Unexpectedlly low frame rate

So I just got a new laptop (Dell E1705) and thought Id give SL another go, but I don't apear to be able to gt more than 20fps and the game feals very laggy.

specs:
Intel core duo T2500 (dual core 2Ghz processor)
1GB ram
Nvidia 7800 Go graphics (256Mb on board dedicated memory)
60GB 7200rpm SATA HD
256kbps net connection (a bit slow I know, but its a hotel room what do you expect )

I'm running all the latest drivers for all my hardware.

I'm running at 1920x1200 (native res) with every option on default and I get no more than 20fps in the starting area. This rig will run half life lost coast at almost 45fps on the same res and default settings.

Turning down the options and res doesnt make a whole lot of difference (a few fps tops).

I'm a little confused as my old desktop (which had lower stats) ran at a better fps.

Any one got any suggestions? or links to good tweaking guides.

Can i suggest the new beta nvidia drivers, 84.12's.

Im running the tweaked version of these at the moment, and have to report a considerable quality and fps increase in SL, I now get between 30-40fps before the lag comes into play.

Here's my machine spec's

Intel Celeron D 2.8ghz
1Gb PC2700 DDR Ram @ Dual Channel
XFX Nvidia 6600GT (128mb AGP)
Soundblaster Audigy 4 OEM

My net connection is 2mb ADSL .

You can get the tweaked 84.12's im using here Http://www.tweaksrus.com

I've just seen that the 84.20's are out so i'lll go give them a try too

(p.s. your comment might also suggest its your net connection that needs improved, your system can only render what it downloads, so perhaps theres a bottleneck between your net connection and your fps)

SL isnt a fps, and contains more then any polygons then any other "game", 10-20 fps with avatars around is normal, avoid the ground and builds it goes higher, no you wont see 100 fps+ here ever.

Reducing the resolution with little appreciable difference in fps suggests that your CPU is the bottleneck. Remember, 2Ghz is similar speed to a 2 year old desktop.

I don't think this is true, really. The slow speed of SL's rendering has little to do with the amount of polygons being drawn (except in the case of twisted torii), and more to do with the fact that there is little optimization done at the moment (such as advanced occlusion... or any occlusion?) due to the nature of the dynamic environment. Many modern 3D engines don't have to worry about a great deal of their geometry changing at any given time, therefore they can use much more effective polygon occluding calculations to avoid drawing what doesn't need to be drawn (objects hidden behind walls or other objects). In SL, the only thing that is reliably static most of the time is the terrain, which is drawn seperately, I believe.

Perhaps LL could implement some sort of occlusion scheme where prims that haven't moved in XX minutes could be routinely baked into some sort of occlusion database which could be used for calculations. I dunno how well that would work, maybe it's what they are doing already. Maybe it should be client side, with the sim giving a copy of the occlusion database to a client whenever they enter or see it.

Sorry for the double post. XD He's not just using a 2GHz, it's a dual-core processor. Processor speed doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the number of instructions per second that it capable of processing anymore. The 2GHz processors available today (like the AMD64 3400+, for example) are an order of magnitude faster than their older cousins (like, for example, the AMD 2400+, which also ran at 2GHz and IS about 3 years old). A Pentium 4 4GHz does NOT go much faster (if at all faster) than the top of the line AMD chips, which commonly run at around 2.6 or less GHz. They just like to tout the higher clock speed because uninformed people see it and go 'Ooooh fast.'

Thanks for all the posts.

I'm currently on an untweaked 84.20 driver from laptopvideo2go.

Please remember the intel duo processors do more instructions per clock cycle and are faster than a 2Ghz P4 (significantly faster I believe) would be and as its dual core I effectivlly have two of them. Now I understand that SL is probablly not multithreaded so can only use one core, but that does mean all of the OS can be offloaded on to the other core which leaves more room for SL. I would expect this rig to perform as well or better than 3 year old athlon I have at home (barnton 2400 or something like that).

I do understand that its not an fps and that it doesnt have to sit at 40+ constantly for every twitch I want to make (and I twitch lots playing deathmatch ), but I find the slightly jerky motion destracting as its not what I expect from a modern comercial product.

