Confused about "performance issues"

I keep reading here that ppl are having major issues in SL and that performance is at an all time low, yet as far as I can tell SLs performance (for myself and most ppl I know anyway) is about as good as it ever was aside from a few minor annoyances now and then. Texture loading still has some minor issues but overall everything is running pretty smoothly. I can only wonder if the ppl complaining are running SL on sub par computers and/or slow internet connections (ie: DSL, satellite or God forbid DIALUP!!!), and that would be the source of their problems. I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ with 1gig RAM and an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with 256 Mb RAM, nothing stellar, but the only problem I have is I can't run in AGP mode due to the ATI driver problem but haven't really noticed a performance change since that became an issue. Most of my settings are as high as they can go and all looks and runs great. I do have ripple water and light turned off since they're just eye candy and don't really affect the way I play the game (altho the ripple water is a very nice effect, I just don't spend enough time gazing at the water to justify having it turned on, especially since when it first was released I experienced the crashing issue with it turned on).

Overall I think Linden Labs is doing an excellent job with SL, especially when you take into consideration all the things required to have such a "world" exist. True they could do a thing or two or three differently, perhaps prioritize bug fixes and upgrades differently, but overall I remain in awe of what they've created.

So, with that all said, can someone enlighten me as to why so many ppl seem to be having issues? Is it just poor system/connection performance or perhaps ignorance as to properly setting their systems up? Do ppl forget to take CONTENT into consideration? Meaning, do you or your neighbor(s) have lag inducing crap all over their property like blinking lights, multiple objects with open listens, anything with a timer in the script, BLING, etc...(yes I know these are debatable as to their lag inducing properties, whatever). I mean no disrespect to those having issues, I just want to know what the deal is since I'm not having these issues.

...or is it that ppl just have a need to whine about something? heh

oohh...you are gonna get flamed...

Although I really haven't had much to complain about lately either, and I'm usually playing on my laptop over my wireless network at home. *shrugs*

I'm not sure. They don't get around posting specs. They just complain on and on about things instead of thinking maybe it's the users as well. These people usually just want something to bitch about.

Example, I happen to have:

Compaq SR1221RS (Tower)
2.4ghz Althon somethingorother
512mb DRR Ram
20gb HD Maxtor (not original HD for machine
FX5200 128mb GeForce(4?) AGP card
Windows XP Pro (BarelyNaked Remix), running low processes/services
...In other words, room for improvement, but a pretty tight setup.
My Broadband Connection: SBC 3.0mbps Downstream 512kbps upstream, Dallas TX
... damn fast, stable, reliable, firewalled with portforwarding on the modem

The only time I see texture loading lag is in places I haven't visited, or dense areas like clubs. My framerates are fair, but I'm running SL for god's sake, it's not always going to be fluid.

Yes, some sims like to forget I exist, some places are so fucking slow I can't move, and sometimes some idiot will kill a sim by attaching their hair. What do I do? I go somewhere else and find something else to do.

The asset server will sometimes take a few seconds to rez objects I pull from inventory, that's acceptible.

Performance has been good for me.

***shrugs***

Yeah. Usually when I get lag or slowdown, it's usually the content present or the dumbasses running around in my general proximity.

Same. SL's performance is as good and often better than my first months here. Quality of service took a crap briefly a few months back, but nothing chronic.

<pissingcontest>
BUT I HAVE A DP G5, 3 GB OF RAM WITH RADEON X800 AND 256 MB OF VRAM HAHAHAHAHA PWNT
</pissingcontest>

DAYUM! Nice setup Enabran! (aside from the fact that it's a Macincrap)

Ditto - and I play both sides - low end mac (ibook) & higher-end pc and rarely have any problems.

Thing is, people bitch, but they don't explain their PCs, their connections, or the setting they're in.

If, say, they're on their on a budget DELL over dial-up in the backwoods of some bumfuck pre-industralized township, they can't roll into a The Edge or SuperHipDanceClubOfTheWeek without taking a slight performance hit.

Go back to playing solitaire, upgrade your setup, or STFU.

heh, no offense to hertzog or burke but I'd consider both of your systems sub par. Hertzog, you've only got 256 ram? ouch. burke an FX5200? no wonder some places are so slow you can't move. good processor though hertzog.

XP3000+ OCd
1.5gig ram
GeForce 6800GT
something like 400gig hd space (unless you're down to your last free gig, this shouldn't effect sl much, although drive speed might).
XP Pro
~6Mbit Comcast Cable

My biggest issue is actually sound. I had an Audigy2 and it had clipping issues in sl. Play sl for a while and all the sounds started to crackle. I recently got an X-Fi Platinum and it's improved a little but the crackle still shows up now and then. Never been able to figure out why.

Internet connections can effect people more than they realize even if it's rated at a pretty good speed. Some older networks have a tough time delivering packets in order, which in sl can cause rubberbanding even if you aren't showing much packet loss and your bandwidth is fine.

I think we are all missing a major point.

I was playing Lineage2 before this.

I could see to a fairly distant horizon, and having to watch a road appear in front of me as I travel down it screams 'horrible performance'.

Now, such comparisons are perhaps 'unfair', but what new user cares about fairness?



I am well aware of streaming -vs- available on hard drive, all the techical issues, &c. But simply because *we* have accepted all this doesn't mean other people new to SL will accept it.

I miss the horizon. I would personally be willing to give up all kinds of performance in other areas to have a horizon again.

good point desmond. it would be nice if somehow your motion was predicted and things would load when you might need them soon. Lots of technical hurdles with that though.

