in my home sim. On new comp it was perfectly smooth with DD at 512m! But RL reduced it to 256m and sent me to some busy places, Amazing! - smooth animations including dances. I ended up by going to Sanctuary Rock - one of my favourite places but notoriously laggy because it's so popular. Still smooth movement with 256m draw distance although it did slow up a bit after I played about with camera angles but it went smooth again.

However, I did have a couple of crashes during the day.

Apparently the RL agency reports that Second Life has just become a whole lot more addictive now. But the main point I'm coming to is that quite a lot of the general moaning we hear in-world about SL and it's poor performance is probably nothing to do with LL but with users' own inadequate PCs.

The bad news is that the new computer mentioned above doesn't actually belong to my RL-er so they'll only be able to use it occasionally. So I'll still be able to be left in peace at least some of the time!

yes, some people might have settings exceeding their pc capabilities and blame it on LL, but, when items don`t rez, lag comes when it was lagless befor, chat not appearing, group IM`s timeout or just items dissapearing from inventory, that is NOT your computer

also the freezing alot of people get is traced back to the client as only SL freezes up, not the pc or any freezes in heavy graphic games

some can be blamed on the pc, but alot can be blamed on LL

We're saying the same thing. As I said. I crashed a couple of times from the new comp. Also yesterday an ear-ring wouldn't attach, so there are performance issues with SL, I'm just pointing out that a lot of people assume that their entire sub-standard SL experience is due to LL.

It's true! I have friend who recently joined and has a lower end Dell computer with a PCI graphics card and 1 MB memory. He can barely move in SL even with a draw distance of 64.

By contrast, my computer is barely a year old, with 2 MB memory and a PCIe card and I run around SL with my draw distance at 256 with minimal lag. The difference is HUGE. SL is unplayable on his machine until he can upgrade to a new one.

Ill agree that some performance issues are due to users inadequate hardware for SL. But before I can recommend anyone to run out and buy a new pc I suggest they first consider minor and less expensive upgrades to their graphics card and maybe some additional RAM. All you have to do is search the forum for ‘graphics card’ and you’ll find countless posts with suggestions.
I waited a full 6 months before I bought a new pc for SL and even then it was an inexpensive factory refurb. Still I couldn’t be happier with the difference it made over my old notebooks performance.

oops

then as said in my previous post but in shorter words, agreed with your first post

How shall we pronounce that? "Reller"? We could speak of our rellers like some people speak of their appendixes. Appendices? Anyway, a superfluous part that we could just as well do without, most likely. Or an annoying inconvenience.

"Sorry I was afk, but my reller had to go to the bathroom."

"My reller's been feeling poorly lately, so I didn't go to the party."

"The doctors took out my reller last week." (Eek, a bot!)

I thought 'ruhller' in my head...

I thought about doing this, but found out that it would actually not be much more for me to buy a new PC. I have a dell 8250, which was my husband's first. It's almost 5 years old, now, and I can't say I have an enormous amount of problems with SL while using the PC, but I would love to be able to have my draw distance up higher than 96 and be able to move freely. Since, overall, it's a very good computer, I figured I would add 2 gb of RAM and upgrade my graphics card. Well, it turns out that this particular dell model takes a one-of-a-kind memory, and to upgrade by only 512 mbs. more would cost me $250. And I want 2 gb's? Plus a new graphics card. Bah to Dell for making this difficult for me! For about $800, or a little more, I can get a brand new PC which has all the specs I want, just would need a more powerful vid card. I'm soooo ready to get it, but need to wait until next month. Sometimes, just upgrading isn't an option, unfortunately.

Good advice, except for people who bought low-end Dell computers that are basically un-upgradeable by design. Graphics card choices for PCI slots are pretty slim and we put the best we could find in already

It's not just your Dell model, it is most of their stuff. Their business model revolves around proprietary hardware so that you HAVE to go through them to upgrade and they limit your upgrade ability because they would rather you buy a new PC instead of upgrade your old one.

My original laggy computer and the super new one are both Dell, LOL!

Well, actually in SL I started making my own computer but couldn't be bothered to make a keyboard texture so I gave up! I wonder if anyone's put a streaming video of their RL onto a PC in-world and sat their avatar down in front of it to watch!

