My SL runs like CRAP! Please Help

Hi everyone, I am new here to SL, just started yesterday. I have been playing video games for a long time, and ive never played a game that ran this crappy in my life. I ask people in SL and they say theres run smoooth, even with a lower end pc than mine. My game is some what choppy and sometimes when im in a highly populated area, its just unplayable. For example, when im in a Casino, The buildings around me take a while to draw and when i move my charactor, its never smooth. Sometimes my charactor moves reaaaaaaaal slow and most of the time its CHoppy. Is this game that demanding? I can run HL2, Oblivion, Battlefield 2, ect alot smoother than SL.

Heres my rig:

Windows XP Pro
AMD X2 4200+ 939 Overclocked @ 2.4Ghz with Dual Core optimized update
Asus A8N-SLI motherboard with Latest BIOS 1014
2GB Corsair DDR500 Dual Channel
Western Digital 80GB SATA 3.0
7900GS 256MB Overclocked @ 600/1600 with 93.71 drivers 3Dmark06 score is 5300
Sound Blaster X-fi
Samsung 21 inch Widescreen LCD

My settings are:
1680 x 1050 Resolution 16:9
Antistrofic filtering turned OFF
160 draw distance
everyting else is up to the max

I have tried lowing my graphics settings to 1024 x 768 with medium graphics settings. It improves a little, but its still not smooth and still choppy, not to mention the graphics look watered down. How can I get better performance?

"I can run HL2, Oblivion, Battlefield 2, ect alot smoother than SL."
'course you can they are games optmized, SL is not a game

Theres about 100+ posts about this but i find the search on this forum is craptacular to so not surprised if it never shows up anything.

Short reasons why SL is so slow
* texture sizes/amount of them,litterally millions
* cache is way to small 1 gig is nothing ,1 sim can have several gigs of texture
* zero optimization
* very heavy cpu rendering/more polygons then any game
* gpu does very little for you here
* streaming content > slows everything <
* a must have 5+ mbit internet and no up/download limit

Just a heads up since you have dual core, set affinity to 1 core for SL, usually fix its horrible wierd fps for most.

Is yours that slow? Is everyones this slow?

Everyone's is that slow. Unlike those other games (I play WoW, so I understand where you're coming from), nothing here is prerendered. Instead, everything you see... EVERYTHING... must be redownloeaded every time. As the other poster said, nothing is optimized. While it may be true that you can visit with any other person in the game, unlike WoW, if you get 16-25 people in a small space, the whole thing grinds to a halt.

The upside is freedom to create and infinite customization. You have to adjust your expectations to the space, because it's apples and oranges.

Turning down your draw distance will help. As everyone else said, everything in SL streams live since it can change at a second's notice, unlike regular games. Also, the more avatars in an area, the worse the lag is. Casinos and dance clubs can grind you to a dead halt because the avatars there can be wearing - literally - thousands of prims (each!) that need to be rendered.

Yeh im slow to usually around 20-25fps but never near ground or to many people then its 5~7fps.

Only one i seen that help turning down is
Object detail / view distance,
that helps alot for fps but it get ugly fast

im usually at lowest 64-96m view distance on sims with neighbour sims, if its a lone sim its not that heavy and you can do 128 without to much issues

Avoid sims with loads of avatars, they will make you crawwwlll

x2-4800
4gig ram
7900gt 256mb

x2-4200
2gig ram
7900gt 256mb

64-3500
2gig ram
6800gt 128mb

I run 50-120 fps on good days even in heavily pop areas. and 24-50 fps the other 75% of the time,
on a core2duo 1.86
with 2 gb 7900gt 256 non over clocked. this is with every gpx option set high and a 128-160 draw distance.

never choppy, never a crawl, (some sim crossing I will sink into the void and hang and rubber band but I consider this a server side bug/issue.

Had the 5-12fps on the old box that was never really what I would call choppy either.
casinos with 15-20 people will lag bad especially one with many machines and raffles and other scrip[ts running.

is that a 64 bit set up? just wondering with the driver you mentioned.
set your affinity to 1 core, set your draw to 160 or less. you should be able to run good with shiny water, bump mapped everything. and all else set maxed or high.

edit, is the choppiness the way your AV walks?
thats a normal walk kinda not truly a walk and very stiff.

WHen you start SecondLife, bring up your Task Manager and set the SecondLife.exe affinity to only one core. That should help greatly.