Video Card SL Benchmarking?

Hello.

I am in the process of upgrading my video card. Since I spend a lot of time working on SL, I need to know which cards work best with SL. I know the Lindens had a post last year with a list of video cards and which did better (I'll try to attach the picture of it, if you missed it)...but, that was a while back and probably outdated the moment they posted it. So, speaking of todays cards...which cards provide the best "Bang for the Buck"? I'm thinking since video cards are so important to SL (being a 3D environment after all), that some of the techie online would have been trading benchmarks like they do for another game/software titles. Where are the benchmarks for SL? Did I miss the thread in my search of these forums and google? If so, please direct me. If not...well, please add your thoughts. I'm looking at the high end cards (ex. 8800gt to 3870...both with Crossfire and not). I know that many other factors play into how SL runs...but, let's try to stick with the video cards only.
Btw, I have a 8800gt 256mb single now...but, thinking of moving up to a crossfire 3870 setup (since it would better match my phenom4x chip and board).
Thanks, I appreciate it!

Oh, here's the framerate blog post back in nov. 07: framerate post

Hi Seann,

Right now I run SL on a Dell XPS410, windows xp..... tons of memory and my video card is the nVidia GeForce7600.... I have never had problems with this card....SL has run beautifully for me....windlight, everything. I know there are newer cards out now with nVidia but I keep seeing posts about issues....so I'm sticking with my 7600 cause it's been great.

A few months ago on the Linden blog, there was a post about the card that ran SL best. I think it was one of the 8800 models, and not the top of the line either.

But that was like 6 months ago. An eternity in video card technology

My 8800 runs SL great... Or did until I upgraded to Vista.. As long as you are running XP then the Nivida 8800 series is very good.. If you are running Vista then pretty much nothing can be recomended at this time.. SL is an OpenGL application and as such is not really supported by Vista.. Some users have no problems at all, and others (like me) have nothing but problems.. So your mileage may vary.

Lizz

thanks for the replies so far. Lizz, so I did some quick qoogle searches on vista opengl performance and it seems your right...but only for windowed SL play (since it's vista's aero that's the big problem). I'm thinking (though can't prove) that full screen SL 'should' not take a hit on Vista. Here's a doc straight from opengl people themselves: http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/. Btw, i'm running Vista 64bit...so, that's another factor. I refused to give up my extra bit of memory to the 32bit memory's 2gig limit issue And a side note, I would be still a MAC user if Jobs didn't price his top video card models 5x the PC market price 'and' SL supported Mac's better Vista 64 is so much trouble compared to Mac's Leopard 64bit. Oh well, the world isn't perfect. So, anyone running SL on Crossfire cards? Any performance boost from running two cards to one for SL in specific? Thanks.

If SL is your *only* concern, a single card with 1GB RAM is prolly the way to go. Crossfire/SLI etc might conceivably give you 80FPS sitting perfectly still. Soon as you try to move around the weakest link will not be the GPU. Especially if you spend any time walking around malls, 1GB texture cache will give SL what it craves the most. If you play any other games tho, the opposite is unfortunately true. Most "off the shelf" games currently don't expect nor know what to do with 1GB VRAM. Because of the heterogeneous content creation, SL is an exception.

thanks Vampaerus and others. So, if the Video cards memory plays a big part...this might be why my 256mb 8800gt seems a bit slow. I know most are 512mb... So, question if you know it: does SL place the textures, etc into VRAM first...then hard disk? And if your VRAM memory is all used up...will it then go to the slower disk cache? I'm thinking this might be what's happening to me...since my smaller 256mb VRAM is being used up fast (plus, I run in Vista Aero windowed sometimes, which it seems to add to the problem)...then it goes to my slower hard disk cache. Looks like a 1gig VC 3870 (so I can crossfire it later when prices come down...currently 250 for one card) might be my best solution...since I don't play games as much as work on SL. Thanks!

just this week Nvidia published new drivers for Vista and the 8800 cards. I had been using it while it was beta and never a problem.

