Are you looking to buy a new computer???

Is your computer slow in Second Life? Feel like buying a new computer?
Don't get scammed from Dell, HP, IBM, or any other top Computer Company.

Computer parts are cheap, and it doesn't take that much money to make a computer.

Any computer I make for you will come with the following software:

Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office XP, Macromedia Studio MX, and Adobe Photoshop 7

A Computer with the following specs will be $650

Asus Motherboard with Intel Celeron D 3.2GHz
Hard Drive- 160 GB
Video Card- GeForce 6200 (256mb)
Memory- 1GB of RAM
Double Layer DVD Burner

A computer with these specs would cost nearly $1,000 just for the tower itself from any leading computer companies.

Also, you wouldn't feel like your computer is out-dated 1 year from now. This is a very nice computer. The GeForce 6200 makes it a great gaming computer. Along with the 1GB of RAM and the 3.2GHz Processor.

There will also be a 1 year warranty on all of the computer parts.
If you feel like you want better parts in your computer, or want to have it cheaper, let me know.

IM Lucas Tempura in Second Life if you're interested at all in a new computer.

1. This is probably better in the classifieds.

2. Celeron's and SL do not mix nicely. I've experimented with a few boxes, and the slowdown is not worth it. Likewise, the 6200 is going to give you marginal performance - if you want SL at a constant 30+fps you will need a good processor and something starting at a 5800 or 6600.

For SL-related hardware, I'd probably assemble something along the lines of:

i. AMD64 3200+ (3800 X2 ideal if your doing other things at the same time as SL [eg: photoshop]), or Pentium 4, 3.2Ghz (the reduced cache matters.) - price should favour the AMD3200 though.
ii. 6600GT ('Sparkle' brand is reliable and cheap)
iii. 120GB Maxtor (cheap and reliable)
iv. 1GB DDR3200

Throw in XP Home, and ignore the remaining software, and you should get something close to that price range, given wholesale & import discounts. (with a little margin for profit.)

-Adam

That's funny... I never heard of Sparkle before, but they seem to be very big in Australia! I guess the equivalent for that where I am would be eVGA, who is known for reliable and cheap Nvidia variants.

Adam, out of curiosity, what's your current system and what sort of local FPS are you getting on SL under reasonably heavy or other typical conditions in your Second Life? (For example, a club with 30 avs.)

Sparkle is a Taiwanese clone brand, I use them whenever I'm building a box-on-a-budget. I suspect they get a lot of use in Australia, because the big importer I use (and that a lot of other people use) likes them a lot, and always has them in stock; but I've never had a problem with any of them, unlike many other clone brands.

My current system is varying a bit; I'm currently back on the machine I was using earlier last year for gaming; and have relegated my Dual Opteron for 'work'-related things (didnt see enough benefit having the slightly-slower opteron x2 for just gaming.), anyway:



I run SL with all settings on, maximum values. 1800x1440. Anti-aliasing usually off.

Performance-wise, around Azure I usually sit around 110 to 130fps. In a busy scene however (ie 30+ avs), I'll drop down to about 15fps; turning off local lighting fixes that to about 45+ though.

The 1.7 preview-with-110-avatars, I got around 9fps (local lighting off - 1.7 preview crashedw ith it, so I cant tell you how it worked with it on.).

Sheez, lead by example! Thanx Adam... goes to show why you have a real eye for performance with SL here. Those kind of framerates are freakin' incredible, does turning antialiasing slow it down significantly? And o, with everything else on, why do you keep it off? Not justified at such a high resolution, or another reason?

I must say you sound quite unique in this regard... I haven't really come across anyone else who's told me they're on a system like that which performs so well. Even similar ones (i.e. AMD x2s). I wish there was more of a systematic set of benchmark tests for SL because there's lots of anecdotal reports to go around but not more hard numbers to pair them with.

Is your FX55 stock or overclocked at all?

Adams *so* got a bajillion computers..

I keep antialiasing off because, the higher your resolution, the worse an impact it has (4xAA renders the scene 16 times, then mashes it together, 16*1800*1440 = a lot of extra operations), it's not a 1:1 degredation (since the data doesnt have to be re-sent to the graphics card - and it's done in hardware reasonably quickly), but it's significant enough that I usually keep it off.

It's not overclocked, AMD didnt bother locking the FX series with good reason -- if your going to pay AU$1500 for a processor, you are not going to risk damaging it at all. That being said, the new FX60 looks interesting -- a dual core version of the FX55 (the FX57 is however running at a faster clockspeed)

I know Belaya has a very similar system to mine (slightly better, she has 2x 6800 Ultra in SLI), and gets very comporable framerates.

The big thing in SL is -- have a good processor. SL is still heavily CPU bound (when I shrink the window, framerates dont improve much at all).

Zapoteth, heh -- I have a full 34RU rack, in my computer room. (yes, I have a few computers.)

-Adam

Personally, I'd pass on the Celeron D for the reasons Adam mentioned above. Find a Socket 939 motherboard and get an Athlon 64 +3200. If you are looking to cut costs, pass on the SLI boards. Socket 939 boards can also handle dual core Athlons if you decide to upgrade later.

I'd also go for at least a GeForce 6600. They have come down quite a bit, and will come down further when the GeForce 7600's come out in a few months.

