Performance!

Greetings

I have been on Second Life for a long while now and I tried being patient with poor performance but this is getting completly out of hand!
Here are just few issues that I would like to specifically point out:
1. Bandwidth - I'm on a 512/128K connection that should have no problem handling SL to a point where it's playable. It used to be this way but past 2-3 weeks are... I have no words. Delay between pressing the UP arrow and avatar moving forward is anything between 5 and 20 seconds, then the avatar keeps moving for another 20 seconds only to jump back to where it was!
2. Map loading/landmark loading - two words: takes years. It's completly unusable and despite P2P teleporting I have to ask friends to port me because my landmarks simply won't load
3. Chat - my own text appears anywhere between 5 seconds and 10 minutes after I post it
4. Client performance - now this is a BIG one. I'm on a system that could be described as top of the line - AMD Sempron 3000+, 1 Gb of RAM, NVidia GeForce 6800 FX (with 256 Mb on board, even thou SL claims I have 128 Mb). On Doom 3 I have average of 60-70 FPS with maxed out details. Second Life client gives me a wonderful 10 FPS, plus it keeps freezing every time I try to rotate the camera to see what is behind me... or sometimes freezes without that even.

The above four are not all problems but they are the most annoying ones I believe.

Here is my suggestion:
Stop putting in more bells and whistles for now and instead focus solely on performance until it is at an acceptable level

That's all I had to say
And PLEASE don't give me the 'yes, we know that, tough luck' treatment. Instead, answer just one simple question - will Linden Labs EVER get to fixing the performance issue that has been causing problems ever since 1.7?

Greetings Raavi! I wish your simple question had a simple answer, because I like simple things. Unfortunately, I don't know of "the performance issue" in a singular sense--as you've prolly seen in the Release Notes, there are many things that get changed.

I don't know what options you've already tried for getting help--but since SL Answers isn't the right place, I'm going to move your post to Technical Issues in hopes more Residents can help you improve what's going on.

Torley

This was not meant to be a bug report or request for assistance. I was trying to point out issues that should be worked on in my opinion as they are not specific for me only but a whole lot of people and so far noone was able to find a reliable solution.
But - if anyone knows how to fix any of the issues I posted, I'd be happy to try... as long as it's something that wasn't suggested before since I spent several hours on the forums and trying all the suggestions I could find. Obviously - nothing helped

I don't believe nVidia makes a 6800 FX chipset. FX are all series 5 GPUs. (Series6 GPU models are: 6800 Ultra, 6800 GT, 6800 GS, 6800, and 6800 XT).

Anywho, you're system, assuming you have a 6800<something>, ought'a run ok. So I'd suspect ... well lots of stuff, cuz I have no clue what you might have tried (you state you tried all the suggestions you could find). Definitely not a top end system (Budget skt754 CPU, not sure what video, how much ram?, you have a quality PSU? And does that PSU meet (and hopefully exceed) the recommendations for your CPU/Video? ..anyhow, enough ranting about hardware. I'll assume your box is stable and runs decently (you quote decent FPS for quake anyway). Also you might just be having cooling issues (when's the last time you blew out your box/heatsinks/fans?). Go get some canned air and start blasting! Don't forget a dust mask. :)

Suggestions:
Set AA/Ansio to OFF or maybe 2x (desktop/nVidia settings).
In Game:
Preferences/Graphics:
Turn OFF local lighting.
Turn OFF Shadows, Water ripple, Shiny
Set Bump (avatar rendering) to Normal
Set Terrain to None (I gain +11FPS going from Full to None), do None for now.
Preferences/AdvGraphics
AGP checked
Detail sliders all to minimal settings
Avatar Vertex checked
Draw distance 64
Fog 30
Drop draw if FPS < 20 (well I like 30, cuz <30 is jittery, but in SL 30 is sorta "good")
Bumpiness Distance 1
Max Particle Count 4096
Outfit composite level 10 (or maybe 8)


Now, that's pretty minimal settings. I'd think if you stare at the ground or sky you'd get 80+ FPS, if not more. (I'm getting 93 staring at the ground with my normal setup active, and my system is not top of the line (but was a year or so ago)).