I agree clock cycles isn't necessarily a good comparison anymore. But, are you assuming that the SL client actually takes full advantage of the dual cores? As from experience, the core duos will run more or less like the Pentium M when not multitasking.



You don't need to tell me this. You see the words 'dual-core!' and go 'Ooooh fast'. Some others see the clock speed and go 'Ooooh fast'. The only way to see if its fast is running the apps that you'd actually use. Like SL for example.



If you actually observe carefully, a typical SL environment has a very high polygon count as compared to a 'static' game. All our builds have redundant faces facing inwards that we don't see, not yet counting twisty prims. A typical static game just uses lots of big shells with textures applied over it. To this effect, when I replaced my graphics card from an nvidia 5700 to a 7800GT, the framerates did not really jump up that much. Which leaves the processor as the prime suspect for the bottleneck.

AN application has to be specifically written to take advantage of multiple processors (including dual-cores). Otherwise, the only benefit is better multitasking. Even today's BEST games do NOT take advantage of more than a single core. In fact, some games have issues with multiple cores (stuttering, etc).

Here's something to try:

Load SL and get it running.
Then hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the task manager.
Click on the Processes tab, sory by name and find the Second Life process.
Right-click on it and choose Set Afinity.
Click on one of the two cores and close the Task Manager.

See if this improves things. The downside to this method is that there's no way inherent in XP to permanently set the afinity. But ther are other methods and fixes.

quake been supporting dual cpu for years , only now are games starting to use it more since its more used, Oblivion must be one of the first to support up to 4 cores, no i dont count xbox360 ; p piece of crap imo (ok so i dont like consoles)

SL is cpu bound sadly, high vid card help to a certain point, but most is done pure cpu power, and yes only 1 core ~.~

Found a graph thingie that i nosed on >here< guess it shows % benefit from going from one card to another +/-

You think newer games like Spore , think dualcore is future? definatly, eventually physics will be on their own card/buildt in on cpu / motherboard, future will be fun :>

SL has backface culling. Simply shove the camera inside a box to see through it.

I just wish prims could be hollowed COMPLETELY to allow for 2-sided flat sides (which could be an alternative to providing a specific 1-/2-sided plane...

Wasn't talking about the insides. Just faces of prims butting against each other. But why bring up some post from last month?

Well, you should've been more clear, then, obviously, Cot. I did a search for "culling" and wanted to comment about. Why must you constantly bug me about replying to old threads? DEAL WITH IT AND QUIT BUGGING ME ABOUT IT OR YOU'RE IGNORED!

Are you sure about this? I did it with the SL exe some time back to see if it'd help out on a hyper threaded CPU. Maybe this really doesn't work on XP which is why I didn't see any improvement, but this is the method I attempted...
http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=3542

Apart from that there's software out there which can set it automatically for you. Like this one for example (which I haven't tried myself yet, but I've seen comments in other forums that suggest it does the job pretty well)...
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/05/28/getting_more_bang_out_of_your_dual_processing_buck/index.html

Both are factors.

Sl does do basic object-object occlusion using octrees, but it's still got immensely more polygons to deal with, even in the implest cases... I put a copy of a Warcraft cart on our land in Noonkkot that's somewhat simplified from the original and still has far more polygons to render. Look at it in wireframe mode to get an idea.

There's also all kinds of optimizations that an MMORPG can do that actually reduce the polygons that have to be rendered even in objects that aren't culled:

When you're outside a city the interior of the city can be represented by a prebaked texture of the whole interior of the walls. A citadel in the distance can be replaced by a convex hull covered with a prebaked texture. Multiple monsters facing the same direction can have all their shading precalculated once, and then they can be cloned as sprites. In SL all these cases have to be handled by actually rendering all the polygons every frame.

Is there an app I can run that flushes out the CPU (perhaps terminating processes that ones doesn't need) so that more resources are available to SL?

I guess I'm talking about a better version of the Task Manager.

THanks,

L