For the most part, my client performance has been ok. I wouldn't consider it stellar, but I don't have a stellar system, either. Athlon 2600+, 1.5 GB Ram, FX5600 256MB vid card.

How and Where you spend your time in SL makes a significant difference too. If you avoid crowds like the plague, you're probably going to get a better experience overall than your average social butterfly.

Just in the way I personally spend my time, I tend to meet a lot of new folks, in an environment that's probably about as laggy (if not a little better) than the Welcome Area. Myself, I do see many of complaints about poor performance from brand-new residents.

However, when you dig a little deeper with them to try & help, you usually find out they're on a sub-par system, or sub-par connection. I had a poor guy this weekend that was attempting to enjoy SL on 44k Dialup, and couldn't understand why nothing would rez

Just in my humble opinion, I think that if LL wants to ultimately make SL ubiquitous, they need to make SL run at least fairly on your average rig. As long as we're talking about a reasonable definition of an average rig, I don't think that's too much to expect. Right now, I think you need an above-average setup to get fair performance in SL.

All of us discussing here have *stayed* in SL, likely in part because we have systems that make it playable. But note that those who have given up on trying it because their system specs are just too low are unlikely to give their input to us here in the forums.

Whether the amount of folks that fall into this category are significant, is up for debate, I suppose

No, I have 1gig of RAM and 256Mb of VIDEO RAM...heh

I was thinking of posting a thread about how my performance is fine (as much as SL can be anyway).

Running fine on both my desktop (at least until my HDD crashed ) and my laptop. (P4 2.5GHz 1GB ATI 9700Pro, PM1.6GHz 1GB ATI Mobility 9600 if anyone cares)

Textures load quickly, I can cope looking at around 30 avatars at once, I've got my draw distance at 200, shiny and ripple water are on...

Having seen the computers my housemates have bought recently though, I'm not surprised some people are having trouble though. I don't know if it's that the components used are utter rubbish, all the useless extra software major PC manufacturers install screws up the performance or they're just set up really badly; but every one of them runs far, far slower than I'd expect from a computer of the spec they are. For example - I was moving some files across the network with one of them and the damned thing could barely handle doing that and browsing the web at the same time!

I"m not offended. I know I could use some hotter specs, but it's not in the cards for me. I'm willing to live with it. I was running less than a third those specs not three months ago but I soldiered on. Because I love SL, and because no other game or world can match it's freedom to create.

etc, etc.

I've got the same problem, running a Platinum 2 Pro...near as I can figure is that it's a connection issue...the connection gets clogged after streaming so much data for an extended period of time. Rebooting my PC or resetting the network connection is all that seems to fix it.

Hence the reason I build my own PCs...DOWN WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT!!! lmao

How much RL$ do you pay LL per month?

Not that that's an issue, but currently I'm on the yearly premium account for $72 annually ($6 a month) and at $25 land tier. Not quite sure how that's got ANYTHING to do with performance tho...

Another area you are confused about, heh.

How much money I spend has EVERYTHING to do with the level of performance I am satisfied with. I'm thinking that if I tier down to basic, then the degradation in performance I've experienced since the 1.7 upgrade won't be something to whine about at all.

If I don't get what I pay for, I'll pay for what I get.

386/SX-16 w/ 2MB RAM
40MB Harddrive
1.44 3.5 Floppy -AND- 1.2 5.25 Floppy
Trident TVGA 8900C ISA 1MB Videocard
2400 Baud Modem

Hah! Jealous of my pimped out rig, haters? Second Life runs pretty good on it.. it just requires a small graphics tweak: You just have to scribble some stick figures on my mackadacious Mitsubishi 640x480 screen with a magic marker, drop 4 tabs of acid, and in about 30 minutes you'll swear Psyra Extrodinaire will be flying out of your monitor n' shit!

// just kiddin.. main gaming rig is an Athlon64-3800 w/ ATi x800 and 1GB RAM. I just don't like it when people are so show-offish of their systems that they do stuff like list their specs as a forum signature. Anyway, SL runs nicely at 1920x1200 with everything turned on except Local Lighting.

Is this the techie equivalent of guys driving hot cars?

Actually it seems you're confused or have missed my point. I'm not seeing any problems with the performance, and from most of the other posts here it seems I'm not alone. It also seems that ppls computers and/or connections are the root of their problems, that and WHERE they go in world. If you go to overcrowded sims, it really doesn't matter what your setup is, you WILL experience problems just from the fact of having SO much content to download and stream and the fact that there are so many other ppl that the system is exchanging data with.

So again I ask, how does what I spend have anything to do with this thread? (unless of course you are one of those having self induced problems and are unwilling to look at the fact that it just might be a problem on YOUR end)

People really need to understand how networks and SL work BEFORE complaining that it's crap. (not a statement directed at you Margaret, just adding it in while I'm writing this)

Do specs really matter if client version 1.5 ran fine @ FPS of 25-35, but with the introduction of client version 1.6, FPS dropped to an average of 5, never going above 10? No change in client settings, no change in video card, RAM, etc..?

No, specs don't matter when the client works fine on Monday, the Lindens introduce an "upgrade" and on Tuesday, the client runs awful.

The Lindens don't give a shit about the growing number of users who are reporting the increasing amount of performance issues and frankly I'm pissed off at all the people in these forums who call me an idiot because "they" aren't having problems so I shouldn't either. F*** that!