So with minimal settings, and if your FPS is decent, then I'd start working each setting as you think you'll want it. Watch your FPS. If it really drops well there's at least ONE setting that is a problem. Keep toying with it for a few hours and see what happens.
That is my suggestion.
...if, with everything at the minimum setting, you still get crappy FPS, well then I'd say you have some software/hardware issues.

Optional, just to boost FPS whenever you want it:
Turn on the Debug Menu, if it isn't already: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D
--Click Debug, Rendering, Types and turn OFF Trees, Grass, Clouds, and Bump ... that'll save you 5-20+fps right there. Downfall is you have to do that everytime you start the client. Very handy though for the clubber types :p

Hi Bosozoku and thanks for your advices

The card I have is the FX card for sure, specifically matched for my motherboard for optimum performance. The system is very stable and gives speed far beyond what you'd expect from hardware specs since I matched each piece of hardware to all others. Took me a while to do it.
Cooling cannot be an issue, the system is brand new (1 month) and I keep it as clean as possible. Temperature monitors are well within optimum values for CPU, graphics and motherboard.

As for the settings:
AA and Ansio are set to OFF allright, I always had it like that
In game everything but shiny is off. Turning shiny off doesn't give any improvement, checked.
All other settings are as you suggested, except for outfit composite (4) and particle limit (512).
Staring at the ground: 15-20 FPS
Normal operation: 10 FPS or lower in our HQ (which is not cluttered at all, plus there are rarely more than 5 people in it)
Clubs: 2 FPS at best

The worst issue however are the slowdowns - whenever I try to rotate the camera and see what's behind me everything comes to a halt for 5 seconds up to several minutes. During that time I can see a huge HD read/write... cache? But this shouldn't last that long! This is a Western Digital SATA2 HD, 10200 RPS with transfer up to 3 Gb. Defragmented this sunday, as usual.

Any other ideas?

Brand new system.. time to update drivers if you haven't.

Find out what motherboard (manufacturer/model) you have, and check with the manufacturer's site for chipset driver updates. Look at BIOS flash updates too -- but only get something that looks like it actually fixes/addresses serious issues. Normally flashing a bios is rarely needed except for specific problems to be overcome (like upgrading the cpu but current bios doesn't support the new cpu).

Anywho, make sure you get updates for the mboard's chipset (nvidia, VIA, or whatever it is your mboard has).

Get video drivers from nvidia, if you haven't already. www.nvidia.com

If you want please post exactly what mboard you have and video card (brand/model). I could poke around and see if there might be known issues/solutions.

Could be you have a bad peice of hardware. If you have a spare video card laying around try using that and see what happens. (although you did say Quake runs fine).

Turn off all background processes that you can live without (IM apps, stupid stuff like that).

Hrm dunno what else to suggest, but I'd immediately look into getting your chipset and video drivers up to date, if you haven't already.

can't hurt either:
Completely uninstall SL, clean out the Cache directory and such too (dunno if uninstalling it does that automatically or not).

Then reinstall it.

Well, at first it sounded like LL network problems, but you may wish to check you don't have any viruses, malware or rootkits installed. Massive HD activity whilst rotating the camera sounds very wrong. Also check that you don't have any programs running in the background - try disabling any virus scanners as well.

Thank you again for the quick response

Let's start from the previous post
Drivers are all up to date, I have a habbit of keeping all drivers and other software in latest versions availble.
The motherboard is MSI K8N Neo3 with nVidia nForce 4 - 4x chipset. The specific graphics card I have (as I mentioned before) is matched for this particular motherboard.
Hardware is perfectly fine, that is without a question. All hardware tests that I ran after buying the system were perfectly fine. Not a single application or game has any problems or issues, even most minor ones. SL is the only single one that has a problem. Also, this system is designed solely for games and there is no other software installed (besides the most basic ones like Office or Acrobat Reader and of course antivirus).
Again, all tests are OK: CPU, RAM, graphics, motherboard, hard drive - all passed without a problem.

As for SL reinstalling/clearing cache. Done each time a new update was issued, including physically deleting all folders that belong to SL.

Side note
I got mighty angry with this issue and tried to run SL on the primary mainframe I have here. Hang on to your hats, this is B.I.G.

