SL running slow, but had run fast

I've got an odd problem.. I don't think it's SL, more likely my system..

I've built up a new system, when for pretty decent stuff.. Core2Duo 2.66, GeFroe 7900GT, 2GB RAM and 500GB HDD.. So a decent spec.. but..

I'm standing at home in SL at the moment and I'm getting 15FPS, which is what I used to get on my old machine.. Now to make this odder.. A couple of times I've loaded SL it run at 45+ FPS consistant.. Which is what I'd expect from this machine, had a good few hours where it didn't drop below fourty.. Nothing has been installed or updated, just a reboot, I've tried killing off as many apps as I can..

Any ideas?

Hmmm, try setting affinity to a single CPU core. AMD duel cores have this exact problem but I have no clue on the Intels. Bring up the task manager (control+alt+delete) and right click Secondlife.exe and choose one cpu. If you see 4 CPU you have hyperthreading and that may be making SL wonky, I am only guessing. I have also heard many compaints about the 7900 cards and crappy drivers but I am not sure on that either.

I just replaced my P4-3GHz & 2 gigs of DDR ram with a new mobo, Core2Duo 2.40 (E6600) and 2 gigs of dual channel ram, both systems using a nVidia 9800GS.

After finally getting windows and all my software installed (gawd, that in itself is a huge PITA in Windows), I ran SL.. went from roughly 20fps down to 13fps. (in high traffic areas), I was pissed.

Reading this thread and after setting the affinity, it jumped to 32fps and I couldn't get it to go any lower no matter what I tried.

Usually I hover around 50-55fps now except in high traffic areas, bottoming out at 32fps.

Yeah, was definately worth the upgrade.

Aye, Worked for me All up to 30-50 FPS now.. Was going nuts after spending all the money on a new system, for it to be the same and in some cases slower than the old one..

Think that should go into the Performance FAQ!

Is there any way to get it to set the affinity to one CPU on run, or gonna have to do it everytime? (I run Full Screen, so it means changing res, which is a bit of pain, but not the end of the world)

Do a quick google for 'windows affinity'. I believe I saw a program that will make it 'stick'.

Would it be better if SL supported current Core2Duo processors?

That is a good question, one would think so but you shouldn't bet the farm on it. The number of programs that can actually use multiple processors to full advantage are few indeed. Photoshop is the only one i know of right off hand but I doubt most people could tell the difference.

Someone could make a mint if they could develop a resource manager that allowed multiple processors to be fully used by any program with little overhead.

Currently Dual-Cores are no help to SL, but they can help your graphics card driver a bit.

"Someone could make a mint if they could develop a resource manager that allowed multiple processors to be fully used by any program with little overhead."

Yes, and if it was possible it would be done The program must also be multi-threaded to make use of more then one core at a time.

"Is there any way to get it to set the affinity to one CPU on run, or gonna have to do it everytime? (I run Full Screen, so it means changing res, which is a bit of pain, but not the end of the world)"

Every time... there are some 3rd party applications out there though I believe. Search the forums.

It would be much better if SL supported any dual processor.

But .. THIS IS NOT AN SL BUG, this is a system bug.

Some report using the following updated drivers/hotfixes can help:
www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256




http://www.adsciengineering.com/StartAffinity/ <-- Program to autostart with only one core.

It is difficult to find any documentation for this tool on Microsoft's website.

http://www.robpol86.com/Files/imagecfg.exe

Copy imagecfg.exe to %systemroot%\system32 (or C:\Windows\system32), and %systemroot%\system32\dllcache (or C:\Windows\system32\dllcache).
Doing so will make imagecfg a system command.

To use this tool to set affinity masks for an executable, type the following command in a command prompt window or run dialog:
imagecfg -a 0x1 c:\path\to\file.exe
If the above didnt work, try typing the following:
imagecfg -u c:\path\to\file.exeimagecfg -a 0x1 c:\path\to\file.exe
0x1 = CPU0 (first logical/physical CPU)
0x2 = CPU1 (second CPU)
0x3 = CPU2 (third CPU)
etc...

This tool only works on NT based operating systems (Windows NT, 2000 Family, XP Family, 2003 Family, Longhorn/Vista).
It will work on Multiprocessor machines and Uniprocessor machines with HyperThreading Technology (and probably multicore processors).