Really Bad Performance Issues

I have an Athalon 2800 XP Processor, 1Gig of RAM, Nvidia 6800 and I experience some bad graphical slowness in SL.

Would anyone have a suggestion on what resolution and settings I should use to get functionality out of that hardware while maintaining to look good?

I have an Athalon 2800 XP Processor, 1Gig of RAM, Nvidia 6800 and I experience some bad graphical slowness in SL.

Would anyone have a suggestion on what resolution and settings I should use to get functionality out of that hardware while maintaining to look good?

Ya know.. we should really have a flashing neon sign the size of the empire state building labled ATTN NOOBS: READ THIS BEFORE COMPLAINING ABOUT LOW FPS so I'll probly make one later.

This question has been asked a billion and one times so let me make it a billion and two:

The way SL works is more like an old school 3d rendering program and not a game. Most of the rendering is CPU bound and atm most of the workload that should be on your 6800 isn't.

Now the big problem is LL has yet to figure out a way to stream meshed content. Thats right, STREAMED. Most games store ALL their data on your hard disk and update when needed. As a result things load much faster and can be made more complex with the proper optimizations to allow for high framerates. Due to the fact 99.9% of all content in SL is made in real time by the userbase its impossible to store all the constantly changing data on your hard disk with proper optimizations for high frame rates. And because LL hasn't found a good way to make meshes work in SL yet, each piece of any object has to be individually streamed and rendered. With some objects being made anywhere from a handful to over 1000 pieces it makes the current rendering engine very innefficient (they working on that).

Here's some hints to help speed things up:

Until version 1.9.1 comes out of the preview grid keep Local Lighting OFF.

Ripple Water, any under a series 6 nVidia card or equivalent will run into some performance issues here. Since you got a 6800 you should be fine if you want the eye candy.

Ansi-Filering, you should be fine with this on. I recomend it actually as it clears everything up and makes building less painful because you can see your mistakes better.

Shiny Objects, go for it. On my GeForceFX 5500 I only loose 0.2FPS so you shouldn't even take a hit.

In the networking crank up your bandwith to 900 or 1000 if you are on a good broadband connection.

In adv graphics tone down your draw distance some. Recomend 64 for best performance. Lower your particle count to like 1024. Lower your outfit composit limit.

In the client all that should help. You wanna go a bit further I recomend swapping out those stock nVidia drivers for the 3rd party NGO Optimized Drivers found at NGOHq.com. Using those drivers you can overclock it if you want, but you won't notice a difference in SL with that. Use the PCI Latency Tool to lower your latency from 258ms to 64ms and start up nHancer. Create a new profile with nHancer for SL. Don't worry about Ehancements unless you wanna force AA or a level of AF. Under optimizations enable Performance (very little quality loss from what I've seen) or High Performance (haven't tested with NGO). Now if you are not using Ansi-Filtering in SL enable Trilinear Optimization. If you are, enable AF Optimization and Ansi Sample Optimization. Now I wasn't sure if SL uses DXT3 textures or not so I played it safe and forced it. I've gained 5 - 7 FPS over the OEM drivers using NGO & nHancer. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Forgot to mension if you switch drivers be sure to clean out the old nVidia drivers with Driver Cleaner Pro (its freeware) as drivers have a tendancy to not clean up after themselves when you uninstall. NEVER JUST INSTALL OVER A PREVIOUS DRIVER. This causes conflicts and slow downs with many drivers.

Thanks for the suggestions, I didn't know exactly why this game had such a lower FPS than a game persay. The settings are working fine, I have about 20FPS and it goes down to around 8-12 when I am just entering an area with lots of stuff.

Take a search of these forums and you will see long and detailed explanations of why SL is not like any "game". I see posts of the same questions and explanations every week. There is plenty of info out there, your FPS are fine and welcome to SL!

Hernando--I've merged this with the other post you made.

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