GeForce Performance Hit

As of the latest update, my framerate has has plummeted. I have a 6800 256MB which now nets me 3.0 FPS average anywhere I go in SL. I have spoken to a Linden and filed a report on it, but i was curious if any other GeForce users noticed a significant performance hit. No response back from the bug report yet... when I hear anything I'll update.

i just got a 6600GT and standing around in my empty land i hit a peak of 71fps and i was getting 20fps in the welcome area (on a amd 2200+)... so no

I get more then that on my GeforceFX 5500 256MB card. Hrm.... Did you have any other card installed before you dropped in your 6800?

6800OC 128MB 4x AGP at 1600x1200 windowed here with obscene improvement from ~20-25 FPS in prior versions to ~50 FPS with the 1.8.2 release in some circumstances.

Moving the camera the slightest amount from default position drops the FPS to ~2; go figure.

Nope, this is the card i've had in this machine to begin with... SL ran great until the last update... all of my other 3D games run without issue as well... really weird things going on...

Uninstall and reinstall SL. I had to do that myself. I usually do that anyway since straight updating usually doesn't work right most of the time, reistalling fixes a lot of problems.

I have a NVIDIA 6800 256 Mb as well and have had no problems.

And just in case, check PREFERENCES ---> GRAPHICS ---> Local Lighting is turned off. I've known this to happen before. Altho uninstalling and reinstalling will reset your Preferences to default and turn this OFF anyway.

I've reinstalled, updated all of my drivers, unchecked everything, dropped everything to the lowest setting, and I'm still seeing 4 FPS. I'll recheck these again. I submitted a bug report the other night but haven't heard anything back yet. It wouldn't bug me so much if it had performed like this prior to the patch, but at this point I'm convinced there is something wrong with the latest version of SL, and not my machine.

I've reverted back to using my old machine, which has an nVidia 6600GT 128MB in it... and it's no where near as bad. For comparison's sake:

New System - Dell XPS 600
-----------
Intel Pentium D 830 (3gHz Dual Core)
2GB DDR2 RAM
16x PCI-Express nVidia 6800 256MB Video


Old System
-----------
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
1GB DDR RAM
AGP nVidia 6600GT 128MB

Now to me, my new system should blow the doors off of my old system in SL. In all of the other games I play, my new machine decimates my old machine in terms of performance. And like said before, SL WAS great until this last patch. I talked to a Linden the other evening with the same card I have... settings are the same, and he's getting 45FPS, which is what I used to get. So something got introduced in the latest patch that brought the performance down into the toilet.

1 Sl isnt multi threaded so you could have 16 cores and it wouldnt matter

and im not familiar with PD chips yet is that 3ghz each core or 1.5ghz each core?
i only ask cause i want to know, and too embarased to ask my tech buddies... and too lazy to look it up heh

It's 3gHz per core.

I know the clockspeed has nothing to do with it. Like I said, it worked awesomely until the last patch... hopefully tomorrow's patch will resolve it.

try setting the affinity to one core. there's a program that will do it for you everytime you start the program but you'll need to update the settings with each SL upgrade.

Multithreading makes a second virtual core and allows access to a second physical core wich SL is not capable of utilizing. Adding that kind of support would call for a major upgrade (like to 1.9 or 2.0) but knowing LL they'll probly just sit on their hands so long as there's a 3rd party fix for the issue.

I gave that a go, and no change at all. *shrugs* I wish I knew what caused this... it's really nuts. At least the old machine is playable for now.

Do you have "agp acceleration" on? ( in preference/adv.graphics ), that one hit me very bad on my nvidia 6800gt pcie card, with it on, 8 fps, without it 62 fps :> (where im currently in SL right now)

Beats me why ~.~ but it affect this pc alot if i enable it in SL.

Same for me,i have 6800 and AGP acceleration drops me from adverage 20 fps down to about 3 fps.

Edit to add:

The acceleration was always on my machine up until 1.7 was released. After that is when i had to uncheck it and things improved.Not sure what they changed to make it act this way.

Also , not wanting to state the obvious, but have you checked for Spyware/Adware? This dramatically affected my fps when i managed to get some in my machine somehow.

Seriously? I have GeForce 6200 256Mb card, I got the AGP setting enabled, already got everything else feature wise disabled and draw distance set to 64m and I get like 10 - 15 FPS normally.

I've checked and unchecked all of those options. I don't use Windows for websurfing, only SecondLife. Spybot and Adaware find nothing. The affinity change did nothing, and it seems changing any of the settings don't do much for me.

C'mon Torley!

Your supposed to say "Drop in 2 GeForce 7800's in SLI and turn local lighting ON!"

=)

LOL..

Anyway, the new patch didn't help any. Not sure what to do at this point since I'm looking to rebuild this machine into a MythTV box..

RUR RUR RUR... I cannot recommend Local Lighting in good conscience as it exists! I used to like it a lot more in earlier versions, but as of the latest, it's been harsh for me.

Seriously tho, one more thing I'm gonna recommend to you, Xan... and gosh I do hope SL gets better for you...

Inworld, hit CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-D for Debug menu. Then, from the Debug menu, select FAST TIMERS.

See those color bars? They'll prolly be moving very slow because of your low client FPS. Click on them to freeze them anyway, and look at the legend on the left. What numbers+colors are the biggest? Whatever corresponds, is likely a clue to what's wrong.

This is a really underrated troubleshooting technique.

For example, sometimes when I'm in an area with a lot of complex objects being loaded and I feel a slowdown, I notice my "Geo Update" (geometry being updated) has shot way up.

Even better, if you could post some screenshots here, and if you contact support, also fill these details in. ^_^

Ok, so I wanted to do a little test.

I installed WINE on my Linux partition, and loaded the Windows client using Wine... it runs great! I don't get it, but I still need to get the windows side squared away since i can't DJ from Linux yet. Once I reboot, i'll get those screenshots together.

Not sure why some of you are getting a drop in FPS when AGP is enabled on a PCI-E card. I did a test and setting AGP Accleration on gave me 10-12 FPS MORE. One part of my test just involved standing in 1 place, my FPS were 47, I turned AGP accleration off it dropped down to 36 FPS, I turned it back on and it went back to 47. Tried logging off and doing the same between settings changes, same results.

My Specs:

MSI Geforce 7800GTX 256MB
2GB OCZ Platnium Rev2 2-3-2-5 1T timings
AMD 64 3500+ Venice Core
Soundblaster Audigy X-Fi
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI

I think its a 6 series issue with AGP options in SL. They're the only PCI-e GeForce cards that have issues with the AGP option that I can see.

As requested, here's a screenshot of my Fast Timers output:



As you can see, the Network is through the roof for some reason. All drivers on this box are up to date at this point. I don't have any other network issues that i'm aware of.

Torley, how should I go about addressing this to support? I have two troubletickets assigned and no response yet

Ron, now that I think about it, when I had a 6800 I believe it did give me less FPS by having AGP on. You are absoutly right!