Omg Now What :)

For every one who tried to help me with my very bad lagg probs i think you from bottom of my heart. I took your advise at the end of it all and called sl support on the phone. I was told that my nvidia 5500 would no longer run sl snice the last update sl specs went up i needed a 5600 or better or a 9600 ati. Will i went out today and bought a ATI 9800 with a new 450w power supply we wont say what it cost me lol . Now heres the catch there is no differnce in the game what so ever. I still frez up when i try to walk, login i have to turn clouds off so i dont see grey blocks ever wher and whe i tp to any sim i have to wait 30 sec or longer befor i even see walls of a building. All settings ar realy low. So low i dont see trees i see green blurs. Can there be anything eles other thin graphic card that would cause this typ of lagg?

I hate to say it, but your graphics card is a possible source of your issues. ATI cards have had some issues with SL and other games. I'm sure someone around here has an ATI card and will be able to help you out better than I. ALso, the 9800, though a good card for it's time, is a couple generations old and really ranks down at the bottom of the list. Can you return it? I would reccomend sticking with nVidia, and looking at the 6600 or 6800.

d00d... they're full of crap if they told you a 5500 wouldn't run SL... I just upgraded to that from my ATI 9250, and it runs like, WAY faster than it did before...

Matter of fact, since I updated to the FX5500, I haven't been having ANY of the problems I was before. No more crashing, taking forever to load, nothing...

I was told a FX5200 card wouldn't run SL. But it does! And does a great job even - for almost two years!

I too bought a better card (and a new power), a 6600 card because the advice of a Linden. The only difference is that it makes the cpu fan run at full speed more often. Perhaps textures are loaded a bit faster too - I don't know. I have the same crashes, the same bugs, the same quality, the same fps with both cards. It almost feels like a waste of money. I put the old card in my old pc, and am so satisfied with that it has actually become my main SL pc. Just because of that damned vacum cleaner noise that is now in my newer pc when running SL

So when given messages from Linden that you cannot use this or that hardware, take that advice with a big pinch of salt! Just try for yourself. And it is the recommended specs that says a 5600 card, not the minimum specs.


Lis

I have an ATI 9250, and it runs quite alright. It's not 100% fluent all the time, but it runs better than some other machines I've seen, that has even better cards.. Honestly, I think there's something fishy about the graphics engine in SL, that could really need some looking at, but that's easier said than done, I know.

SL seems to have problems on every card, and on every posiible configuration.

I guess the big questions to ask are:

How much RAM do you have? And how much is useable?
Boot your computer clean. When you get to the desktop, *wait* and do nothing until your harddrive calms down. Then right-click on your task bar and choose Task Manager. Then click on the Performance Tab and look at the number under the PF Useage. Sub tract that from your total RAM and what you have left is all you have to use to play SL with (under the *best* conditions, I won't get into the other factors, this is just a simple way of looking at this) SL can/will use a LOT of RAM. So the more you have the better.

How fast is your CPU?
SL uses an old graphical engine that doesn't make use of the advanced features of the newer graphics cards. So a fast CPU can really help.

Hmmm, I not totally sure if Second Life does not use advanced features in the graphic cards as I got told by a Linden that they will be usung more of GPU in the future.

After the last lot of updates Second Life seams to have problems with any graphic cards and even if you have a fast processor, AMD Athlon 3400+ for example, you still have problems with terrible lag and crashing every few while.

A great depends on your ingame (graphics) settings as well as your (computers) graphic settings. It's nowhere near as simple as 'card x will always run SL, np' and 'card Y will never run SL, ever'.

And how much spyware/malware/desired background programs are running. You can have 4 gig of RAM, but if you have a bunch of background programs eating CPU and memory bus cycles - you'll still be hurting.

None of these are to say that none of the problems stem from SL, just that it's more complex than it seems.

TY all for your feed back on this. I have 1 gig of ram on my comp and i have 889872kb of free ram. I have a sepron 2800(tx) 2.0ghz processer. I have been told by a linden to trust what they ar saying about the sl recommended specs. I am looking to buy another card like a 6600 or 6800 nvidia There is one thing thou iam sure a linden as been reading our post here could one please give me your feed back on this matter. Seems to me the lindens need to come forward and explain whats going on. I mean we all cant be wrong.

Oh and i keep my comp very clean of spyware and i make sure no programs ar running in the back ground. I even defrag on a daily bases. I reset my router every other day. Every tim ei even think i my comp may be running strang i run a virus scan. Allwas checking for updates. My dsl connection is very very good.

It seems now to be standard procedure for Linden Labs Support to say that your graphics card is causing the problem, no matter what the problem is.

Last week I got outright mad when I got an email reply from [email]support@secondlife.com[/email] telling me my card was responsible for an obviously server induced inventory problem, then sent back an angry email pointing out that my gForce-2 card was specifically named in the specs.

I hate to tell you this, but you just wasted all that money buying a new card.

I'm finding that seams to be the standard answer fron the Linden Support it's your graphic card and drivers. one of their lastest was my ISP.

They seam not to take into account that Second Life had been running fine for everyone for mon ths on the same machine using the same graphic cards fine!

It's very frustating as they seam very reluctant to check things at thier end!

the only problems I have with my ATI is 1. no AGP and 2. it crashes LOTS when I have ripple water on... I turn it off and its fine.. I use a Asus 9800xt 256mb

Wow i decided to chang back to the nvidia 5500 but leave the new 450w power supply in. Realy to my surprise the improvment is awsome. Could it have been my tiger pro 350w power supply was that bad? I realy didnt think it would cause that much lagg.On the good side nvidia fx 5500 (with a good power supply) lol will run sl.Anyone want to buy a slightly used 9800 ati rofl.

No, it isnt your new PS.... unless your old PS was effecting everyone else... I havent changed anything and suddenly the packet loss and the associated problems disapeared this morning

Hmm... see, I must be a bit of an anomaly, then. My computer isn't exactly... top of the line. I've got an XP2000+, 512 MB DDR PC2100, an Asus A7N8X-E Delux, and (now) a GeForce FX5500 256 MB. I have /everything/ turned on and enabled, and I have no problems what-so-ever. Other than the whole net randomly going down ONLY when I'm in SL... and it hasn't happened in a few days, so that might be fixed.

Before, the only difference was the video card, which was a 128 MB ATI 9250. It ran perfectly smooth with everything that could be enabled on it enabled, before I updated the drivers... then it didn't matter what I had the settings on - turned up or down, it was always 'running perfectly' or 'running horribly and randomly crashing' or 'running perfectly and randomly crashing', depending on the time of day, moisture in the air, and/or position of the stars in relation to the moon at the particular moment. It did this in both Windows and Linux, with the difference being it was /always/ like that in Linux, while it only started after the drivers were updated in Windows (2k, for the curious).

So... who knows? Later on today, I might try getting SL running in Linux with my new card, and see what happens.