Upgrades to PC unable to fix lag

Recently, I had my computer upgraded with a brand-new Radeon 9250 video card and enough ram to bring it up to 760 MB. However, after reinstalling Second Life and logging on, I was instantly hit with a 'driver is out of date' warning, and when I finally got on SL, it still showed the same choppy slowdown that it had shown before the update. I'm not sure why this is, or how to fix it. I'm using a 2.20 GHz Celeron processor and have a 1.5 gig modem connected to my computer with a wireless adaptor. I'm pretty certain that it isn't the wireless connection, as my roommate's laptop has one as well, and SL runs on that with markedly less slowdown than my computer is displaying. How do I fix this problem?

Well, the 9250 isn't exactly a speed demon nor anywhere near top of the line card. 7600mb? You sure? That is like 7 gigs (which Windows can only use 4 gigs). If you mean 760mb, that is certainly better than 512mb but not enough to write home about. The Celeron processor is the budget Intel chip and is very limited compared to a Pentium.

With your setup you are going to have to turn off all the graphics goodies like shadows, shine, local lighting, etc. Turn your draw distance way down to 96 or 128, your object detail and tree detail way down, turn off bump and cloth.

Try running SL with the computer running wired straight to verify it isn't the wireless connection. Also realize there are sims that even the fastest computers will experience lag in plus the grid has been experiencing odd sim behavior on and off the last week or two.

I have a AMD 2600+, ATI 6600gt and 1 gig of memory on a 3000 cable connection and I still experience instances of lag. There are different types of lag with different causes, need to look at the support Wiki to see what may be causing it.

It's probably the Celeron causing most of your problems. Kathmandu is right. Turn all your rendering options down, then turn the ones you can afford back up. What kind of lag are you seeing? Is it constant? Does it spike? Under the Ctrl-Shift-1 menu, what sorts of framerates are you seeing (At the top, under FPS.) What is your ping time? (Both "ping sim" and "ping user"

What Cat said.

With your computer's new upgrades, you should be able to run SL at 10fps comfortably.

Remember also to set your maximum bandwidth setting to something higher than the default 300kbps. I recommend 800-900 if you have a 1.5meg pipe

Sorry, I meant 760 megs. And I've tried those suggestions; nothing works. SL's just as slow and laggy as it was before the upgrade, which is weird since both of my roommate's computers are either right on par with or less powerful than my own, and SL works very satisfactory on both of them.

It's laggy all the time, but it gets slightly worse in high-prim areas. FPS is usually below 10, and the ping time hovers around 150-200 for both.

Have you turned down your draw distance and turned off the myriad "may make SL run slower)" options?

Depending on where you are in the world, your ping might improve somewhat by plugging your computer in directly, instead of using wireless.

Can you list your roommate's computers' specs?

Yes, I reduced the draw distance and turned all of those off. And it's not the wireless connection, else my roommate's laptop (which also has wireless) would have the same kind of lag, which it doesn't.

I would probably suspect the graphics card, i just priced one up here and its pretty much entry level priced around 50$ there

No, SL is CPU-bound. Your processor is nearly always going to be the weakest link in the chain, and unfortunately, a $65 processor is going to demonstrate that pretty effectively.

Short of a processor upgrade, I'm not sure there's much more you can do, Synjo. You can get a 2.4Ghz P4 with eight times your Celeron's cache for around $130 US these days. It might be something to think about. You won't get 30fps in all areas, but it'd be a lot more usable.

That isn't necissarily the case. If your wireless card is not configured correctly or there is a hardware problem then it would only show up on your machine. Recommended steps to isolate the problem:

1. Directly wire the computer to the modem, if it still does it then you know for a fact it isn't the wireless connection. Wireless connections are the biggest (or one of) headache LL has in techsupport.

2. Make sure you have the latest drivers for everything on your machine, sound, graphics, motherboard chipset, etc.

3. When the card was upgraded, the tech may not have completely removed your old cards drivers. Make sure you have only one set of graphics drivers loaded in "Add or remove heardware" check "Device Manager" for any yellow warnings.

4. Make sure nothing else is running when SL is on. Use Spybot and Ad aware to remove any background spyware programs. 1 is harmless, 300 will grind you to a halt. Use a virus scanner to clean out your system. Trend Micro has a free online one that is pretty good called Housecall.

I had a professional configure the wireless connection, so I know it's not that. And, for some reason, the stupid modem refuses to run through a router so I CAN hook the cable up to my computer. And I actually had my computer completely wiped and restored (due to problems with a fragmented hard drive and such) just prior to getting back on SL, and it STILL had the same slowdown effects. Even with nothing else running, it chokes up. In fact, just to test something, I got everything on my graphics preferences on SL that would slow me down reduced to their lowest point to see how it would help; I got vastly improved framerate, but only when there was nothing else around my avatar. The SECOND I enter even a remotely crowded area, my framerate screeches to a dead halt. We ARE looking into getting a faster processor and such, but right now, I am completely unable to play SL on my computer due to the slowdown, and I have no idea why it's choking up this bad.