MB: Intel Quadro I680 Beta
CPU: 4x dual-core Pentium 3.0 GHz
RAM: 16 Gb RAMBUS at 1033 MHz
Graphics: nVidia GeForce 7800 Ultra (512 Mb onboard)
Primary HD: Western Digital SATA2, 10200 RPM (240 Gb)

Issue 1: SL claims I have 128 Mb of video RAM
Issue 2: Client FPS at 15-20 with minimum settings, 30 if staring at ground

Performance? Slowformance I think...

Thanks for replying, Mack

1. Viruses cannot be an issue, this system is too well protected against that - Norton Antivirus is on guard all the time, regular virus checks are normal for me
2. Spyware/malware/other - check, AdAware and SpyBot S&D are both installed and I run both every 2-3 days. Besides, this system is used solely for games so where would that stuff come from?
3. Disabling the virus scanner is the last thing I'd do but I'll try that. No other programs are running in background, Windows services are cut down too

Honestly... I happen to be a coder by passion, education and trade. And having my systems run at peak performance and as safe as possible is my private hobby

Raavi, I've got the exact same problem as you when rotating the camera, so you're not alone. The other problems you've described though, I've (thankfully) not experienced. The camera thing has been going on since 1.7, and it gets better or worse with each passing update. Pretty much all of 1.8 has been on the worse side. I've bug reported it, and I've mentioned it many times on the forums. No response whatsoever from LL on it so far. I'm not even sure they believe the problem exists since it doesn't affect everyone. It's extremely annoying, and it's brought my building efforts to a screeching halt.

My specs are as follows:

4Mb down/1Mb up connection
2.54 GHz HT Pentium 4
256MB nVidia Quadro FX 3000
768MB PC 1066 RD RAM

I realize I could use more RAM, but RD is soooo much better for graphics intensve applications than the DDR2 that's in most systems, I can usually run circles around machines with several gigabytes of DDR2 or even DDR3. My machine performs exactly the same with Photoshop, Maya, SL, Illustrator, etc. running all at the same time as it does with just one of them running, so I'm inclined to believe SL's problems are not related to the amount of system RAM in any way.

SL performance has been getting steadily worse with each new version. 1.7 was bad comapred to 1.6. 1.8 just sucks. On ocasion, certain minor updates have made things better, only to have them get worse again in the next update.

Since 1.7, I can't turn on local lighting anymore without things coming to a standstill (used to have it on all the time). Since 1.8, I can't have more than 4 or 5 avatars around me without having to turn all settings to bare minimum, just to be able to move (used to be able to keep all settings quite high with no problems with lots of people around). By far the most serious problem is the camera thing. It started with 1.7, it got better as 1.7 progressed, and then in 1.8 it got worse than ever, and it's stayed that way. Move the camera, and SL locks up for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes before slowly climbing to very low FPS (like 1.5 - maybe 3 or 4). Touch an arrow key to return the camera to normal position, and FPS jumps back to normal, instantly.

As I said, this is extremely annoying, and it makes building next to impossible. For someone like me, whose main purpose in SL is as a content creator, this is a HUGE problem. LL, fix the freakin' camera already, will ya? And for the love of all that is decent and holy, once you've got it fixed, LEAVE IT THAT WAY!

Raavi perhaps this is a silly question

Is it possible this is a network issue?

ie an ethernet adapter running at 100 instead of 1000 or you ISP crapping out?

This can make a huge difference.

Ok I've read the posts and here's my answers:

1) you're using an FX series card. Its considered LOW budget. I myself have a GeforceFX 5500 256MB AGP. It does me well and the frame rates you describe accurately match the grade of performance as a series 5 FX nVidia card. Not a high end series 6 like you claim. (There's no such thing as a 6800FX)

2) You're Semptron is only a little better then my 32bit Anthlon XP because its 64bit. Also considered LOW budget. Get yourself a real AMD64 chip instead of the watered down crap.

3) Norton AV is the CPU hog of antivirus programs and is now pretty much useless due to the fact virus writers having be targeting Norton to disable it so their virus can do their work on your system. Disable it while in SL or find a better one that uses less resources.

4) Internet connection, this is where your lag is coming from. From experience & observation you need a minimum of a 1Mbit connection to play SL without lag. Your 512kbit just meets playability. Keep in mind the wire age/quality in your home will also affect latantcy on your DSL connection and there's little you can do about that other then tear up your home & replace all the phone lines.

