Computer Recommendations

I'm new to SL, and totally besotted with it, but my older computer (which was never intended for gaming) crashes every five minutes some days, and makes me rebake textures 10 times a day.

It's just not up to this.

When I go out shopping soon for a new machine, are there any brands/configurations that work particularly well with SL, and are there any I should avoid considering?

Thanks!

it seems that the most important thing is to make sure that your video card is supported fully. The list is at http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php

After that it seems lots of video memory and computer memory are good.

I'll leave it up to the more geeky types to give you more specifics...

<looks around for geeky types>

Like everything in the computing world, what is cutting edge today, will be junk tomorrow, well almost.
Buying a computer platform that you can upgrade components, rather that an enclosed system that requires you to throw it away rather than upgrade, or be very expensive to upgrade, would be my advice.
If you need to upgrade the Graphics Card, its a relatively easy swap, same with memory and HD's etc. The only thing to be aware of, is the Motherboard. Most come supplied in a system, that only has limited, if any, upgradeability for memory speeds, and slots such as PCI-Express. As one user found out, their systems motherboard by Dell, came with a PCI-Express slot which was only rated at 4x and not the standard 16x speed.

Laptops are classed generally as Enclosed systems, as their upgradability is potentially limited or non-existent.

I always advise anyone to actually go and try any keyboard, mouse and screen at a shop, then go and buy the one they prefer from the internet to get a better deal.

Power supply, go for one rated at 700watts or greater. For those that want to protect their investment, get a Uninterupted Power Supply unit, that can encompass all power outlets to both the system box and monitor, and the connection to the internet (telephone line, if required).

I've never seen any evidence that people need huge amounts of extra wattage from their power supplies. Your average user's systems today don't consume more than about 350W at peak load. 700W+ is really only needed if you're running a really power-hungry configuration (high-end graphics SLI configuration, RAID, overclocking, multiple fans, etc.)

I'd generally say 450W or 500W is going to be more than enough for your typical SL-capable machine.

First, Ableskivers are delicious. Warm little balls of fried pancake batter with apple butter. Mmmmm....

Second, Freyja is right that initially you will probably not need more than 400W, to 500 or so, depending on your equipment specs.

If you can swing it, though, go for more. The difference in price between a 400w power supply and a 600-700w power supply isn't much, and, like AWM said, you don't want to have to scrap the system and buy a new one every time you want to upgrade. Having extra power gives you the ability to upgrade later without replacing your power supply. The motherboard is key. Swapping video cards, adding RAM, etc. is no big deal. Swapping motherboards because your old one doesn't support the newer equipment you want to run is a giant PITA. New motherboards are expensive, and you basically have to disassemble and rebuild the computer from scratch to swap them. It's about as major a project as you can do.

You should seacrh these forums.

This question gets asked all the time.

The one piece of advice I'd offer is resist the temptation to go for the "latest and greatest." That means don't buy a system that uses any "Rev A" parts, particularly the motherboard. You'll always be better off and have far less headaches going with last year's model. I just bought a new system and really wanted to get the new Intel Yorkfield quad core chip due to it's lower power consumption and heat output. That made me not follow my own advice and I bought a system with a motherboard that was released in November. My reward has been 4-5 IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL blue screens a day. I've spent the last two weeks trying to figure out the problem and have pretty well exhausted all the options. I'll most likely have to send it back for a refund before my 30 days expire. Needless to say it hasn't been a very fun experience. Don't make the same mistake.

here's my 2 geek lindens

get at least 2GB of RAM especially if you're forced to get windows vista.

get at least 128MB to 256MB of video memory. i prefer nvidia video cards over ati video cards myself but check out the link to that list of supported cards and you can decide for yourself. if you do go with nvidia then get a card with the second digit beginning with a 6 or higher. for instance i would get a 7600 over an 8200 if i couldn't get an 8600 card.

if you get a laptop then make sure you get a dedicated video card. don't get any of that shared video memory stuff.

the more RAM you have and the more video RAM you have the better your experience will be in SL. barring any bottleneck issues with your internet connections.

gl with your new purchase. i can't recommend any brands out there because i usually build my own systems.

Chip, not to derail the thread, but I'd be willing to bet your problem is that the CPU is overheating. What kind of cooling do you have on it? And how open-aired is your case?

In my experience, cooling is where way too many "high end" computer makers tend to drop the ball. In most cases, they either make the cases too sealed off, block the air flow with sloppy wiring, use inadequate cooling hardware, or any combination of the three. Needless to say, I've learned about this the hard way.