Talk about cornering their market. My husband has an Alienware (Area 51 model, maybe...not sure). It's almost 2 years old now, but only came with 1 GB of memory. He just purchased 2 gb's for $50. That's it!! Just about made me sick. However, in defense of Dell, he's had to totally reboot his Alien back to original state 3 times since he got it for weird, so-called one in a million errors. My dell is going pretty strong and I kind of begrudge having to buy a new one when the one I have works perfectly well. However, I enjoy SL and as it continues to change and grow, my poor 512 mb of RAM and 128 mb video card just won't be able to keep up. Since it will cost me about $700-$800 to upgrade, it's a better idea to just get a new one, I guess. Not planning on using Vista as an OS, though. Thank goodness there are models still available with XP. I know Vista can be "tweaked" to get a better performance without all the load, but I'm very non-technical and wouldn't even begin to know where to start.

I just got a quad-core Mac Pro, shortly before Christmas, and it is amazing in terms of performance.

Ditto.

coco

Long story, but my current computer is going away permanently next week. I expect a brand new one to arrive very shortly thereafter. I'm salivating. I can't wait, and I'm jealous of you people who already have yours. It's going to be so fast and shiny and pretty. I'm thinking about dropping out of RL for a couple weeks and just playing. OMG I can't wait!

I'm expecting delivery of my new 3ghz quad core computer in a couple of weeks. I can't wait! This thread is just making the wait even harder, hehe.

It is quite an astounding experience when one upgrades drastically. I began SL on my old G4 Powerbook, and had to turn everything down and still suffer horribly slow frame rates. When I bought a proper PC it was a revelation.

I am quite bitter that the iMac that I have now is still, in terms of SL performance, inferior to the PC, even if the iMac is a far superior machine for all other purposes. And SL performance under Linux is even more impressive. But hey ho.

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a P4 3.0 Ghz. It came with 512MB Ram and a Radeon x300. I paid around $400 for it on ebay. It suited my needs until I found SL, one of the updates back in March or so made SL unplayable for me. The Nicholaz viewer helped, but I added 2 GB of memory from Crucial.com for about $125. Big diffrence. SL has been stable since them with occasional hiccups. My video card is the weak link still, but I just had to buy a new printer, and am looking for a flat screen monitor so a video card will have to wait. For now, I am happy with the Nicholaz Old School Viewer.

Oh, I didn't say Dell was bad - they just make it incredibly difficult and expensive to upgrade existing systems. If you know what you are doing when you order, then you should be ok. It's when you order a system without planning for what you might need in the future where they nail you. Take a look through their support forums sometime - it's a real eye-opener.

the point is......that you shouldnt have to, have a "nasa computer" to play.

You really don't. I'm getting the new one for reasons totally unrelated to needing an upgrade, and I'm going for a pretty tricked out setup because I also play a lot of first person shooters, and for those, you really can't get away with a dated system. That genre requires more horsepower than the basic setup can give you. For SL you need a decent cpu, at least 1G of RAM and a 6600 series or better card. Yes, I said 6600. I've gotten SL to run on a computer with a 6600GT, 512Mb of RAM and a P4 chipset, although I think it was one of the later iterations of the P4. I can't remember which one exactly. It didn't run great, but it ran good enough. The RAM seriously needed an upgrade.

You don't need a NASA computer to run SL, but if you have one, it makes a HUGE difference.

you could likely play SL on an extremely lowend computer. however once you had in all those textures and extra polys you need a nasa computer.

for textures I think it's safe to say someone out there has a 1024 by 1024 pixel texture for their finger nails. that's a major performance eater people who create but don't take into consideration resource useage.

lol....... i guess it would. alot of people play on comps like you described...and some work great and some terrible.. if theres goin to be a min requirement to run Sl, then it should at least work to some degree.there shouldnt be so many things broken and yes a NASA computer would be great! if only i could afford one lol..
i can see LL working hard to fix things but i just wish they would hurry up..

*clutches my QuadCore with 2 x 720 MB RAM 8800 GTX SLId graphics cards with a death grip*

On the other hand, I feel that anyone should be able to access such technology as SL, but in reality, we need be mindful of progress. My understanding is that systems/software etc. cater to the latest proven tech. Remember when people made websites for 800 x 600 resolution? Not any more. Why? Newest purchases, and perhaps most of them, are for monitors capable of so much more. Tech solutions/systems/software can't cater to the older hardware tech, or there will be no progress... or incentive.

It's the age old leapfrog effect and tech conspiracy that keeps both software and hardware industries alive and well.