CorvusTech Seeks Your Input

As those of you who are forum junkies already know, I have opened a business that allows you to purchase computers and computer components through SL, either in part or in full using L$.

I want to make sure I'm bringing you they best product for the best price. To do that, of course, I need to know what you want! This weekend the objects that represent and forward purchase orders to me will be constructed, and I like to do things right the first time .

So please, give me your input! I'm creating this thread so that everyone can post their specs and typical performance, as well as their next planned upgrade, so not only can I get a good idea of what to sell, you guys can get a good idea of what system part combinations do the best with Second Life!

Please use my post as an example:

AMD Athlon X2 4400+ 2x2.2GHZ CPU
2GB G.Skill PC4000 DDR RAM
320GB Western Digital SATA Hard drive 7200RPM
2x nVidia 7800GTX Video cards in SLI configuration, 2x256MB VRAM
Realtek AC97 Audio (onboard sound)

Average FPS: About 50 once textures load, texture and sim loading takes about 3-5 seconds after a teleport, less than a second in flight.

Lowest FPS: 25 after everything is loaded in busy areas with a lot of people with prim hair.

Internet connection: 8mb/s Cable (by the way guys, SL will only use 1mb so if you get less than 1mb, thats part of your problems)

Settings: Everything but local lighting on.

Purchase or Upgrade next (if Upgrade, list): Upgrade, CPU
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If you're unsure on your specs but you have your computer model number and manufacturer, post that and I'll look it up.

This is all to give me a better idea of what everyone is experiencing with what equipment, so I can insure I bring the best product and support to you. Thanks!

This in no way has anything to do with CorvusTech, which sounds like a neat idea, but it's kind of sad that SL only gets 25-50 FPS with those system specs. Actually, it's really sad. What do you get with local lighting on, by the way? I keep local lighting off on my main account because it gets abused (Hi, your overlapping 10x10m red prims don't need to be light and turn the whole sim a lovely shade of red, thanks.) and I can't take the performance hit, but on my alternate account I keep it on because it does fantastic things to my build and there's not much else around me. My main machine is a 3.6ghz P4 with dual channel DDR2 memory (1gb) and an nVidia Go 6800 256MB (also DDR2) PCI-X and I average 15-25 FPS, sometimes spiking up to 40-50 depending on locations, but that's the exception rather than the norm. If I had the money just laying around for it I'd probably build an SL-specific machine just on the hopes of making 40-50 the average.

Who was it that said they were getting 110 FPS a while back? Was it Adam Zaius? There must be all of like 3 people in SL who can make that claim, and you are the envy of us all.

Still, though, in Second Life's defense, I've found a lot of the performance issues are ignorant users more than the system. My main store is across a river from someone who's shop has 100+ 1024x2048 and 2048x2048 textures confined to a 1024m parcel. I get 20-25 FPS facing away from his store, if I start to turn toward it SL lags out completely for 30-60 seconds (sometimes longer) and slowly recovers at a fraction of my normal framerate.

Anyway, best of luck! Next time I'm in the market for an upgrade I'll definitely look you up and see how competitive your prices are.

Actually my only bottleneck is the bandwidth. SL needs to let me use more than 1mb/s out of my 8mb/s connection.

I do get 120FPS in areas where the builders use only 128x128 textures though. I'd do that myself but if you stretch that on a large sign prim it becomes illegible.

Agreed on the users issue though. I have to ask one of my best friends to put her animated hair up into a bun on a regular basis because the person that made it used 1024x1024 textures for it and on an AV that causes lag like none other. I have a note about this sort of thing inside my store.


Edit: THanks for your support, btw!

I no little about what I want. I do know I'd like what works very well for SL and a few other online games and gaming in general.
When I go to a computer site, they have this configuration utility and I'm clueless for about half of the items.
Yes, what computer configuration will allow the best of all the SL settings to properly work w/o lag and such?
I like your original configuration.
Also, this is dumb, as I don't know what I'm talking about but I don't understand the:
2x2.2GHZ CPU. I am assuming it's better than having a 3.6 GHz.

My major concern and search is to find the quality of the Athlon and Nvidia card you propose and I agree with and find such a computer for around $1500. I did find one for about $1700 with two dvd drives, both rw. It was $1732.
But I might need a better vid card and such to view SL in all its glory after being able to function w/o lag and have my SL graphics settings set at their highest.

I think you're clever to offer this. I am interested. Can you PM me?
For the rest, please forgive my ignorance about computers. I just want one that works, well for SL and such. That's one reason I'm hardly ever here. Then I have to enter in busy or hidden so that I can get my weekly money and sneek out. I can't do much with my 2.4 Ghz, Nvidia 5200, 111 GB, 512 ram. Yes, I keep my computer clean of cookies and know how to keep it clean.

And Dell with just charge a thousand more than I need to spend for the amount.

Now, I called UBI as Paradise is coming out. I asked if they had problems with hyper threading or dual processors. As I understood it, there were problems while gaming with hyper threading for their games. I might not have asked the question correctly or misunderstood the answer, so this is with a huge grain of salt for me.

I'd love to build my computer but it appears daunting. Hmm...I wonder if there are local classes where we can do this? I want to be able to reinstall OS as is needed off and on.
Does this all make any sense?
Thanks for this great idea!!

In most cases the actual building of the computer isn't that difficult (except for the $@#$! processor fan). The parts selection is tricky, I know I couldn't just do it off-hand. I've build two machines for myself in '01 and '04. They ran fine, even the second one, which was from collected parts. I built one for my freind, it was nice and modern, but he bought cheap parts and his ability to magically break things meant he often needed replacements.

Corvus, how much were those specs you mentioned?

I'm presently pimping on a 2.1ghz Compaq that runs SL well enough, but looking at Preview and Oblivion, I'm thinking it might be time to start saving for an upgrade.

We're supposed to have 1tb drives by Q2'07.