How to improve FPS?

Hello,

I've tried to find help while logged in and some very friendly people have tried to assist me, but I'm still having problems with framerate. First off, here's my system specs:

Pentium 805D @ 2.66Ghz
2Gb DDR2 667
500Gb SATA HDD (16mb cache and NCQ)
Nvidia 7900GT
SB Audigy ZS2

WinXP Pro SP2
All latest drivers
High speed Cable Internet (8Mb / 768kb)

Example--

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-09-05 14:15:57 EST:
2771 / 628
Your download speed : 2771 kbps or 346.4 KB/sec.
That is 49.9% worse than an average user on comcast.net

Your upload speed : 628 kbps or 78.5 KB/sec.
That is 23.3% better than an average user on comcast.net

...but when I just logged into SL, I'm getting an FPS of less than 10, and most times I'm hovering right around 5-7 in moderately populated areas. I even reduced my video settings (which didn't make me very happy) and I noticed maybe a 1-2 FPS bump at the most. I was told that this was normal but I'm not sure I believe that.

While I know SL is not like other online multiplayer environments, I find it hard to believe that this is the "norm" when other games and such play at a smooth framerate on older hardware. I'm probably going to cancel my account if this is the case, because SL is not very pretty or user friendly when viewed as a slideshow.

However, if anyone can help me with this, I'm all eyes because I've been hearing about SL for so long that I finally took the plunge and I think it's really neat and I really want it to work right.

Thanks in advance,

Megil

*edit*

I must say that I just logged in again and I cen get up to 40FPS (which is fine) in non-populated and non-developed areas, but the second I encounter a man-made object my FPS tanks back under 10.

Download the new Nvidia drivers mentioned here, I found they improved my 7800GT some:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4039

My FPS varies between 70 (looking out to sea) to 25 (busy area)

You can have the meanest, badest, monster system and the fastest cable connection available, but we are all subject to the bottlenecks and erratic behavior of Linden Lab's ISP's, their network and that mess of an internet backbone in and around the San Francisco region.

Ping around the country and then start pinging the LL ISP addresses... they run about 15.

I think you will find the 'weakest link' and the reasons for performance issues - regardless of your system's specifications.

Can you get a faster connection? 8-10Mbit/sec connections can help somewhat with SL performance.

Try going into Debug with Ctrl+shift+alt+D and goofing with the settings under "rendering". Unfortunately, some settings will reduce the video quality even more, but they can give you massive boosts to your fps. With a system like that, I don't know how you can possibly be having framerate issues. Maybe a virus scan, spyware scan and defrag might help? I dunno, just a couple of suggestions

Well, thanks for validating my system building skills

I'll try what you said and all of the above and see if that helps. Boy I hope LL improves their software soon though...

45fps is as fast as the servers run so you won't see a lot of instances where your framerate exceeds 35-40 fps except looking out into voids. Make sure your draw distance is 160 meters or less. My AMD 4200+ 6800Ultra 2gig will choke above that unless I turn off all the AA and AF filtering. You have more than enough bandwidth as LL chokes off to 1000kbps anyway so try turning up the network slider all the way up.

You should be seeing around 20-30 fps in moderately built up areas with a couple of avatars with your rig. You might consider uninstalling SL and reinstalling it as this cures a lot of problems with SL. The 7900GT is a relatively new card and Nvidia may well have crappy drivers for the thing, you haven't been the only one reporting sub par framerates with them and the 7900GTX. My older computer can easily do 20-30 fps with its AMD 2500+ 6600GT and 1 gig so yours should the same or better. Also i found SL will grind to a halt if you try to use a dual monitor system and certain desktop configurations.

Avatars cause lag so find a sim with few avatars in it and see if you get better fps. Make sure you don't have other programs running as SL is a CPU hog and needs every cycle.

kath server and client fps are totally unrelated, the server fps say how many simulation cycles the server do in one second and the client fps is how many times the client redraw the screen per second, when looking at the sky in an epty sim i get about 90 fps

Gee, looking into the sky...hmmm that's a void. Yes, you are correct they are different but it makes no real world difference if your client is doing 100fps, the world is only doing 45 or less, client updates usually run only 20 or so in developed areas. That means if you are getting a consistant 60-70 fps you can easily turn up the eye candy because your SL experience is going to be locked at 45fps, your flying and movement doesn't get smoother, physical items don't fall any better and the visual experience doesn't improve much either. Turning up AA and AF filtering will make a hell of a visual improvement compared to running at 70 fps.

You are also missinterpreting what the server FPS does. The game is very much NOT locked at 45 FPS. You can and will see smoother animation than the server FPS, because the actual animation is client side. The server handles all the game world important stuff, of course.

But that doesn't much matter. One of the main things is a little something called interpolation. For one, how likely is it that your client side framerate is going to sync up with the server? W/O interpolation the out of sync frame rates would perpetually result in herky jerky movement.

The client draws objects not at exactly the last position the server said they were at, but at a best guess, basically.

Other things like anims are totally client side. The server doesn't actually animate your avatar, it positions it and set's the states, ect. It decides when to start and animation, and which anims to mix, ect. But it's the client that actually draws and animates your AV.

Again we have interpolation going on, because the anims only use so many key frames, but you aren't locked into the frame rate of the key frames in the anims. Your AV's animation is smoothly interpolated to generate all the between key frame positions and your AV thus animates ate whatever your current FPS is.

Add on top of that the actual animation of simply moving your camera around. This doesn't even require interpolation, because it's client side. Basically your camera control is totally client side based on the game state that the client currently understands to exist. This means you can pan, tilt, yaw, truck, boom, ect your camera just as smooth as your client side FPS will let you, no 45 FPS lock.

Yes, some things which aren't built to interpolate will get locked at 45 FPS, but those are the minority. In a general sense the server FPS has little to do with animation, (with the exception of time dilation from a poorly running sim which causes slomo effects.)

Keep in mind that the server doesn't really need to load up all the actual graphic files, ect. The server doesn't use them, it doesn't render the entire world, it controls it. For all I know the server could have little or no UI at all.

I think the main confusion is the assumption that FPS is a graphics term. The server frames aren't graphics at all, but states more akin to rounds in a table top war game or role playing game.


I will agree with your basic point that if you're getting 50 to 60 FPS you probably should up the eye candy. Unless you're doing something with intensive twich skills usage the extra FPS won't help you and frankly, getting under the server's FPS will help hide the server induced anomalies. Frankly I find SL quite playable at low framerates and thus turn on more than is normally advised.