Something is awry

Whenever I'm on SL for a little while, my internet starts to fade out, and my music gets choppy. This doesn't happen with any other program. What's going on?

SL is big. It's eating up your resources. You're either running out or RAM, bogging your CPU, or running out of internet bandwidth. (^_^)y

Alright, well since I have a Mac, how can I fix these issues?

Start with specs. Log in to SL and click Help >> About Second Life, copy-paste the 'CPU' paragraph here on the forum and a few people here can toss you some guidelines. (^_^)

For example:
CPU: AMD (Unknown model) (3000 MHz)
Memory: 8192 MB
OS Version: Professional (Build 7100)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8600 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 3.0.0

(^_^)y

CPU: Dual i386 (Unknown) (2160 MHz)
Memory: 1024 MB
OS Version: Darwin 8.11.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.1: Wed Oct 10 18:23:28 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.25.20~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X1600 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 2.0 ATI-1.4.58

What kind of internet connection do you have? Cable, DSL, wireless?

You can check your download speed here:

http://www.speedtest.net/

If it seems low, contact your service provider.

You should probably check all the processes running on your Mac as well. Activity Monitor (?) might help with this. Shut down all the ones you're not using, like iTunes, word processors, etc etc. Anti-virus stuff will take up LOTS of CPU time.

Apparently I need a PC to do that Speed Test thing. I'm using DSL on a wireless connection. Again, this doesn't happen with any other programs I run other than SL.

This system SHOULD handle SL just fine except for 1 small thing.

1024 MB of RAM

I am betting if your net connection is good, the small amount of RAM is the problem. I'd suggest double that if not more (not sure how much the max is in your particular Mac).

Wait, how do I "double" RAM? Where would I start with that?

SL is notorius for not doing well with wireless. What happens if you try with a Wired connection?

what settings are you running in your preferences??
draw distances is a big vacuum..try reducing your settings in the graphics area and see if you are taxed less..

sl is well known for having memory leaks

IF its a Desktop model got to Apples website and look up the specs for your mac. It should tell you how much RAM it can take and which chips works. The go shopping for the chips. Open the machine and pop em in. (or if thats scary take the mac to your dealer and have them do it)

If its a laptop contact your dealer.

I've got everything on a pretty extreme low.

"
SL is notorius for not doing well with wireless. What happens if you try with a Wired connection?"

I've never tried it with a wire connection. Thing is that this issue is the worst I've gone through.

i never went wireless and it's still luck of the draw depending what day it is in sl lol

Also it happens on-and-off. I'll be in the middle of, say, a building project for a good few minutes, and then my music cuts out, and my bars fade. This will happen sporadically.

yes i get that a lot too on certain days

Mobin, if you can't do that speed test, then I think you might have problems bigger than just SL. I run a Mac and I have no problem with that speed test: it loads and tests immediately. I would contact your internet service provider.

I don't think I need to update my RAM or discontinue any of the programs I had running when I first got SL. The problem is ONLY in SL. I can have about 20 things going off at the same time and not experience anything.

It's a .exe, usually those are for PCs and such.

how much ram do you have already?

It's your call I can only tell you that 1 Gig of RAM is low for SL. It was low for SL 4 years ago and lower now. SL has a major Memory leak has had one for years.

VRAM (Total): 128 MB

Considering I don't have too much money, how much does expanding my RAM cost?

His/Her ram is 1 Gig and Vram is 128

Both are on the low side imho.

Look up what kind of chips you need then do some shopping online. RAM prices vary ALOT from one type to another. Even from one vendor to another.