GeForce Release 175 WHQL 175.16 May 13, 2008

I thought I would throw this out to see if anyone knew the answer as well (I know, I'm full of questions!): Doing Crossfire ATI Cards; does two 512mb cards provide more VRAM than one 512mb card and/or one 1gig card? I've seen that with most games/software crossfire just uses the gpu of both cards to speed things up (same with SLI)...but, it doesn't actually double the VRAM. BUT, how about in SL where textures are so important to performance? Will two cards be better than one? Does anyone have an answer or idea about this? You'd think Linden Lads would have a person testing their software on different cards and combos and provide this information to the public to better everyone's experience...humm...there I go again, expecting too much! thanks!

Textures should cashe at 3 levels: VRAM, system RAM, HDD. But because every different piece of content in SL is made by someone else, using their own textures, there really is no good pool of commonly used textures to effectively utilize VRAM so it gets swamped. So yeah a 256 card is nearly invisible since it needs to keep loading textures thru system RAM for nearly every frame. Mine is a 256 so I do not personally know how much if any 512 alleviates this problem. At 1GB I would hope most of it gets to stay put and is not constantly being swapped out. SLI/Crossfire does not pool the VRAM . Each GPU needs it's own high speed on board texture cache. So come to think of it, it might actually put twice the burden on sys RAM making matters worse. A single 1GB would be far better than 2x 512 (strictly speaking for SL).

My 2 cents: Search the forums for Benchmarking posts by me.

Thanks all...I think I'm going to wait until AMD comes out next month with the newer 4800 series...and get one of those...or see it the current 3800 series is discounted (it should). And look at a 1gig Vram version.

was just pricing a couple cards myself, and noticed something else which should be mentioned here. Any of the cards that end in "X2" or similar have 2 GPU's on a single card. So while the *card* may have 1GB RAM on it, it has that same 512 per GPU problem. For alot of the gamers out there this is essentially SLI without the hassle which is great. For SL in specific, it wouldn't show much difference over any other 512 so it would be wasted money.

Ahh, thank you thank you thank you! I've been looking for confirmation of this (which I suspected must be so, with all the continuously user-updated content) like crazy. There are hardly any 'proper' SL benchmarks anywhere and when people talk about their cards' performance no-one mentions VRAM size at all (not even LL, in that blog post about comparative GPU performance). I just knew it had to be important!

OK, so between a 256-MB DDR3 HD3650 and a 512-MB one I should definitely get the latter, without worrying that I'd be throwing away the difference money. (That's what most gamers warn you against, because most games don't really do much with VRAM beyond the first 256 megs. Except, it seems, Second Life and something called "PT Boats: Knights of the Sea", which showed an exact doubling of framerate between 256-MB and 512-MB cards.)

Seann a few months back I upgraded video cards, as I access from from 2 locations 2 needed. At the time it was said the top Nividia 8800 was best but it was very expensive, allmost value of the PC. The next best was 7900 and more resonably priced, so I got that. The other PC is AGP connection and only one I found to fit was the 7600. Both PCs doing what I want from SL very well, I use the RC viewer as well.
I now believe there are 9000 series so it might be 8000 series prices dropped.
I not an expert, but it was said to me for the 8000 series the power from power unit should be checked, and upgraded if neccessary.
Love
June

I was going to ask pretty much the same question, as I'm upgrading the desktop to play Age of Me anyway. I've settled on an 8600 though; best I can afford at the moment.

Just thought I would post my experience over a very recent major computer upgrade that is specifically aligned with what is being discussed on this thread.

I had been tossing around the idea of upgrading from my high end ATI card to an Nvidia card. I was planning on going with two 512mb Nvidia cards in SLI mode, but because of this very post, I purchased a single 1 GB card instead.

Based on other threads addressing ATI vs Nvidia, I had expected to be pleasantly floored with eye candy that I had never seen before, and based on this thread, I also expected to be floored by cache performance with using 1 GB of VRAM.

Well, I was not floored at all. Here is what I upgraded from:

an AMD 64 4400+ (2.2 ghz) CPU, with 2 GB of system ram, and an ATI x1950 512mb VRAM

to

an AMD X2 5900+ (2.9 ghz) CPU, with 4 GB of system ram (though windows xp only recognizes 3 GB), and an Nvidia 9600GT 1GB VRAM

With my new system there is not one spec of eye candy to be found over the old system, and there is no noticeable speed increase to texture loading. And just yesterday I experienced one of those uncontrollable 'fly, fly and fly till you crash' crashes, so it appears nothing has changed in that department either.

