ATI 9600 AGP option in game greyed out...and network question...

I just loaded Second Life onto my 2nd computer, it's slower in every department....less ram(512 pc3200), less cpu(athlon barton 2500) and a lesser video card (Nvidia FX5600).

My primary computer is, 1gb PC4000 ram, Athlon XP 3200+, ATI 9600...

the darn slower nvidia video card computer is out performing my ATI primary computer. This doesn't happen in any game but SL. The AGP option in SL on the nvidia (slow) computer is checked. The AGP option in SL on the ATI (faster) computer is greyed out, i can't even select it.

The old computer loads up textures nearly instantly! Takes 5 years for the ATI computer to load them it seems.

Newest drivers on both computer.

The other question about my network is....i'm on a 3mbit connection...what should my maximum bandwidth setting be set too, under network preferences? Currently it's set at 300.

The video card problem is the big concern of mine.

If you got more BW, give it to SL...In run mine at 1000 (max) since I have a 3M DSL line..

Also you can fool SL to allow AGP to be turned on, but I never really did a test to see if it made a difference, I get 20+ FPS normally (50+ when looking over water, or low texture sims)...one of these days I will check if the agp really makes a difference or not (did not make it any less stable, rarely crashed in 1.5, but like most other crash a lot more in 1.6)

PS Not at my SL machine so can't remember the filename to edit to allow agp to turned on..some feature.txt file in the SL directory, find all ATI cards and change the AGP..Setting to 1 and 1 instead of 0 and 0....(back up before you change, just in case you change more then those #s).

ahh thank you, i'll try it out. much appreciated.

i have one other slight problem, is it a known issue, to run two computers using the same connection in SL?

it seems one or the other tends to lock up after 5 mins. maybe its just a little laggy tonight on the servers.

ATI card on the whole are really good cards but they don't do well with SL because ATI doesn't do Open GL very well. AGP is turned off for compatability issues on ATI cards, turning it on may cause more problems than the very minor performance gain is worth. You would get a significant performance boost simply by exchanging video cards having the 5600 in the faster machine since CPU and memory have a lot more to do with SL performance than a hefty video card.

As far as the network problem is concerned, you likely need to set up separate ports for each computer. It is in the support wiki on how to do this. https://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Problems+with+multiple+computers+on+one+connection