Slow DSL

NO LONGER RELEVANT

Hi ConductorX, welcome to SL.

There are many factors that can cause the problems that you are experiencing. The first step is to try and isolate the problem.

First hit Cntrl-Shift-1 to bring up the Stats screen.

A) Check your bandwidth and adjust it to slightly less than your DSL speed (500-600 I think in your situation)

B) Check your FPS (Frames per second) you should get reasonable movement with 6 fps or greater.

C) Check the Ping Sim. Probably should be 180 msec or less.

D) Look at the Sim FPS. Usually at 45 FPS. Sometimes the Sim is dogging.

Next BIG factor is your video card. I have a very low end system at home with a 768kbps DSL ATT connection and am running about 15 to 22 fps with the new windlight viewer.

Although a faster connection can be beneficial, (I have 2.5mkbps at work and a lesser graphics card. It is much worse that my home system and it is because of the graphics card), period.

Most of the work in rendering SL is the graphics, thus the biggest bottleneck. I upgraded my home system a while ago with a $50US ATI card, and doubled my speed.

Find the bottleneck and post your pc specs. Maybe we will be able to pinpoint your problem.

That sounds like bigger problems? I use EVDO which is slower than DSL, especially for uploads, and although textures take longer to get to me, I've seen a fast laptop with super video through my connection and it was a different world than my laptop.

If you have the older viewer that shows the bandwidth/packet loss meters, you can lower your network speed in preferences until the packet loss goes away and then it will be optimal!

I usually have mine set at 450 or so because higher doesn't help me. There was a period of months with the Nicholaz viewer I didn't crash despite sometimes being on for hours. Now with the new grid and using the Linden Windlight viewer I'm back to crashing infrequently again (none yesterday, twice the day before).

I listen to lots of music and have watched movies I'm afraid, so it sounds to me like you have other issues maybe?

I have the fastest AT&T FastAccess DSL, and I have terrible packet loss even with that package. So, it's not so much your speed that you need to think about. Sometimes tweaking the network speed down to 200-250 helps but other times pegging it seems to be better. It's really hard to tell.

SL has some very different requirements from other "games", number one being that the content is not installed on your computer when you install the software, it's downloaded every time you visit the area (and hopefully only then if you set your cache big enough). This is because the content is not provided by Linden Labs, but by the people that reside in the World. So, there's no other way to deliver the content.

That means you need a fat pipe, and not just any fat pipe, but one that handles packets well because SL doesn't use TCIP (I think).

The freezing sounds like your PC reading your disk cache, if you have the disk space you might want to max that out. I know some people say not to do that but it seemed to stop my freezes. I even went in the debug menu and bumped it higher. Is your hard drive reading while the freeze is going on?

OK here it goes. I could not discover any method to adjusting the controls.

a) Bandwidth was low but I didn't see method to adjust it or set a max limit.
b) Frames per second was 17, still no method to adjust.
c) Ping was 62msec
d) Sim FPS 45


My Video card is: Intel G33/31 Express 250 meg of memory
I am running Windows Vista on a Dell with Intel Core2 Duo CPU at 2.0 GHZ with
1 GB memory.

I am open to suggestions. I need to get this working. My company plans to use SL as a training and knowledge sharing tool.

Thanks,
"G"

Go to Preferences>Network to set it. If your bandwidth is too low you are creating a narrow pipe for the data. (Should not be larger than your connection speed)

The other settings seem to be fine, also check your cache setting and make note as to the disk access, "is it running constantly?" as another post inquired. If it is too high, SL will continoulsy write data to the cache.

I also wonder about your graphic card. It is not shown on Graphics card chart:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/15/typical-frame-rate-performance-by-graphics-cardgpu/#more-1388

Maybe some else using this graphics card can comment.

Both the network and disk cache sliders are on the network tab in preferences.

I've seen recommendations with DSL to keep the maximum bandwidth at 200-250 because of the above mentioned lack of using TCIP by Second Life, packet loss results otherwise and that means nothing gets through but garbage. However, after dreadfully long load times (BUT with no packet loss!) I pushed the slider back to my maximum upload bandwidth (510) and it seemed to help. Remember, you aren't just downloading, you are uploading too, not as much but still some. That wonderfull fastaccess async DSL has a fraction of the upload that the download provides. I have 4-6k easy download, but my upload is a measly 510. If you try to put your maximum bandwidth at your download speed, you are surely going to have packet loss. Put it at your upload speed or less.

Disk cashe, right under that. Some say a big disk cache causes long disk read times, but that probably depends on the type of drive you have and how fast it is. I have a SATA RAID array so I don't have much of a disk read problem. IMHO the only advantage of a small disk cache is to save disk space, which is silly when you can pick up a mega gigabite hard drive for under a hundred bucks these days. Try sliding the slider to the right all the way, to 1000 and see if that helps.

Not sure what else to tell you, I'm new at this too so I'd thought I'd share some of what I've learned. I can't tell you much about that card but 256mb of ram should be enough, I played on a laptop with about that much and it was acceptible for a demonstration to some colleagues. My biggest problem I had was I was piping it through a hotel's wireless broadband.

Your problem may be your graphics card. It appears that it is an integrated graphics card.

http://forums.legitreviews.com/post80936.html

If that is the case, you need a better card and need to disable the built in one. They are just not capable of game rendering.

Good luck.

Yrrek,

I went out and picked up another video card and it made a world of difference (pardon the pun). The system hangs rarely and when it does the screen blacks for a second and then everything is fine. I am still getting the DSL upgrade, but I think the Video card made all the difference.

I have some land in Tipaskan also near the Free Tax area come look me up or send me a PM and Ill send you a land mark.

"G"

I know someone is going to ask: It is a Nivida GeForce 8600 GT OC with 512mb of memory.

Yeah, I was just about to point to your "Intel G33/31 Express 250 meg of memory" and say, "well there's your problem." LL does not officially support any integrated video chipsets. If it works, you're lucky. Frankly I was surprised you were getting frame rates as high as 17 on your system. Many people with integrated video get 4 FPS or worse, according to LL's performance metrics.

Yea! Do you know that we are neighbors! My villa is in front of Freetax's land between it and the beach! LOL!

I am next door to a mall with a big radar dish floating above it. I have a Grungy Garage with some VWs parked inside.

"G"