Duo Core makes SL weird

I had a custom computer built:
Intel Duo Core 6600 Processors 2.4GHZ
Memory 4 gig RAM
Nvidia 7900 GS overclocked
Bus Speed 1026
Raid Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
On Extreme DSL

When I got it it had an ATI Radeon 2600 xt in it however the clothes looked like they were rags with strips hanging off and some sculpti items ie boots looked like blocks instead of shoes and the body shapes were mis-formed. I replaced it with an Nvidia card and now the avatar is fine and so is the clothes however the hair always has weird angles.
Now sometimes when I enter everything looks normal however when I move or get 12 meters away it changes to one of the forms, mostly triangles, used to make it ie picture frames and other pictures. Trees are weird as they start out flat, then as I get closer start becoming 3_4 triangle and finally developing triangle shaped growths up and down the trunks. I also can not get all textures to load. If the texture on the columns is there the doors disappear and if the columns are white the doors are present. Torches alternate between being right ie flame at the end to the stick grows longer and the flames, when seen, are in the middle. In addition it looks like the screen will pulsate ie the text gets bigger and then returns, the avatars have tics and they also like to put arms up and down by themselves. The picture that shows my last location as I log in is also pixeled ie you can see various colors plus the textures when they change into weird shapes also show dots of color. When I ask someone to look at me and to check out the area that I am in they say everything looks fine. We have two computers so I go to the other and I look fine on it, so its this computer.

I have also done the following :
Ran various scans and made sure ALL drivers were up to date and current. I mean even the Ethernet card.
Downloaded and Installed flash, Quicktime and Java
Ran DxDiag and sent to Linden Labs along with logs and did what they said which was update drivers, clear cache manually and reload second life. No change, okay it looks okay some times but as soon as I move its back.
Went into Nvida control panel and tried to “let application decide”, and then changed every setting in various combos, nothing permanent again.
Diabled Dr. Watson
Turned on and off anti-virus protection (Avasti)
Turned Open GL on and off
Defragmented
Cleared cache and reload 3 more times
Screamed and cussed several times

#1- make sure you've cleaned out the ATI Drivers.
#2- If your video is OC'd, try setting it back to normal speed. It's possible the effects are a symptom of the card straining.
#3- As usual, make sure the latest drivers are installed.

Seems to be a lot going on there.
As its a custom built system, I assume the power supply unit is big enough for the system.
Remove all traces of SL from your system. Run a registry cleaner and defrag your HD. Reboot your PC. Now reinstall SL from a freshly downloaded copy.

The tree thing, In preferences, slide the Flexi option for trees over to the right, that will improve that.
Twitching, turn off Avatar Vertex Buffers in preferences. Set the clock speeds to the GC to normal.
Other avatar related flexi things, put all flexi sliders to the right to improve that.
Set draw distance to say 128, particles to 250 or more (not too high otherwise it will cause lag), for the flames, composite layers to 2 or 3, fog to 2-3 range.
In the Network tab, increase the cache to full. Set bandwidth to 2/3rds of your actual connection speed. You can adjust this in increments to reduce packet loss, and texture download speeds to suit your local conditions.
Set Local lights, to gain better shadow effects.
Turn off Ripple water, unless you particularily like the effect, although it may cause lag.
Turn off any graphic Filtering in preferences.
Check you are using the correct/supported monitor resolution in preferences, and that the UI scale is set to 1.0.. Gamma should also be set to 0, including nighttime brightness set to 1.0

Although doubtful that the dual core is an issue, as the recent update was supposed to have cured that, go into the Client menu (top of your screen), if you can't see it, press Ctrl+Shift+D, and check Run Mulithreads.

Now assuming things have improved, go through one by one, each of these setting and make fine adjustments, until you have the right balance of eye candy to lag ratio.

Well first yes it has 450 watt power supply and while it CAN be overclocked the video card was on normal settings. Mars my husband did eveything you told me to 3 times.....using Tune-up 2007 to check and clean any remaining bits and pieces of second life, manually removing cache, temp file and temporary internet files. It was perfect UNTIL after being in for 2 minutes then the ticks started, the arm swings etc. The graphics stayed okay for 4 minutes and then they went to back to ABNORMAL. Works excellant in Civilization and Rome: Total War games (hubby games) but not Second life, so right now I on older computer (3 months old with 3.4 ghz single intel processor, 1 gig of ram and ATI Radeon 1600 Pro card which works fine and hubby (a technology coordinator) is suffering having to use the Duo Core until he can figure it out. He said he is welcome to ANY and ALL suggestions.

Get a 500w+ powersupply. Sounds like you need more power in my option on what you listed. Maybe even 550 at the least. Second, try setting SL to run on one core. Sometimes SL will run really jittery for me (I have a dual core as well) and setting it to one core fixes the problem. Uninstall all your video drivers (Nvidia/ati) and make sure they're all gone and nothing is left. Then reinstall the video drivers again. Sometimes files are left behind.

okay it works..here is what happened:
Hubby had an account at DriverAgent.com (from school) and unlike others he ran it showed Drivers not updated in two key areas..PCI Express and Audio
He updated both although PCI Express still says out of date but he leaving alone as IT WORKS right now.
He also downloaded and installed WinLauncherXp and put only Sl on 1 processor. He says to tell you that alone this made NO DIFFERENCE, however some combination with the drivers must have worked. We stressed it for 15 minutes going to various places and no problems. All graphics load and no tics.

