slow client performance

My system:

1.2ghz athlon
512mb RAM
"Mad Dog Multimedia" Geforce 2 MX400 64MB AGP 4x graphics
6.0/1.5mbit DSL, no connectivity issues
latest nvidia driver
latest directx

I'm getting client FPS in the area of 8-15, sometimes even less. My question: is this expected slowness, or might there be something I can fix? I have to figure if there is a bottleneck it's probably my CPU... which sucks cause this motherboard won't take a faster CPU.

What do you folks think?

Almost forgot:

All checkboxes marked "slower" disabled, draw distance set to 64.

Hey Lex!

I think you are correct to suspect your CPU plays a big part in your client FPS performance. Newview.exe, the SL client, will use as much CPU time as your system can offer it. In general, a faster CPU means the client software can potentially calculate more frames per second. FSB and memory bandwidth are also going to be considerations.

Your video card may not be as big a factor as some might suppose; when I started playing SL, I was using an Athlon-1000 w/512mB RAM and a GeForce2 MX 200 32mB 4X AGP. Not knowing much about SL at the time, I upgraded to an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/128mB. I didn't see a appreciable increase in client FPS! That was what prompted my next system upgrade purchase, an Athlon XP 3200+. ^_^

That said, your GeForce2's 64mB comes up a little short in many texture-heavy areas of SL; your card may have a hard time loading them all at full resolution without doing AGP transfers. It's also hard to ignore some of the improvements Nvidia and ATI have made in the last three or so years.

Given your hardware setup, I'd be satisifed that 8-15 FPS was doing pretty well. As you've already made sure that you've turned off all of the display options in SL that have "slower)" next to them, including local lighting, shadows, anisometric filtering, and the rest, I'm not sure what performance enchancing tweaks are left open to you. You mentioned that you had dropped the render distance to something low; you may also want to look at dialing back object, avatar, and tree detail levels to their minimum. Also lower your ground terrain detail as much as possible. Beyond that, avoid the usual sort of stuff that can interfere with a 3D games, like running other programs simultaneously, etc.

If you decide that you are really want to see a higher client FPS, you may need to seriously consider a CPU/motherboard/RAM and possibly video upgrade.

geforce2 mx's are actually basically repackaged original geforce1's... so at this point.. the technology is gettin to be near 5 years old.. you'd do much much better with a newer one.. even a $50-60 geforce 5200 would be much *much* faster than that old mx2

the cpu is also abit of a problem... overall yer probable best speed for the value would be a faster computer, even a medium or low end one... combined with an average off the shelf video card... it prolly will overall take about $5-600 to really get back up to snuff tho i'm sorry to say

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I was only able to even try second life because I got a nice deal on this graphics card ($10US after rebate). Guess I'll stick with my jerky framerate. Perhaps lowering ground and av detail will help a little more. I could lower resolution, but that really didn't have much of an effect (2-3 FPS), and definitely didn't justify the difference in detail and room for UI stuff.