Optimal Settings

Hello everyone!

I am new to the world of second life and took my first tour of the game last night. I noticed that I was hit with incredible lag from first entry. I noticed that other people in game were having issues as well but seemed capable of still playing the game. for me, even walking was very very choppy. does anyone have any optimal settings on what to run on for a mediocre setup? I'm currently running an AMD Athlon 65bit, 756mgs of ram and a g-force 4. this is of course this horrible lag is related to my computer only - perhaps the lag in game is actually that bad, but as a new comer, i don't know for sure. any input or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-II-


edit: spelling...not enough coffee in my system

What is your bandwidth and have you went into your network settings inside the games preferences and bumped up the initial bandwidth speed? The default is 500, but maybe if you bump it up (if your speed is high enough to handle it), that would help reduce the lag.

Sometimes the only way to really fine tune the settings is to do trial and error. Not every situation is the same for every computer unfortunately.

E

The Geforce 4 is also a bottleneck. I'd highly suggest picking up atleast a Geforce 6600 to use with SL, preferably a Geforce 7600 or better.

Go to the Edit Menu on top of your screen:

Select Preferences.

Select Network Tab and do as suggested above--adjust the bandwidth setting to correspond to your connection.

Select Graphics tab: With your set up I'd set the Draw Distance to no more than 128. When indoors set it to 64.

Select Graphics Detail Tab: Uncheck Rippled Water; Uncheck Bump Mapped; Select Sun and Moon only. Select low for terrain detail.

There are sliders at the bottom. Slide the Top one maybe 1/4 from the left. All others push all the way to the left.

Other things to do (Will noticeably detract on screen image outdoors)

Press Ctrl+Alt+D

Open Client Menu on top of screen

Clik on Rendering>Click Types on menu that opens on the right>Select and clik on Clouds.

Open Client Menu>clik Rendering>Clik on Features>Clik on Fog.


I agree with Ketra. If you find that you enjoy SL you should invest in an upgraded Vid Card ASAP.

Here's an idea why there's no point in investing any money in newer and more powerful gfx cards for secondlife.

My current configuration:
CPU - Intel Dual Core 3.4Ghz
GPU - nVdia 7900GT 512MB DDR3 SONIC
RAM - 4GB DDR2 433Mhz

PERFORMANCE (Single Core/Manual Config):
-Heavy Load (Ultimately meaning a whole bunch of prims and textures available all around you)
Maximum Settings: 12FPS - 15FPS
Minimum Settings: 28FPS - 34FPS
-Light Load (Very little prims around you, little or no textures)
Maximum Settings: 28FPS - 34FPS
Minimum Settings: 35FPS and beyond

PERFORMANCE (Dual Core/Default Config):
-Heavy Load (Ultimately meaning a whole bunch of prims and textures available all around you)
Maximum Settings: 2FPS - 5FPS
Minimum Settings: 5FPS - 8FPS
-Light Load (Very little prims around you, little or no textures)
Maximum Settings: 2FPS - 5FPS
Minimum Settings: 6FPS and 8FPS

Believe me, you don't want to go SLi, or Quad SLi. If Dual Core is this pathetic, I doubt it'll be better with SLi or CrossFire configurations.

SL, as well as many other games, doesn't support Dual Core processors.

There has been a long standing recognized issue with AMD dual cores. No reason to expect Intels to work any better.

Indeed. But even without dualcore support, switched over to single core, the performance is still dissappointing. I ran Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion with all settings at maximum, and still yield over 60FPS, didn't expect a program like second life would use it up to only 35FPS.