5) Drivers, make sure if you've had previous drivers for your video card installed that you use something like Driver Cleaner Pro to clean EVERYTHING out. nVidia has a tendancy to leave junk behind after an install and it usually affects stability and/or performance. Also you might wanna try some 3rd party drivers like the NGO Optimized nVidia drivers. I've noticed a nice little gain using their drivers + a full uninstall of my old drivers using Driver Cleaner Pro.

Now we all feel for you that performance isn't what it should be, but as a coder like you claim, you should already know that SL doesn't operate like conventional games and CAN'T operate like conventional games. If you feel you can do better, by all means try and share the wealth with LL and land a job with them. Any performance improvements will be well welcomed (if they work).

OK, let me reply in order as posts appeared

Chosen:
I'm also a content creator, thou mostly dealing in scripting. But yes, building is a MAJOR pain ever since 1.7. You know exactly what I mean and wrote it down here so I won't repeat after you

Darkness:
Yes, 512 is a bit slow for SL but it should be decent after everything has loaded. The connection is fine, however data.agni.lindenlabs.com has a major packet loss at times. And that is the ONLY place that has packet loss from my end so I don't think it's network issue.
I'll perform additional network tests just to make sure, good point there

Ron, my friend, no offense intended here, so please don't take any, but I feel compelled to make a quick factual correction here. There is indeed such a thing as a 6800FX. Well, sort of. It's actually reversed; the FX comes before the 6800, so the name properly is GeForce FX 6800, but it does exist, just the same. Here is an early test article for one from July of 2004 if you'd like to check it out, and here is one of the many places where you can buy one. As you can see, there are many additional suffixes added onto the names of the cards to designate specific models, but the root name of the card in both links is "nVidia GeForce FX 6800".

It's true that there's nothing currently on nVidia's website with "FX" and "6800" in the same name, but clearly those particular letters and numbers must have been used in concert in the past. A quick trip to Froogle reveals no less than eleven cards called "GeForce FX 6800" for sale.

Also, I'd hardly all cards with FX in their name "low budget". My Quadro FX 3000 cost me $1500 US. Those 2 little letters in the name certainly didn't serve to lower the price in any way on that one. The reason I bought it was because, at the time, it was nVidia's absolute top of the line for applications like Maya, what nVidia calls an "Ultra High End Product" (although it's since been downgraded simply to "High End Product" since there are newer cards available in the Quadro series now).

Anyway, I think it's probably safe to take Raavi's word for it on what hardware he's got in the machine right in front of him.

Just a quick suggestion: Hit CTRL-SHIFT-1 and bring up the timing console - the ping times + packet loss indicators on there might give you a clue as to whether you have some kind of network saturation problem.

Hi Shep and thanks for your suggestion

I've been looking at performance console for a long time and I'm quite shocked with the results.
Pings are between 500 and 700 which is awful, considering that average pings from my machine to US servers are around 200-250.
Furthermore - I'm seeing heavy packet loss appear and dissapear, up to 80% even! I traced the route to data.agni.lindenlab.com from all machines in my network and all of them report that the loss is solely on the LL machine. Neither my local network or the routes to the server cause packet loss. Traces to any other US destination show no packet loss either. I'm assuming this must be something on the server's end then...
This might explain slowdowns and awful moving/map loading/texture loading performance but the problem is certainly not on my end.

I spent last 2 hours testing my connections (two private 512/128 and one for the server - 100 Mb), all of them report same symptoms - heavy packet loss and very high pings to data.agni.lindenlab.com and secondlife.com which hosts website (explains awfully slow forum). Everything besides that is 100% fine, pings average between 50-100 (local in-country) and 200-250 (US/Canada servers), no packet loss anywhere else.

So I think we just found the cause of the problem... or not?

Let me explain some issues regarding the FX card I have

Indeed, this is nVidia FX 6800, not 6800 FX - mea culpa. And I certainly wouldn't consider it low budget, seeing as it was 580 USD card.

And Ron...
My Sempron is fully 64 bit one. I reccomend http://techreport.com/cpu/index.x?sort=name before you start saying there is no such Sempron. Check out Sempron 3000+, it's near the bottom. You will see 3 models - Thoroughbred (32 bit) and two Palermo (32 and 64 bit)

I know that Norton is a hog if it comes to CPU usage. Any of you can reccomend a better antivirus?

