IS anybody running SL on...

AMD Athlon 2800+
512 RAM
nvidia 5????

I'm going to build a dedicated SL box, but am on a budget. It would be quite irritating to invest in the hrdware and have it not work. Therefore, I'm interetes in SL experiences from people with similar systems.

I'm on a 2700+, previously had 512 MB of RAM (upgraded to 1.5 GB recently) and have a Radeon 9600, which an NVidia 5 series should beat; worked fine.

As soon as you can afford it, though, up the RAM. It makes a huge difference.

P2

My stats are:

AMD Athlon 2600+
1536 RAM (El Cheapo Brand)
nVidia 5500 256 MB
Windows XP Pro

SL Settings:

Draw Distance = 64m
Max Particle Count = 0
Local Lighting/Ripple Water = OFF

I spend most of my time in-game around a lot of other AV's, and typically get between 6-12 FPS depending on what's around me & what I'm looking at.

When I upgraded my RAM from 512 to 1536... whew! what a difference. If you're going for budget, and providing you've got a minimum spec video card already - dumping some cash into extra RAM will give you a huge bang for your buck

AMD T Bird 1000
1GB PC 3200 Mem
Nvidia MX 440 128MB Video Card
Running Windows XP Pro

My be a bit old but still working perfectly for SL

AMD 2500+ OCed to nearly 3200+ settings
1G of DDR400
nVidia 5700

previously was at 512M and even when the 2500 wasn't overclocked it runs just fine.
Just leave Shadows (for reasons other than speed) and local lighting off.

for a while had a 6800Ultra in there and it made very little difference.

going from 512 to 1G definitely made loading Photoshop and Poser and SL simultaneously much much better

L8r,
UU

That reads like my laptop spec, which runs Second Life "okay."

Not good, not great. Merely okay. Though a good video card and RAM are what you'll want for a smooth experience here.

For a decent budget PC you should consider an AMD Sempron 64 2800+ instead of an athalon. It's quite a bit cheaper and performs very well (some tests have it outperforming a 2.4Ghz P4). Put the money you save over the athalon towards a better video card.

All the Sempron 64 processors run with a bus speed of 1.6Ghz but are easily overclocked to around 2Ghz. Perfect for a budget PC IMHO.

AMD Anthlon XP 2600+
1gig DDR333 ram
GeForceFX 5500 256MB AGP

CPU status: stock, no overclocking yet till I spare the change for a new heatsink/fan
FSB status: stock, haven't done any overclocking yet
videocard status: Overclocked from (GPU/RAM) 270/400 to 315/483

drivers: latest Hyperion drivers for my motherboard, NGO Optimized nVidia drivers ver 1.8.212

SL settings: Draw distance 64, fog ratio 3, particles 2048, 200mb cache, Shinies ON, Ansitropic Filtering ON, Local Lighting OFF, Water Ripples OFF, Shadows OFF

Driver Profile settings: Ansitropic Filtering: Application controlled, AntiAlizing: Application controlled, Hardware Acceleration: single view mode, Trilinear Optimization: On, Ansitropic Mip Optimization: On, Ansitropic sample optimization: On, Triple Buffering: On

Average local Frame rate (FPS): 15 - 20 in an average populated area

We have a dual Xeon server running 1.8 (on each chip of course)
4Gigs of RAM. (Pcs1600 I think it is.)
Several graphic cards. Currently using a 256mb Nvidia.

The thing simply won't run SL more than 5 fps.
But it handles any of the latest games out like its eatin candy.

Yet we have a dual 500Mhz with 512 ram that does 15 fps with two SL accounts going on it.

And it only has a 64mb card on it.

What do people think about the Athlon vs. Sempron question? Can I get away with a Sempron and putting the savings into a better card or more RAM?

Older Semprons are basically the old Socket A Athlon XP line renamed. The later ones are Socket 754 compatible. Socket A is pretty much dead, but if you want to get a Socket 754 version, you can later upgrade to a 64 bit processor. On the other hand, Socket 754 is also on the way out.

In the end, you can save a few bucks by getting a Sempron, but there isn't much leeway for future upgrades with either Socket A or Socket 754 processors. If you are really on a tight budget, go with a Socket 754 Sempron.

I ran an Athalon 2600+ with a Nvidia Gforce FX 5600 256 mb and a Gig of RAM for quite a while.

It finally all died and I had to upgrade my system, but it ran for two years under the stress I put it under.

Stress = Maya, Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, Painter 8, and sometimes Norton Antivirus all at the same time.

I ran SL pretty well with lights, shadows, high particle count and other things on. I only had distance set low. Ran well for a month before my computer actually died from previous overkill.

Your stats should run SL fine long as you don't push it too far on farclip and effects.

Yeah, I killed my computer ;_;. *slaps self* Bad artist...bad.

A big server machine with all the BIG-BAD Hardware in it doesnt mean its optimized AT ALL to play games...

A graphics card can have 256mb on it... but it can also mean that its a WORKSTATION card.... which means that its GREAT for rendering out stuff in 3Ds Max or something.

really ... theres a huge difference between rendering shrek frame per frame and rendering anygame in realtime

my SL computer is a amd XP2200+ 1.5gb of ram and a severly overclocked GeForce2GTS(agp pro ohhhh!) and in active scenes get 5-10fps and way up in my skybox workshop 30+ fps

running at 1280x1024 shiney 64m draw no fog and no lighting its quite playable for a 6 year old video card