Is this a problem with my video card or...lagg induced?

Since the last update, I have been experiencing something rather frustrating...

When I go into a sim with more than a dozen or so AVs, the prims and textures on my screen get incredibly distorted. Most times, they take over the whole screen and I literally cannot see in front of me.

For instance, someone's shoes might get distorted (zig zags and long lines coming out of them) and next thing I know, the colors from the shoes take over and I am effectively blind.

This only happens in heavy traffic areas.

Any ideas?

I've not encountered that precise kind of graphical corruption as you but my first line of defence if suspecting performance is to teleport to another place. Sometimes just one server seems to be playing up.
Have you checked your video card against the SL website system requirements?
How about driver update?

Are there easy ways to do those things? Admittedly, I have not checked drivers.

System requirements: http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php
Driver is a stab in the dark - can't really see an SL update making a driver unstable.

I think I may have found the issue - my video card is ATI Radeon x300...sounds like that might be older than recommended?

ah, might be it. I had a Radeon 7500 when I started. I upgraded to a 9550 - so much better and didn't break the bank

How easy is it to upgrade a video card?

Weird... From your description, it almost sounds like "Smearing". That's where a certain object or texture "forgets" to remove itself when it updates, so if you move the camera or the object moves in your point of view, you get a smooth smear made up up hundreds of copies of the unremoved item. The more you look around the more copies of it fill up your screen until you cant see.
If that's what it's doing then that could be caused by drivers not being up to date, or heat.

If it doesn't do it all the time (in low-traffic areas too), and doesn't do it in other games, I would probably try to update the video card drivers and DirectX and see if it still does it.
If it still does it, I would clean the video cards heatsinc with a can of compressed air and get rid of the dust build up.

EDIT: Ahh x300... heavy rendering.. it's struggling. Clean the dust off of the card and lower your draw distance in the games videos preferrences section.. that should hopefully help.

Thanks, Dana. What should I lower draw distance to? It's at 64 now.

I think it may be heat...and dust that is not helping.

HI, typically heat build up is the cause for artifacts like that, and also rendering errors. That can happen when the video card builds up with dust, the computer case gets too hot, when your game throw too much work at it, or when it's overclocked (set to run faster than manufacturer specs).
If your draw distance is set at 64, there's not much lower you can go... try also lowering the texture detail sliders, avatar detail sliders.. that kind of thing. If you can lower some of them and get it to NOT do that funky error then you'll know for sure that the game is pushing the video card too hard. You CAN play with lowered details, but it'll probably look ugly. Try that and see... The only REAL fix if you have to lower it so much you cant live with it is to get a newer video card.

Instructions that came with my card were very clear if you do take the upgrade option:

remove present display from control panel\system, power off, replace AGP/PCI card with new one, reconnect, power on, stop Windows trying to install drivers*, run CD that comes with card, go to website and check for even newer driver.
At * Windows didn't prompt me for a reply and just flew through installing what IT wanted LOL. Can't complain though - it worked

If your video is in a PCI-e or AGP slot, then it is pretty easy.

this sounds EXACTLY like the problem I started having with my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP for those who care)

lemme see if I have a screenshot. Nope.. But it was annoying.. huge giant triangles, flickering constantly.. that would stretch from the center all the way to the outside edge of the screen. sometimes zooming out a bit would help.. but not often. Tended to be textures off flexi items that would do this most often... but it was.. INSANE.

Started off small and annoying.. once or twice a day.. but then got to the point where it was constant, nearly every time. When I pulled the card out of my computer, it was scalding hot.

Frankly, I'm willing to bet that this is some kind of overheating issue with the 3d accelerator. Probably JUST my card.. not a flaw in the design.. but I'm pretty sure that that card's 3d parts are burned beyond recognition.

Funny though, I can use it as a video card for other programs just fine.

ATi cards are not fully OpenGL compliant. You'll get artifacting even with the more recent cards. Best solution is to not use ATi to run SL (or any application that uses OpenGL).

Oddly, my ATI 9600 SE (a lesser card than the 9800 pro) runs SL perfectly fine.

"this sounds EXACTLY like the problem I started having with my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP for those who care)"?
Oh? I occasionally have this kind of distortion happen with my Radeon 9800 XT.
It usually seems to happen when I resize the window.
Huge polygons all over the place, distorted horribly from whatever's in the world.

What I do to fix it is go to preferences, Adv. Graphics, and uncheck AGP (then, if I feel like having a higher framerate, re-check it).

Well Dell is replacing my whole system as they believe it is heat-induced. So we shall see

OP, this happens to me. It is an issue with your graphics card. It happens on two of my three pcs, which do not have graphics cards supported by SL. My third pc has a Radeon Xpress X200 which performs flawlessly. My notebook uses the ancient intel 82830M integrated gpu, which technically should not work at all on SL - it does, but the textures of my own avatars skin and clothes fluctuate (the funniest thing I have ever seen is when my own face appears on my ass, I laughed so hard I nearly died).

I'm running a X300 and not having much problem. Of course, I make sure that the drivers are up to date. ATI has their 6.10 drivers out now. *snickers* I do have a lot of useless things turned off or down as low as I can and still play, say, like particles and draw distance.

Istarted having this very same problem with my ATI Radeon 9800 a few months ago after 3 years of no problem with it in SL. I don't have this rendering problem with any other program nor do I have this problem with SL on other machines with other cards.

I then noticed that I began seeing window artifacts on my desktop when I purchased a flat screen monitor so I reduced my hardware acceleration in windows system tools. That eliminated the desktop artifacts but my SL screen rendering really still to hell when I resize my SL window. The only way I can correct it is to relog.

Sounds to me like a lot of these issues people are having might simply be dust build up in the videocard's heatsinc, or poor airflow thru the case, or a combination of both. I've known people to have never cleaned the dust out of a system they've had for like 5 years, and then call me up wondering why their processor is smoking or they cant play their favorite game anymore...

Well that makes, Dana. But some questions:
1) How does one increase air flow?
2) How the heck do I get to my heatsinc?
3) Should I really be opening up my notebook and shooting compressed air through it?

These may very well be dumb questions...but I honestly don't know

Editing because I should add that Dell is sending me a whole new notebook as a result of the heat issues I was having anyway. Hopefully, the new one will work better...

I was really referring to desktop machines as that's still the big majority that people use for gaming.
In answer to those question for a notebook:
1. You dont in a notebook. Some have replaced the cooling fan with a better higher-powered one, but then you risk burning out the fan header as those are only rated for X number of miliamps/volts.
2. Typically notebooks have "trapdoors" on the bottom of the unit. They usually hide things like the cpu and heatsinc, memory slots (for upgrade), and some have doors for the video unit (usually only if the video unit is upgradeable).
3. Not if you aren't comfortable with it! For my notebook, i actually use a pair of micro plastic tweezers to pull the clumps of dust out of the heatsinc. This is because I dont like the idea of blasting dust out and into enclosed areas of my laptop that i cant readily clean.
Desktops are a totally different matter... blast away.

If your getting a replacement then all is good. It might be of benefit to open up those little trapdoors and make note of whats in there, for future referrence. The day may come that you'll need to pop one of them covers off and carefully clean some dust out.

of course.. I run with the sides off my case. Dust is not nearly much of an issue.. and as for airflow.. it has TONS.

I made an adjustment to my settings that seems to be helping this graphics problem.

In the windows control panel, system properties, performance, advanced button, I reset my selection to " adjust for best performance." This eliminated all the fancy windows effects and now I am not getting the artifacts and graphics deterioration problems that I had previously.

Let me know if this helps you too.