As for the network - internal LAN is brand new, installed 2 months ago on Cat 6 cables. External line is actually a single fiber-optic cable that runs to the local ISP server which then is connected to the internet using a 1 Gb line. But as my previous post said - network issues certainly are a problem here.

I never said anything about a Sempron not existing, I said they're not that good. I said get yourself a AMD64. Though I'd highly recomend an AMD X2, FX, or Opteron if possible.

The antivirus I use is AVG. They have a premium version that has more features like a firewall and spyware remover, but the free version is all you really need if you already have that stuff wich is just an antivirus with the basic antivirus functions (active scan, schedualled scans, email scanning, automatic daily definition updates, and free automatic upgrades).

Sure, I could get myself Opteron or X2 but who will pay for that? Note that 100 USD for me is half a month of living. But honestly, this Sempron is more than enough for any game I know so far (except for SL... doh!).

I'll check out AVG, thanks

Torely Linden did and if I had the cash I would too especially if its the hard to find Opteron 170 she found. Also.. alot of people here on the forums own X2 processors.

EDIT: I almost forgot, your MB has HyperThreading technology on it. Try setting SL's affinity to one of your virtual cores. That might give youa bit of speed boost.

This is an example of the most frustrating aspect of Second Life. If you have a problem, instead of assigning a tech person to contact you (or giving you the info to contact him/her) your post gets moved to a different forum. When I was having problems and tried to get help through the forums, I was told my post wasn't in the right forum. Yeah, that was helpful. As if shuffling your request for help to a different place is actually doing something helpful. When are we going to be treated as customers? Does LL even have a customer service department? For me it took weeks to get the situation corrected using in-world help, email and posting in the forums. In the end I found my own solution. Amazing

For anti-virus I've used CA's (Computer Associates) InnoculateIT/eTrust for probably the last 10 years or so. (InnoculateIT (used to be free) was dropped for the commercial version, "eTrust" ($29)). They also offer free online scans if you want to save money.

I really don't like the GUI that they use now (in order to compete with pretty AOL friendly applications like Bloaton's, err Norton's). But it is NOT bloatware (which norton's is so infamous for). It's fast, small, and doesn't hog resources. I personally don't run real-time scanning -- but I also don't "net" like an idiot. I used to run the email checker, but with good server-side filters/virus scan I stopped using that (I do scan my attachments manually though, at least the ones I don't instantly delete -- which is like 98% of them).

Anyway, huge link follows, on this page is also a link to their free online scanner.
http://store.ca.com/dr/sat1/ec_Main.Entry17c?SID=35715&SP=10023&PN=1&PID=671589&V1=671589&CID=179788&api1=78&api2=1&CUR=840&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=179788

here's CA's "home" page for home users, with other solution products (which I don't use):
http://store.ca.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry?CID=0&SID=35715&SP=10007&DSP=0&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

Their site can be a little confusing, if you get off track, as they are a primarily a corporate security (software) company, and really their home-use stuff is secondary. Much of their site is aimed at big networks/business.

There are other free web based scanners too, which I haven't used. Pretty sure Avast has a good one.

Personally ive found SL to be precisely as laggy for the last 2 or 3 months. I call it the 1.fucking7 effect. Ever since this damn patch came in ive found SL unplayably laggy in any sims that have more than 1 person in them. Something is drastically wrong.
I have a high power system
Athlon 64
1gig
6600 GT
4meg connection. SL is the ONLY thing that lags me. Hell I run Battlefield 2 on reasonably high settings.

Yes, since SL 1.7, SL has been very slow. Vektor Linden mentioned to me back then that the problem is some kind of AGP pipeline issue, but I don't remember, or recorded, exactly what he said it was. Regardless, whenever a texture downloads, SL lags. Local lighting is barely standable unless your draw distance is at 64m and there are no prim-heavy (twisty hair/jewelry) avs in-range. Why as soon as such an av comes in range--even if I'm not LOOKING at it--tanks my framerate I just don't know--even after their textures have downloaded!

This issue REALLY needs to be fixed ASAP!

Other annoying bugs since SL 1.7:

- having to login with a Windows profile that doesn't have any extended ASCII characters in it
- disabling fog in debug menu will eventually cause all objects to have a yellowish faded look (close fog, essentially) on them