Thanks a bunch as now I get my new computer back and he has to use his "old" computer

In the GC controller software, check all functions to 'Let Applications Decide'. Also turn off VBO in preferences in the client.
Keep us posted

BTW, all the games you listed as running ok.. are all DirectX games, SL is an OpenGL game. Have you got versions 1, 2 and 3 NetFramework on your system? NetFramework is not updated or downloaded by default on the Micorsoft update website, you have to go the to get it, then run update to get the latest patches.

no use in doing anything... i did all of what you advise but nothing changed on my duo core
i think the SL guys haven't investigated things
i have ran all the checks possible, have updated all my software - drivers and all have the lates
and i ran reg cleans and all (even though my machine is BRAND NEW)
and I installed a fresh SL client and ran a defrag and it is freakin slow!!!! and things look HORRIBLE

I agree...it's been a long standing problem for me too. The fact that some seem to be able to resolve it is encouraging but nothing has worked for me so far, and I've tried all the known workarounds.

edit: Intel Duo Core

I use both Athlon 64 (desktop) & Turion 64 (laptop), both dual core, neither have any issues. Same for everyone else I know using an AMD dual core system, so an issue with Intel duo processors rather than just the fact they are dual core.
I don't know any Intel Duo users on here but if it's affecting everyone with a Duo that's a big problem and hopefully for all the Intel users out there one they'll fix soon!

Curious how you set SL to run on one core? I have a dual core and have had no issues like above stated.

Bring up task manager (Ctrl + alt + delete) Go to the processes tab and find secondlife.exe and right click on it. Go to set affinity and uncheck one of the cores. For example, uncheck core 1 and keep core0 checked. SL will now run on one core. Works for any program too.

oh no turning off cores yet again? Why is this old fix still be talked about? After the first "FIRST LOOK" client release there is no need to turn off ANY CORES. If you want a drop in preforance and lose of speed please do it. But otherwise don`t.

I run a two year old Intel P4 Duo Core 3.06 processor. I don't have and have never had a problem with SL and my CPU. With both cores working my CPU usage is roughly 50%, with a single core set my CPU usage is roughly 50%. In other words........it don't make a darn bit of difference with my system.

With my old P4 1.5 processor SL ran at nearly 100% constantly. Though it did run pretty good........in fact a very good friend of mine in RL has that computer now and runs SL without glitches too.

My guess why some have problems and others don't is that some run background programs while trying to run SL........even unknowingly. The programs that start when I boot up are minimal. Anti virus, fire wall, Windows Defender, and necessary system programs......that's it. Email checkers, Instant message programs, Skype (or other phone services), fax software, and such really play hell with resources.

Atleast some people have common sence! Turning off cores is just reducing useablity of speed. I too have had no problems runing dual core CPU(s),in the past. I ran a 866mhx Intel for the first year on sl. I had no problems otehr then system being old and slow.

And is this information helping those of us with problems? No.

Assuming you are running a Windows machine, it might. Try running MSconfig and shutting down unneceassry programs loading at boot up. Everyone needs to run an antivirus 100% of the time......same with a firewall. Some AV's are intrusive (like Norton and McAfee) and occassionally interfer with SL. Most firewalls are passive once you have them configured correctly (consult your manual or help files). Almost all mal/spyware programs are not active at all (Spyware Blaster and Windows Defenders are two that I know are exceptions......but they don't interfer with my system (I run both).

Of course you have to keep the necessary programs for you OS to run. Other than that, shut them off. See if it helps.

Yes, the information we are giving could very well help you. You want me to come to your place and set your computer up? I'm an amatuer in that department......but I will do it for 1000 USD plus air fare round trip.

This sounds suspiciously like the detail sliders are turned down too low in preferences. With your setup you can move the sliders like tree detail and object detail all the way to the right with little affect on fps. Edit -> Preferences -> Graphics Detail and you should see 4 sliders labeled "Object Mesh Detail", "Flexible Mesh Detail", "Tree Mesh Detail" and "Avatar Mesh Detail". slide 'em to the right. You should also have "Enable Vertex Shaders" and "Avatar Vertex Program" selected too as your card can handle it and will make big improvements in SL. Keep in mind SL has a set distance detail limit no matter how powerful your setup which means round objects turn to hexagons at a certain distance and Flexprims go wonky as well.

Then again he believe what he wants. He still believe there is not such thing as a dual core and we are still APPLE is still using the apple II+


Your points are well expressed. Some just don`t get some things about dual cores are just outdated.


Usagi

I use a AMD Dual core setup and have not had any issues, however with the last client update, there were some 'bug fixes' where they introduced better identification of some higher end Intel Dual core CPU's.

In the Client menu, check MultiThreading, that is supossed to work now.

Given the prolifercation of system setups, hardware, software, OS, firmware etc, it is always difficult to give a solid answer to issues, so therefore we have to make spirialing suggestions, in the hope that along the way, we may correct the problem. Most people with issues, do not post their specifications, or any error messages, report logs, so its a blind chase.