Performance Questions and Expectations

Hello, Ok this is pretty much just me whimpering and wondering what I should expect. Ever since 1.6 was put out every release after that I have seen my performance drop...frame rates and lag issues being the main issue. I used to run with every graphic detail possible on and maxed out and recieved aprox 25fps....at 1.6 release I saw this drop to 2fps, yes TWO, so I have tuurned off everything but ripple water and I'm back up to 15fps, but wow big diffrence. So I'm posting my specs and asking for what should I expect, since life is all about expectations and apparently I need to adjust mine.

P4 3.2Gig
2gig DDR 400, running Dual Chnl @ 800Mhz
Stripe Raid with two 73Gig WD Raptor HD's @ 10k RPM
GeForce 6800GT Over Clocked w/ 256Meg
Average Connect speed is around 6mbs

I think thats all the pertinet info....so am I crazy or is 15fps way to slow and why can't I have full details any longer even with the latest drivers etc...

Just for comparison reasons:

P4 1.6Ghz 256L2 cache
512MB DDR 266Mhz
GF2 Ti 64Mb - running at 1280x1024 @ 72Mhz
250GB WD 8MB cache @ 7200Rpm
10Mbit internet connection, never using more than 1Mbit for SL (assume its limited). Pings average 250ms for my most used locations.

Average FPS fluctuates between 10-15, under 10 when in highly populated areas. My settings are a variety of medium, high and low.

I would say, something either in your drivers or the software itself, is seriously messed up to be giving you this shockingly low FPS in comparison to your rather nice system. As you can see, my nearly 4 year old machine is doing about as well. My guess would be to start looking at your graphics card driver options to see what you can tweak.

Ok well I took your advice and looked into everything, I totaly removed all known existence of my video card, including registry entries. Removed and reinstalled SL and Graphics Drivers, newest version of course. And with ALL Graphics options on still get 0-2fps......However, Local Lighting seems to be dragging it down, without Local Lighting, everything else on and set to max, I now get 15 - 35fps......Apparently not enough machine and Video Card for Local Lighting..be interesting to know who can run it and what I'm missing that would let me... But....MUCH MUCH BETTER TYVM for the sugestion, I finally corrected my rectal cranium inversion issue, should have done that from go....Much appreciated

Every so often the newest graphics card drivers aren't actually the best for a given, err, game. So you could try different ones to see if that helps. Then it's possible you've picked up some sort of malicious or otherwise problem causing app somehow which is crippling performance. Do you have any other demanding online games and if so have you seen a decrease in performance in them too? There are various apps and even some free online scanners (not that I would use them) out there to check for such things.

Local lighting is a big problem and can tank performance. There are some new lighting functions in 1.9.1 that seem to work well and don't cause nearly as much trouble from what I've seen.