Please help me... incredilby low fps (like 0.5-2.5) with ATI

Can some technical wizard out there please give me some advice? I'm patient, good with following instructions, and learning to do things with my computer, but this is getting beyond me. I am SO frustrated. I bought my computer a week ago, with almost the sole purpose of playing SL... my bf and I were starting to fight over gaming time...lol

Here is my issue: My game is running between 0.5-2.5 fps (causing issues with my travelling and my chatting). My User Ping and Ping Sim are usually 450-700, but often jumping to 10,000 and occasionally 20,000.

I have followed advice from the forum to change all of my graphic options to the fastest settings (I don't really have any problems with the visual aspect of the game, it just takes forever to load or do anything).

Here are the specs for my system:

SR1717CL Compaq Presario
512 MB RAM, 200 GB HD
AMD Sempron Processor 3400+
994 MHz
Windows XP O/S
Integrated ATI Radeon XPress 200 Graphics Card

I use a high speed cable modem, which connects 2 computers to the internet via a DI-604 router. I have opened the firewall/ports 12020 - 13050 to allow SL access, as per SL support. My Windows XP firewall is disabled, and my Norton firewall is set to always allow SL access.

Our second computer (an older DELL, with 256 MB RAM, and the ATI Radion 9250 graphics card) runs the game at 7+ fps... much more smoothly than mine. It runs through the same router.

SL support suggested that I update all my Windows patches, which I did. I then upgraded the driver for my video card (at least I found the only download for it I could... the Catalyst download).

I then updated the firmware for my router. To my dismay, there have not been any improvements to my SL experience.

I tried uninstalling the Catalyst CP, and the ATI CP, and installing the Omega driver instead, but when I downloaded it, it did not give me the 'installation wizard' type options, it just downloaded, and disappeared.... did I do something wrong in this step? How do I check to see if the driver installed properly?

If someone can let me know anything I can try, PLEASE let me know... I'm so frustrated. I love SL, and really really want it to run properly.

If the problem is needing a new video card, can someone please suggest a good one for my computer to run SL?

Like I said, I'm not very techincal, and I've done the best I can with the help I've gotten from Live Help in game, the support through email, and the forums (which are all great), but I havent found the answer(s) yet.

Thanks to anyone who can help me,

Willow Rawley.

the problem is your videocard. The Radeon XPress cards have problems with SL because.. well.. they suck. Easy way to boost speed is to disable Avitar Vertex. that should boost you up to at least 6-7 fps.

also open the debug console and disable the fog... You can't do it in the pre game options and you have to make the change every time you log on...

debug mode is something like ctrl alt "d" all together.... and you should get an extra option at the top of the screen...

Then the fog option is in rendering... you'll have to search forr it but once disabled it'll bring you a good 10FPS. As ATI cards realy such at emulating nvidia fog effects... and unfortunatly thats exactly what the fog option is!

The intigrated x200 is not only a wimpy video card but because of the intigrated nature of the video memory, you are sharing slow system memory with video cutting down on system memory available so if you have 128 video memory set up you only have 384 left over for the system and that really isn't enough to run SL with any speed. The 9250 is essentually the same video card with it's own dedicated memory so it doesn't have to use slow system memory.

Disabling Avitar Rendering did bring me up to 6-9 fps, thank you so much for the info. Why does it say 'faster' on it if it's slower? Is this an anomoly with the ATI graphics cards? And I'll disble the fog when I'm in world next... thank you guys so much... I can actually 'play' SL now!!!!! Wish someone had suggested this earlier... would have saved me so much time...lol.

So one more question- if I have an integrated ATI RAdion Xpress 200 Video Card in my computer, can I buy a different type of video card in the future, or am I stuck with ATI?

Thanks again for the help- you guys rock!

Happy SLing, everyone!

Willow R.

You should be able to go into your system's BIOS settings and disable the onboard video and use a regular video card instead.

Looking at the information on the Compaq SR1717CL (at http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?dlc=en&lc=en&product=1822601&lang=en&cc=us& it indicates that that machine uses an ASUS A8AE-LE motherboard, and does have a PCI-e slot. This is a good thing.

It can also handle up to 4 GB of RAM. This is also very good. I recently upgraded my machine from 512 MB to 1.5 GB of RAM and it improved my SL experience immensely. Consider adding additional RAM.

You state that your processor is at 994 MHz, but the product information on the above mentioned site says that the AMD Sempron 3400+ in these machines should be set at 2 GHz. If it's actually set at 994 MHz, that's less than half of the normal speed, and should be checked.

Best of luck!

P2

Actually its because its an integrated videocard. It shares a whole load of resources with your system instead of being independant and thats where all the issues come from. I believe the Geforce 6100 is the same way. Better off saving up an extra $100 - $150 and picking yourself up a Geforce 6600GT or a 6800GS/GT.