When I bought my current machine, I spent extra money to have them put in a fancy liquid cooling system, under the mistaken impression that liquid cooling was better than air. What I found out was just the opposite. After the liquid system leaked (thank God the machine was off at the time), I ripped it out and put in a big Zalman 9500 fan, which basically a big copper bloomin' onion with a fan in the middle, amazing heat dissipation.

Not only is the Zalman actually quieter than the radiator fan that had been on the liquid system, but I've now got more room inside the case, and the whole machine runs a good 10 degrees cooler now than it did originally.

For $50-60, and about an hour or two of work to install it, you might want to give one a try. I think the Yorkville chips are socket 775, right? If they are, you should be able to use the same model fan that I'm using. If there's a CompUSA near you, they stock them, or of course you can order one online. http://www.sharkacomputers.com/zacn95ledcpu.html

Also, you'll find that simple wire ties can work wonders. If the manufacturer did a sloppy job, you can have wires just haphazardly strung all over the place. This blocks air flow, not good. It's well worth it to spend a couple dollars on some Velcro ties, and bring some order to all that chaos. Neatly bunch the wires together as best you can, and tie them well out of the way of air intakes. I've seen your website, so I know you know a little bit about air flow. I doubt you'll have much trouble figuring out what to do.

Oh, by the way, if you do try the Zalman 9500, I've got two words of caution. One, be careful touching those copper fins. They can cut you if you're careless. Two, you'll find that the fan sits a bit loose on top of the CPU. That's OK; it's supposed to do that. Resist the temptation to try to figure out how to tighten it down. When I first installed mine, I thought I'd done something wrong since the fan was able to move around a little. It feels a little scary when you can grab the fan housing and physically slide it around in the thermal grease on top of the CPU, but for whatever reason, they did designed it that way on purpose, I found out. That little bit of freedom of movement is intentional. I don't know why.


Another possibility is you've got a bad memory stick or a bad memory socket on the motherboard. Try downloading Memtest, and let it run overnight. It's generally pretty good at pinpointing the right trouble spots. http://www.memtest.org/

Good luck.

Just like racing cars:
Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?

Hi Chip

Did you get the Asus Striker Extreme motherboard eventually? If so, it is notoriously fussy about the RAM modules it has in it, even if it is listed on ASUS's QVL for that motherboard (which I assume you have).

I had the exact same BSoD with my Striker Extreme until I returned the original RAM modules and replaced them with paired & sequentially numbered modules (both types were on the QVL.)

After that the BSoD went way, and after a few more tweeks, runs like a dream...gl

I'm a simple woman, with simple needs. I want to stop crashing, I want to stop lurching into walls and people, I want to stop turning colors and having to rebake textures, I want the background to show up that day. Anything more would be gravy.

Although now that you mention it, it would be nice to have room to play and grow....

This place kind of sucks you in...

Thanks for the advice, Chosen and Debbie. Chosen, I thought heat was my problem when I first looked at the cpu temp shown in the bios. It was hitting 75-80 degrees C. Then I downloaded the latest version of CoreTemp and it showed the individual cores running just 30-40 degrees C (but the t junction temps on those quad cores is rather insane, like 105 degrees). The ambient board temp is around 26 degrees. So after all that I don't think heat is the issue. I got the CoolerMaster Cosmos case which has very good air cooling and I had them add a heavy duty heatsink on the CPU. If there's one thing I love about the computer it's that case.

Debbie, I still think RAM might be the issue. It tests without errors in memtest86 and the windows memory checker utility. I ended up getting the P5N-T Deluxe motherboard. Lots of people had problems with it until the latest bios release which seems to have fixed most people's problems (except mine). I'm running the RAM as a DDR pair, but they aren't sequential and the Asus QVL doesn't officially support them that way (but weirdly will support two pairs of this ram as two dual pairs). Originally I had 3 1 gig chips configured as single channel, then tried two as single channel, and even one by itself. The same crashes persisted. The timings are set manually to the specs from the SPD.

I've also tried running just a single graphics card and running with network and sound disabled to no avail. Humorously there were two crash dumps in the minidump folder from before it was shipped to me.

Right now I've just set AI overclocking to 5% and have been running stable for about six hours. I think it's waiting for me to get psyched that maybe I've found a stable configuration before it goes "hah! Sucker."

edit: fixed a typo. t junction temp is 105 degrees, not 150.

