Please tell me how to improve performance

by changing my settings. I can't move scarcely move, for the lag - or jerkiness or whatever you want to call it. I looked on the WIKI stuff, and it suggested "change preferences," but when I followed that link, it just repeated the page I was on in a different form. Having searched around, one thing I read was "turn off local lighting." Exactly how do I go about reducing graphics settings - I mean, which ones, and set them to what, lower or higher? - so that I can actually play this game? coco

What type of system and connection do you have?

Try this.

I have simular problems, which often keeps me away from a lot of event I'd like to go to...

I run SL on 1400 AMD (I know, it's old, but it runs smoothly) with 400M RAM and an ATI 128M Radeon 9200 (I know it's old too, and will replace it soon)

My connection speed is ADSL at 704/128 kbps.

Still, SL behaves as if I'm running it on a x486 with a dailup connection.
What can I do? (besides upgrading or buying a new pc )

Molecular, that link you gave me is the same one where I originally tried to find my answers. When I click the link on it ("change preferences" it just gives me that very same page, only it looks a bit different.

Dan, I connect via cable and Mozilla Firefox browser, but I can also connect through cable and AOL. I'm not very technologically astute, but here are theinfo I found for my computer:

Dell Computer
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz
Processor Speed 1.75GHz
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition; version 5.1.2600
Speed 1794 MHz
RAM 256 MB
Local Disk Total Capacity 37.21 GB: Used 22.38GB, Free 14.82 GB
NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 200
Display Type: Plug and Play Monitor, High Color (16 Bit), Resultion, 800x600
DirectX – don’t know what version this is, but downloaded the latest DirectX a week or so ago. (I think it was version 8.)

Thanks, y'all, for your help!

coco

This is the second page referred to, above. It does provide quite a bit of detail:

http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Changing+Preferences+for+best+performance

Ah, this might also be a huge part of your lag problem. You need at least 512, and 1024 is recommended. All other factors notwithstanding, increasing RAM is the single-most effective way to reduce lag.

I have 384, and it runs fine. Plus, there are many factors when it comes to SL's performance. CPU and RAM matter just as much as your GFX card.

That's weird about how the Wiki won't show you the right page though. Try the link Paolo gave. Should take you to the right page.

It's your GF3 and your RAM.

Incidentally, jerkiness isn't "lag", it's a low framerate and is overwhelmingly a computer performance problem.

The memory is where you're going to find the worst performance. Most of Second Life's minimum specificiations are just that: the hardware on which SL will run at all. Windows XP can consume 256MB of memory just running the operating system; 512 is really recommended for what you might consider "good" performance.

Read the detailed Preferences guide; the most important things are going to be to reduce draw distance to 64, move object/tree/avatar sliders to their lowest level, and disable Local Lighting. I'd suggest also reducing your cache size; with 256MB, your hard drive will be taking the place of the extra memory you don't have, and making it run a huge cache as well is asking a bit much.

Great tips, Lee! Appreciate your taking the time to clear up the urban legends re: lag.

ACK! Somehow I've been thinking for a long time here that I had 512 RAM!!!

As for the video card, I thought mine was a good one, and one that was considered good for this game. I can see adding some RAM (if I could figure out how to do it), but I don't think the video card really needs to be replaced; don't you agree?

Paolo, thank you for sending that link. It did work, and I have printed it out.

Lee, I copied and printed out your helpful remarks, too.

Meanwhile, in game someone helped me change some of the settings and it made it work much better. With the information you guys have provided me, I may be able to fine-tune things even better.

I had read enough here to know that "lag" vs "jerkiness" are actually two different things. Just, I call it lag anyway.

Thanks again for all your help with this problem! Even with things not optimum, I am enjoying Second Life.

coco

On the Wiki: Changing Preferences for best performance page listed above, it would be cool if someone way smart could give some idea of the performance hit taken for each of the items, i.e. how much bang for the buck relized for each option. I'm sure some of the items are of minor improvement with a minor performance hit while others (Local Light) are really neat, but owch!