Crashing with NVidia GForce 6800 series graphics card

Just got a new Dell Dimension 8400 computer: Pentium 4; 3.4 GHz; 1 GB RAM with the following graphics card: NVidia GeForce 6800 series 256 MB (PCI Express x16)

When reinstalling SL (numerous times, as I do it after each crash) I make sure the Crash Logger is engaged. I upgraded to the latest NVidia drivers, made sure the Directx was up to date and still can't stay in longer than a few minutes or sometimes not even get past the caching screen before crashing. The few times when I've been able to stay in for a few minutes, the crash occurred when I tried to go into Appearance mode.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

Doesn't sound necessarily like it's the graphics card causing the crash. Did you talk to LL about the crash, with log attached already?

The Dell 8400 is rather new; I'd first look for a new BIOS on support.dell.com. Then run "dxdiag" and particularly the display tests. Then I'd try some of the nVidia demos (nvidia.com) like "dawn". Then I'd start wondering if it was SL. Then I'd blame Microsoft

There have been alot of problems with the 6800 and Second Life. Too bad.
I was looking at that Dell box MadameThespian, it looks very yummy.

Try searching the forums or the wiki.


fen-

My 6800GT run's just fine.


But it isn't PCI-E


Sound like an issue with SL not supporting PCI-E. Just like SL doesn't support ATI w/ working AGP unless you make a hook.dll and make SL think you have a nvidia card, you can do this with 3danalyze.


Anyways, I'll look into this.

For the record, my ATI 9800 chokes due to particles being too close to my av... I swear, anyway

I have turned down my max particle count considerably, but god help me if someone sets off a napalm bomb or something and I'm in first-person mode. Insta-choke

So that's why I kept seeing you logging on and off last night MT

What are your graphic options set to?

L8r,
UU

All your comments are very much appreciated! I thank you very much and shall try some of the suggestions listed here.

After posting this last night, I was able to do some more testing and seem to have narrowed down the trigger for the crashing...my skin. I've been using Namssor Daguerre's awesome Second Skins on my old Dell 8200 (with an AGP GeForce graphics card) with no problems for months. Now the crashing consistently happens when I "put the skins on" (i.e. copy the skin files to my Character directory in SL on my hard drive as per Namssor's procedure) then log in to SL and then go into Appearance mode.

Hiya Upshaw (cousin ), my Display is set to the following:
Performance Options-- only the "disable far clip" mode is checked
Avatar Rendering -- normal
Terrain Detail -- full
Gamma -- 1.00
"Run in Window" checked
Fullscreen Aspect Ratio -- 1.333
"Auto Detect" checked

Options are set to the following:
Texture Cache Size -- Large
Video Card Memory -- 256
Avatar Vertex Program is checked
Draw Distance -- 128
Fog Distance -- 1.2
Drop Draw Distance, etc. -- 0
Bumpiness Draw Distance -- 10
Max Particle Count -- 4096
Outfit Composite Limit -- 5

Again, thanks to ALL for replying. This community is very helpful!