All that said, I don't regret this upgrade at all, even though I only did it for SL and no other reason. I am very sure if I somehow benchmarked 'stuff' it would be leaps and bounds better with my new system, but day to day I just don't feel it. Though I think eventually I'll run across something that will be noticeably better with the new video card - but I've only been playing with the new system for 3 days now.

Your mileage can and probably will vary, but I do highly recommend to not upgrade from a good ATI or Nvidia card to a better Nvidia card and expect miracles. Low end or old ATI to Nvidia is probably a night and day upgrade however.

P/S actually I just remembered that there is one thing that I did notice was better with my new system. Multiple SL clients. I was able to run sluggishly though usably with all 6 of my alts logged on at the same time this morning lol! I might have been able to get 3, maybe 4 with my last system before client freeze ups and crashes - but this is a silly benchmark anyway because who needs 6 avatars at the same time? Not me anyway...

In this instance, I think a lot could be said about your upgrade being to a "better" card. After all, the x1[95]0 is a high-end card, while the 9[6]00 is mid-range. If the SL client is such that it doesn't make much use of the generational enhancements made since ATi's x1??? series, you may have just gotten yourself a significant speedup with the double RAM size and then struck it back down by the switch from high-end to mid-range card (I don't know what the respective clock frequencies of those cards are, but you should take that into account).

I'm going to switch from nVidia 7300GT/256 to ATi HD3650/512, so I definitely expect a visibly improved experience.

I agree that the ATI was a high end card not long ago at all, and that the Nvidia is a mid-range card now, but I do think if comparing apples to apples the Nvidia card today is a better (though obviosly not much). The Nvidia card is clocked at 120 MHZ higher on the processer, and 400 MHZ faster on the memory, for which it has double of as well. But since I also doubled the system ram, and increased the system processer by 1000 mhz (I over clocked the 2.9 to 3.1), so I expected that all this together would give me a decent boost.

I'm willing to bet that if i were to pull out the 9600 right now and put in the biggest and baddest nvidia 9800 that I still would not *feel* much of an increase in performance...

Well that, of course, depends on what feeling you were getting to begin with. Mine stutters like all Hell if I try to run it in 1440x900 and is barely acceptable in 800x600, so pretty much any upgrade should cause significant changes in the experience right now. You, OTOH, may be up at the plateau. (After all, if your LCD monitor only refreshes the image at 60 Hz, it's perfectly useless to try to squeeze more than 60 FPS out of your video card.)

In my experiance the Video card makes little difference in how SL runs, any "modern" card will do .. your internet connection is a much much more important factor as 95% of what you see on your screen is streamed to you.

I play on 4 different computers in our house, they range from a Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0ghz. with 8 gigs of ram with a 8800GT 512 meg down to a Athalon 2.5+ Barton with 2 gigs of ram and a 7600GT (agp) and I see very little performance difference between them.

If I load up a more modern game yes then I can see a marked difference between the performance of the machines.. but dont forget SL was designed in 2001-2002 when a GeForce 2-TI200 with 128 megs was considered hot.

I recently switched from ADSL (2.0gig/sec) to Cable (5.0gig/sec) and that made a huge difference on SL's performance... on all the machines.

We've got fiber in our house and I'm expecting a huge jump from my ATI x1300 on the dual Athlon/1gb RAM to the quad-core Intel with 4gb ram and the nvidia 8800GT. And it's on the truck today, going to pick it up tonight! woo!!

Cristalle, are you using Vista? I am upgrading as well and ordered 4gb ram but I'm using XP which I understand will only see/use 3gb.

Would love to see how your system turns out; do post more about it.

Having fiber optics 100MBPS UP AND DOWN ( over 2 years now ) and a ( for me a AMD 6000+ 125watt) and 7900 gtx 512 extreme with xp pro with 4 giga of DDR2.......The frame rates are pretty good. been running this computer for over 1 year.....But when the game is broken on LLAB side its worth nothing. You still see grey missing textures, etc etc etc etc etc..........

Not surprising. Your "old" machine was overkill for SL. But we were originally discussing theoretical benchmarks. Benchmarks are a way of doing quantitative analysis on something you can't easily see ("feel". What is your FPS on each machine? What is your draw distance? In a crowded area the 1GB should support a larger draw radius before the FPS takes a hit.

The OP was asking about benchmarks, you are discussing "good enough". What is good enough is a whole 'nother debate.