Choppy Video and FPS

I've been having some problems with choppy streaming video in SL, as well as lousy FPS.

I've done a search on the forums for relevant information, but with no success...

I'm not sure what anyone will need to help me debug (if any of you can... that'd be awesome), so here is what information I can gather:

Connection:
RCN 20Mb cable connection, hardwired (cable modem's connected to a Linksys G router, firewall disabled, ports 13000-14000 open).

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 (Unknown model) (3200 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB DDR
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: Radeon X1650 Series x86/SSE2 (512mb ram)
OpenGL Version: 2.0.6645 WinXP Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 10/139142 (0.0%)

Preferences (Graphic Settings):

Graphics:
Run in a Window
800x600
Draw Distance 64

Graphics Detail:
Enable Vertex Shaders (Enabled)
Enable Bumpmapping and Shiny (Enabled)
Enable Ripple Water (Enabled)
Avatar Vertex Program (Enabled)
Avatar Rendering: Bump Map and Cloth
Lighting Detail: Nearby Local Lights
Terrain Detail High
Object Mesh Detail: Highest
Flexible Mesh Detail: Highest
Tree Mesh Detail: Highest
Avatar Mesh Detail: Highest

Adv. Graphics:
Anisotropic Filtering (Disabled)
Gamma 0
Night Brightness 1
Enable VBO: Enabled
512 MB Graphics card memory
Fog Distance: 4
Max Particle Count: 4098
Outfit Composite Limit 5
Debug Becon Line Width 1

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Even with ALL of my video and graphic settings turned to the lowest possible settings (as well as disabling clouds, particles, sky, and water in the debug menu), I still get choppy video and choppy performance (i.e. there is no improvement).

If I can provide any further info that might help, I'd be glad to do so...... but it'd be great if I could get this fixed.

Amazing... I have the EXACT same PC hardware of yours, and I usually get about 4-8fps TOPS (even w/ my video cards overclocked)! I have NO other issues w/ other games... and even MS Flight Simulator X as maximum settings has better FPS than SL. I also have the same issues w/ streaming video. I usually get a greyish HEAVILY pixelated image, that barely does anything! =S

have you tried a different video driver?

Try turning off Vertex Buffer Objects (VBO) in the Advanced tab. I was having choppy frame rates in SL after I installed any nVidia driver after 94.24. I turned off VBO and it was smooth sailing again. My frame rate smoothed out and my CPU usage went from 90% to 30%.

Try it.

Jamie

@Shayde: It's LOUSY, isn't it?

@Element: Yes, several.

@Jamie: I have tried that, along with turning all other settings off, with no success.

I have been having issues with the latest ATI cards (i.e the ones with DirectX 10 support) for weeks without resolution. SL runs for 30 seconds and freezes.

This has been widely reported and NOBODY seems to listen. I exchanged my 2400HD card for an earlier one and it works PERFECTLY!!

If you have an issue like this....please complain to SL and ATI. WE need to get someone going. It appears SL isn't reading the card configuratipn correctly.

My ATI X1950 Pro works nicely with SL if I turn Catalyst AI off. If it is on I crash in under 5 mins.

It could be a couple of things causing the problem.

If the movie was created and rendered at a higher FPS that your GC can render the Client/Game, then you will have dropped frames.

If your ping rates, or latencey is too high, again you will get dropped frames.

If your connection is on a high contention ratio (you don't get 20mbps all to yourself, you share that bandwidth), you maybe only actually getting a sustainable rate of 300-500kbps. As movie media ranges between 50-200kbps, you may need to turn down the Client bandwith to allow the media stream to have some room to download.

If the media is being streamed on a RSTP server, that maybe overloaded and the stream being interupted. If it is a good server, open QuickTime and in preferences, under connections, move the cache slider to the right, to create a larger cache for the media to buffer.

If the movie is poorly created, then ur stuffed....

Oh, and forget DirectX, SL is a OpenGL platform.

Fog Distance: 4 - turn down to 2.0 that's adequate
Max Particle Count: 4098 - turn down to 512, that WILL make a difference
Outfit Composite Limit 5 - turn down to 2

If you want to watch movies, turn off ripple water. Reducing the load on your client while watching movies, always helps.

Press Ctrl+Shift+2 ... watch the lime green bars.. now turn on the movie, what percentage does the lime green bars take up now? Those bars are relative to the work your client is having to do, to UpDateImage i.e. the movie being rendered. 20% is great.... 50% is okay, more is too much, unless you have the capacity. Each system can handle the various elements of the platform differently.

Are you by any chance running a dual core CPU?

This sounds like the "affinity" issue some of us still have.

Heh...

I used to have fps issues until I bought another 150gb 10krpm raptor and went raid 0 and also upgraded my ram to two 2 gb sticks instead of having 2 gigs. I get around 40-100fps I have a amd athlon 6000+ and nvidia evga 8800gtx all air cooled. So I think after the ram and raid 0 my performance increased but there's a slight problem... I can walk around with the high fps and I get a jerky feeling whenever I walk now... is it because sl is accessing too fast now? I'm not sure... hehe =)