Everyone Check Your Cpu Performance Now!!!! Urgent

Thank you for this great technical insight into the bowels of SL vs. my math coprocessor..(somehow I knew it was math=heat) duh.. I'm wondering now however, if increasing my paging file 'number' (only 700 now) would increase performance of SL in anyway at all and ease the load on my cpu??? Just a question.. and thanK YOU for your informative responses..you guys ROCK our World ) -stillwondering

Assuming you are using windows XP, you should likely set the pagefile size to the "system managed size" burried way under "control panel > system > advanced > virtual memory change..." although this is probably the default. Increasing the pagefile larger than windows thinks it should be would likely improve nothing; by the time chunks of memory are being paged out, you have already "lost".

The more I learn about windows internals, the more I think it is horrible at memory management. If you are running SL with less than 1GB RAM, the best you can do is add memory. Unfortunately, windows doesn't seem to like to use some of it. I guess it is reserved for viruses or sumptin

Since you mention that firefox and SL don't live happily together, my guess is that have too little memory installed, or, have a lot of junk running that you don't need. Every program you install these days seems to think it deserves to own your machine (SL is an exception). For example, if you install a printer, it may run programs that sit in the system tray that you don't need, but of course the printer company won't tell you that. Some programs like Office load most of themselves into memory when the computer starts so that Word will appear to start faster when you run it. Unfortunately, knowing what you can get rid of and what you shouldn't really, really depends on what you have installed and what you use. My recommendation: find a nerd and promise sexual favors in exchange for cleaning up your machine; you likely won't even have to "pay up" as most of 'em know how machines work, but get lost around biologicals.

Good luck. And what everyone else said about not fretting about burning up your CPU.

the slashdot thing was self-referntial, self-deprecating humor, if you think I was insulting *you*, I wasn't

SL will use 100% cpu. Period. While I thought otherwise initially, the game fps is directly tied to your cpu speed. The only way I can see a system not using 100% cpu is if it has more than one processor, or the ACPI isn't kicking in properly. You can also tell windows (via software like RightMark CPU Clock) to set your cpu speed at given speeds.

Because of this, when I use camping chairs, I tell my Turion64 based desktop to run at 800mhz. The low 25 watt cpu doesn't use up much power and so the camping chair money doesn't end up costing me more money in real life due to power bills.

To give you an idea about frame rate and cpu speed, my MT-40 system will render SL 33% faster when going from half speed, to full speed. With that said, if your system is running SL with anything OTHER Than full speed, then your frame rates will most definately be lower because of it.

Mine runs at 56% that close enough?

CPU: Not supported (3192 Mhz) - It's A P4 hyperthreaded
Memory: 511 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
OpenGL Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce FX 5950 Ultra/AGP/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 1.4.1

other juicy info you will have to tell me how to find

There's a difference between "SL grabs 100% of your CPU because it's computationally intensive" and "SL grabs 100% of your CPU because it's inefficiently coded."

If the SL client is poorly coded, it means a lot of the lag we see could be fixed just by cleaning it up. You don't need a faster CPU or a bigger net pipe.

I'm running Mac OSX on a G4 Powerbook, and SL uses 100% CPU all the time. If I'm sitting in an empty sim, and all the textures are loaded, and I can't see anything moving for miles around, then I don't think it should have to pull that much power. It just doesn't feel right.

Heck, SL even pulls 100% CPU at the login screen! That's right, before I've even connected to the grid. It's just displaying a static image and waiting for me to click on the "Connect" button. There's no reason it should be using that much CPU. There's something wrong there.

OK: the plot thickens: When I noticed my cpu @100%, I interviewed 20 people in SL asking their processor ram and cpu usage. TEN were on 3.2 or higher machines with lots of ram and nvidia cards running 56% or lower. TEN were (like mine) 2.4 or less machines with 512 RAM nvidia cards running 100%.. Everyone wants to KNOW what to BUY now to get that wonderful 56% with SL running..I know I do! Thanks for your specs and info! For the non=technical person (like me) this information is 'priceless' Happy now Torley??? *GRINZ*hugsss... stay cool --stillpink

AHHHHHH!

Usage around 50% is PERFECTLY NORMAL if you have a hyperthreaded, dual-core, or dual-processor system. Why's that? Well, for example, with two CPUs, SL will only use one, which is close to 100% of that processor, but only 50% of the whole, since 1/2 is 50%.

Second Life is currently not specifically optimized for those types of instruction sets, I don't think. But it's PERFECTLY NORMAL.

You can do this to see... Ctrl-Alt-Del as usual and then in WINDOWS TASK MANAGER, find the PROCESSES tab. Look for SecondLife.exe, right-click it, and choose SET AFFINITY (or something similar). You may see more than one checkbox checked! Only check one, and return and see how much CPU % it uses.

Give it a spin!

Apologies for the redundancy, Striker Wolfe and Kathmandu Gilman posted similar info earlier in this thread. But yes it is normal for those types of systems.

As I understand it sl takes all the cpu time available. If there's nothing around it will just render at as high a framerate as it can with as much cpu as you have available. If someone see's 50% cpu usage, they may either have two processors or hyperthreading turned on. If they see it using 80% or so, they probably have other processes running that are taking the other 20%. If you want other processes to be able to use more cpu time if they need it, set the priority of SL to below normal. But if something in the background decides it needs your cpu, SL will draaaaaaaag.

Well It maxes out one of my CPU cores pretty much (2 Dual Core Xeon's) but that does not suprise me any game should do that. Here is my CPU use while running SL

CPU at 50% with SL paint shop msn yahoo antivirus and other bits

Intresting..

Can someone tell me why my CPU usage is 35% at the log in screen? (As opposed to 2% without it)

As soon as you start SL weather you are logged in or not it starts to use up a lot of CPU cycles, this is perfectly normal.

IS there a reason by default our avatars are typing IN THIN AIR??? why can't we have facial expressions animated when we type instead? a simple head nod would do??? or eyes closed ??? or head looking down? Wouldn't something simpler like this help with LAG??? is there a future planned option for this PERHAPS??? how about letting US control it??? WHAT do you all think about this??? INPUT please!!! thanks!

First, Decaf.. Might be a good idea.

Second: You can get 'Animation Overriders' in SL whick can change how you move when you do everyday things in SL. There are some good free ones out there. There are also specific ones for just that animation you are talking about. I've seen one where you type on a laptop, and oen where you are entering data into a holographic screen.

on my single core Athlon XP box, i get stuck with 100% usage.


On my dual core Intel Core Duo Macintosh, it sticks at 50%. since its using 1 core at 100%, and the other core 0%, it evens that out to 50%. So its still using 1 processor, no matter how many i have, completely.