Y'know, when you take your car to a competant mechanic telling them the car won't go, the first thing he does is look for the simple stuff first. He will walk around it to make sure the tires are there and have air in them, then he will turn the key and see if the motor will turn over. If it does but not start he then looks to make sure there is gas in the vehicle.

Without eliminating the wireless connection as a possible cause first, you are basically trying to rebuild the engine without even checking to see if the tires are on the vehicle. Lee did say that wireless connections were the biggest troubleshooting headache they have in techsupport and denial by the customer is the biggest response... it cannot possibly be. Well, ok. Good luck with that.

Here is my forthright opinion. This "proffessional" sold you a bargan bin video card and didn't even bother to install the latest drivers for you. If you had XP reinstalled (due to fragmentation 0.o ?) you likely didn't get the latest motherboard drivers either. If this same proffessional set up your wireless connection you might consider yourself lucky to be online at all. There may be a whole host of problems, missconfigured or subpar memory, hard drive in PIO mode, a firewall, router conflict, hard drive and CD drive on the same cable and not set to master /slave... the list goes on and on.

Turn on your statistics bar (ctrl+shift+1) and look at your bandwidth when you start to slow down, if it stays low, 6-10 no matter what comes into view then your connection is throttled somewhere. If it jumps up to 300 or more when you encounter a building or another avatar then it is likely to be a computer problem, not a connection problem. If your bandwidth never bumps up then you will need to wire the modem directly to the computer (may need an nic card if the computer doesn't have a network cable port) and see if that solves the problem, if it does then there is something wrong in the wireless setup. Keep in mind, the weaker the wireless signal the less bandwidth. You have a noisy connection and you could be doing less than dial up speed.

Are you calling me a liar? Listen, pal, we took my computer to a trusted professional that we KNOW is legit. My roommate is good friends with him and I have no reason to question his credibility. Everything works exactly as it should, and at their optimum capacity. How dare you accuse me of lying about who I went to and what kind of rep he has. Frankly, I don't think YOU have any idea what you're talking about, since you wouldn't even SUGGEST those possibilities had you actually read my posts.

Im pretty sure its all the details avatars/attachments thats killing you, a celeron is pretty much a office/work cpu, id never use one for games they do suck,,

Do you think a professional always do things right?, they can mess up to, i cought socalled professional doing mistakes, dont trust anything 100%

But anyway go ingame get a screenshot with these on
ctrl-shift-1 (loads of statistic)
ctrl-shift-2 (need to have debug on - ctrl-alt-d )

and eeh dont expect a high fps in SL, thats not possible if you have several avatars near you , i have a decent machine and i get 12 with local light,shiny,bump,and stuff on.

Wireless can be a crucial part of the problem. Just because your roommate's wireless card is picking up fine and dandy does NOT mean that your card is. Unless you two have identical laptops, identical network cards, and you are simultaneously occupying the exact same position in time and space, then you CAN'T eliminate the wireless network card.

This is absolutely true. WiFi is extremely spotty when it comes to SL. However, the problem is still going to be the Celeron. Honestly, it's a terrible chip for running SL, even if it performs fine in other applications or games. I'm sorry, but you're unlikely to get a framerate above 10fps with it.

Well, like I said, we're looking into possibly upgrading my system with a better processor, if it can take it (we're not sure if the motherboard will handle it).

I can tell you if it is or not. If you don't know your motherboard model, download WCPUID, run it, then select View > System Info, select "Type 1", then post what it says for Manufacturer, Product String and Version String.

Okay, the motherboard is an Intel NBGV. I'm not nearly tech-savvy enough to know what that means, but hopefully it means it can take an upgrade of processor without me having to replace my entire computer.

Is this computer an HP? Regardless of brand, do you have the model number handy?

It's an HP Pavilion 514n.

Well, according to HP's site, it SAYS your board should support Willamette- and Northwood-based P4s and Celerons. So that SHOULD be a P4 up to 3.4 Ghz, assuming the replacement chip is definitely a 130nm process core, and not 90nm. So that means you almost certainly can't use a Prescott CPU, making it more difficult to find a chip that will fit your motherboard.

My roommate has an HP computer as well, and his has an Athalon AMD processor in it. His computer is running SL extremely well with it. Would my computer be able to support that?

No, you'd have to replace the motherboard, and if you're planning on doing that, it's a pretty big hassle, particularly as your board is micro-ATX, so you have to make sure you get one small enough.

If you DID do that, you'd definitely get better performance than what you have now, and it might be easier to find an Athlon and micro-ATX motherboard than it would be to get a suitable P4.