Oh, you're overclocking? That could be the problem right there. It's possible things are just out of sync. The processor could be talking faster than the memory is configured to listen, for example. Overclocking stably isn't as easy as those "intelligent overclocking" labels on motherboard packaging would have people believe.

I should have thought of this, actually, since I've experienced similar problems myself. My machine, which had originally been "factory overclocked", used to experience random restarts and bluescreens all the time until I turned off the overclocking altogether. I don't know enough about how all the various voltages and timings are supposed to work harmoniously to feel confident setting up for stable overclocking by hand, and I know the so called "intelligent" software tends to screw it up too, so I don't try to mess with it anymore. Regular speed works.

It wasn't overclocked before at all. I don't know squat about it either and it wasn't something I intended to do at all. I'd read comments from someone else in the Asus forums saying that they couldn't get their system stable until they overclocked it by ten percent so figured it was worth a shot since I've tried just about everything else. Going on about twelve hours now without a BSOD. If it stays up overnight without me waking up to a one I might even start being optimistic.

Wow, that's really weird, Chip. I guess you were right. You really have tried everything at this point. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. It sounds like that particular board likes to behave strangely.

Thanks, Chosen. I know you had a lot of issues with yours when you got it and I got mine from the same VAR, knowing I was taking a chance. I figure if I can fix it myself in 1-2 weeks then it was worth it for the money saved. If I have to return it at least it's been very educational. It's been years since I've had to muck about in the bowels of a computer and things have changed a whole lot since then.

Warranty is very important on a new system. Store warranties tend to be bad and a lot of trouble. You really can't go wrong getting a Dell or Alienware with extended warranties, or some of the other custom system makers you see advertising in Game magazines. For the money and level of components I find Dell to be the best deal with most committed warranty.

Skimping on a computer or warranty is often a big mistake. Buying from a local store is often a mistake. A mid priced Dell is fine, but avoid "integrated graphics" and get at least 1 gig and even 2 gigs RAM. I prefer to go Intel rather then AMD processors.

If your machine can run the torture test of prime95 for a half hour it's probably okay thermal-wise. Version 25.5 tests all cores simultaneously. It's much more conclusive than not crashing for a day under normal load. It's a very tough test.

Reflecting my own experiences...

Going from 1 to 2Mb of RAM reduced my number of crashes by a couple of orders of magnitude.

A GeForce 7900GS gives a better frame-rate on SL than a lot of people I talk to, but it could definitely be better. How much better is *needs* to be is a matter of taste.

My connection seems to be the biggest bottleneck in my system; once textures are downloaded, everything goes OK. Unfortunately it's the one thing I can't do much about.

Expandability is a valuable asset in a PC and worth paying a bit extra for. Check for a motherboard that will accept a faster processor, a case with enough space & sockets for newer graphics cards, and a PSU with enough grunt to run them.

Whatever you do, there are times when SL doesn't keep up. Even people running gaming machines thrice-blessed by John Carmack & cooled by cheetah blood experience lag on SL in busy sims.

As soon as I saw you mention an ASUS Motherboard, I thought I'd ask- What about the RAM? Asus boards tend to be finicky with different brands of RAM.

Not to mention sunspots and microwave ovens in use nearby. The RAM is being used in a config not officially supported in the QVL, but right now it's more stable than when it was set up in a way this particular RAM is certified for. I still think RAM may be a factor but probably due to it being under or over-volted by the board. As long as I keep this tinfoil wrapped around my left arm and keep facing north I think I might be okay now (knock on wood).

Don't forget to test with SuperPi also. Prime is great for the thermal stress, but I find SuperPi a great test for the stability of the memory system. I've has this system crash on SuperPi, but never on Prime95. But that is only because the slight memory issue with my P5E3 & the DDR3 at the moment.

I have a Dell Laptop (XPS 1710) and it run SL like a DREAM... Sometimes I swear it runs faster on XP and that system then my Desktop running Vista and a QX9650 @ 4Ghz. Maybe it's just because I have less crud on there

OMG! I'm in a similar boat. QX9650 here and I get a those crashes. I swear it either the Ram, or Video card or a combination of the two because I can run the CPU stock and it still does the same. I will note i've got it down to every couple days now that it happens. Usually I get nvlddmkm errors indicating an issue with the video card.

It is an Asus board though. I'm not sure if it doesn't like the ram.

I've heard of everything from bumping RAM voltage to Disabling Legacy USB support fixing peoples problems...

-edit-
Excuse my 3 replies, I really should have combined it into one.