Time for upgrade

My current system came off the arc last year, and the times they are a changing. Im looking to upgrade to Q6600 2.4ghz and splash out on the GTX 280 1GB. Am running E6700 and 8800GTS card ........ any advice on this would be greatly appreciated as I wish to optmimise my system for SL.

According to my Resident Geek, the video card and the amount of RAM you have will probably have the most effect on SL performance. He still likes the 8800GTS, and wants to tap the family credit card for another 2GB of RAM to bring it to 4.

RAM is in a price slump so now is a good time to grab some cheap.

Might be a silly question but can you have too much RAM for your computer? Like I have an extra slot will it hurt anything to put more in then?

Bec

GTX280 will make it impossible to change clothes until http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7957 is fixed, (the workaround posted is highly cumbersome) because without the 177 version of Nvidia drivers it just won't work.

If you're using a 64bit version of Windows (64 bit XP is kind of rare, Vista may be 64bit or may not be - check your system) or Linux, more RAM can never hurt, though it depends on whether your motherboard can take more RAM. (An empty slot does not necessarily mean it can - check the motherboard manual for details.) Otherwise, Windows will not be able to use more than about 3G depending on your settings.

I am running XP32 with 4gig ram, previously 2 gig. The upgrade did improve SL performance.

Well for the too much ram question, it depends on the operating system bit wise. If you are running 32bit windows, do not bother going over 3GB or Ram, you are just wasting the rest. Windows 32bit operating environment can only make use of 3GB of ram even if it detects more. For 64bit windows you max out 8GB of ram. Though I am not sure if the most up to date MotherBoards have more than 4 ram slots yet, given that I only know of 2GB DDR2 sticks this may in fact be a hardware limitation, and the 64bit windows environment may be able to address more yet there is not enough physical room for more ram.

I have had this from time to time with current setup, whereby when changing clothing, I see the original ..... only after a restarting the SL client do I see the new clothing.

An E6700 and 8800GTS aren't hacking it for you? You have some pretty high standards.

I doubt SL is CPU bound by that processor. I'd see what a new video card would do before replacing the CPU.

Edit: Since SL isn't optimized for multiple cores yet, the Q6600 may actually be a downgrade from an E6700.

ok came home for lunch.

in my system properties it says AMD Athlon 64 processor. So then I have 64 right? Currently have 2 gig in there from looking at the properties. So I am safe to get more ram?

Bec

Not necessarily, 32 bit versions of Windows run on 64 bit processors and will tell you what processor you have, but won't use all of their capabilities. If it doesn't say something like "Windows XP Professional x64" or "Vista x64" (or whatever the 64 bit version of Vista says, I don't know) your system is not 64 bit.

But either way it can handle and use one more gigabyte of RAM, and your motherboard is not likely to let you add more than that if you only have one slot left. Check the limitations of your motherboard in it's manual, there is no good way to know otherwise.

thanks!! My brother has a 1 gig stick he wants to put in there so we shall see


Bec

Just as an FYI, I'm running Vista Home Premium, and in Control Panel > System (for the version I'm running) it simply states -

System type: 32-bit Operating System

- under the Manufacturer, Model, Rating, Processor and Memory (RAM) section. So it's as clear as it can possibly be.

I just picked up a laptop as mentioned in another post, with the 8800GTS. So far it is kicking the crap out of SL.

I went from 4fps to 22fps in the same crowded club.

1.83 ghz
4 mgs ram
Vista 64bit