You could go with a smaller hard drive. I'd get a 120GB drive. No one really needs to store a bazillion digital pictures or MP3s on their hard drives. Its always smart to burn that stuff to DVDs. After you lose a couple of hard drives, the wisdom behind DVD backups makes alot of sense.

In the end, if you go cheap on the case (but not the power supply) it is possible to build a machine that has a little room for upgrades and falls well below a grand.

That's great info... thank you again, Adam. One reason why I'm so curious is because the other (admittedly few) personal responses of performance with high-end processors only seems to be a fraction of what you're getting. For example, Thili's results here:

/111/a6/69658/1.html#post722568

I wonder what might be chopping the framerate down, or if there's a particularly effective combo.

That must also be pretty fast RAM too? Does 8GB make a big difference compared to, say, 2GB?

Interesting reading that thread. Looks like there might be something not working quite right individually with that hardware or system config (or just something with SL itself), those framerates seem pretty low - at least compared to what I'm getting.

8GB shouldnt make that big of a difference for SL alone. I have that much for non-SL-related reasons.

Hrrm. Not sure there.

Incidentally; SL is actually broken at high framerates; lots of things (like Trees) are done per-frame, not per-second; so at 110fps, you look like your in a hurricane.

-Adam

LOL yup, the trees buzz like crazy!

One of those bugs that, since it effects only 0.00001% of users, isn't a big deal.

There's an AA setting? Is it in Preferences or ini?

Never seen it anywhere in the SL settings. I usually force it in the graphics options in Windows.



Oh, and I agree Celeron's are poo.

The bad post icon, to the left of the original post should be used to advise the moderator to move this thread out of General.

Unless the moderator has the good sense to see that the bulk of the thread is of general interest. I suppose it doesn't really matter though. nm

Well, I am planning out an upgrade to an Athlon 64 3200 ans an SLI Asus motherboard, so I can run dual 256 PCI express cards (yes in my other life I am FPS player) so I look forward to seeing SL with full bore graphics.

Really though, in my search for my ideal upgrade, I did note that there are a lot of less expensive routes to go for upgrades, and really with them looking at respec'ing SL, maybe this thread could be hijacked inot a discussion of what properspecs are to run SL, and thus stay in gerneal.

I'm now wondering if it'd be possible to do some sort of benchmarking app for SL. Ideally, you could select it easily from Preferences (or perhaps an option to take the test before you ever join SL so you have accurate expectations) and it'd run through several scenes, not unlike the 3Dmark series, but with a specific emphasis towards how Second Life weights performance. Typically laggy scenarios would appear, followed by a texture loading test to really work your system, and perhaps some audio components too.

When finished, the test would churn out a requisite numerical score, and give you a Green, Yellow, or Red light depending on how well things went.

A main point of this test would be to expose any glaring weakness in an otherwise excellent computer setup. For example, I've seen some people on very fast AMD processors (like Adam's scenario) but crippled because of a very unstable, unreliable Internet connection. Or someone who has a good graphics card that's badly bottlenecked by a slower CPU.

One of the main obstacles to such a test, although I am sure there are other technical reasons, is how it would go about rendering these "scenes". Presumably, doing it within an actual region of the grid wouldn't be that accurate (imagine hundreds of potential new Resis all crowding on a few regions), and it couldn't be fully automated either. There's got to be a better way to do this.

That being said, it's nice that the first Basic account is free, so at least if things go badly, you didn't lose any money.

Well, I just looked at Dell US and it seems a PCIE motherboard 3.2 Ghz P4 system, including a 17" monitor, a 256 Radeon XP800, 1GB, etc, etc that comfortably exceeds your advertised spec comes out about the same money you are asking - without however the pirated software.

Enough said?

Results from three different types of system, including two notebooks (Uru is on these as well for comparison, of course):

http://sungak.net/weblog/archives/32

The summary is that my data would support Adam's P4 3.2 Ghz note. Even with the older/ancient vid card, the Sager notebook (with the 3.2) is overall outperforming the desktop and its 3.0 CPU. Much more than the 200 mhz change would support.

I'd swap chips, but the desktop case is what's known as SFF (the case is ~ 1/4th the size of the default SL cube) and heat was obviously an issue.

The HP notebook was purely a curious experiment, I had no intent at all to put a game on it and was bought with that in mind. The fact I even got them running is impressive, though it was discussed at SLCC/SoP that if the vid card were not stealing system mem the system would be a rather nice one for SL.

If I have enough money that I can earmark again, I'll probably head in the direction of an AMD Venice core (low-power, low-heat) system on the next desktop rebuild.

Adobe doesn't release OEMs of their products. Even at the educational discount price, that $280.00.

Office XP? Let's say at least $150.00, and that'd being generous.

Let's say $100 for XP Home.

Macromedia Studio MX? At least $800.00.

So that's $1,330.00 of software, even if you go with the lowest prices you can find. Care to explain?

Regards,

-Flip

...

warez

OMGOMGOMG and all this time I thought 1337 warez d00dz were just a myth! OMG!

Ph33r!

$109.99 Asus A8N-E NForce4 motherboard
$319.00 EVGA GeForce 7800GT
$400.00 AMD 64 4200+ Dual-Core
$244.00 Corsair TwinX2048-3200 matched SDRAM, 2GB
$4.99 Thermal paste for the CPU

I already had a 450-or-so-watt power supply and a 160GB SATA disk and a case from the previous machine. Total for this upgrade was $1077.98 plus tax and S&H. It will last me for at LEAST two years, which means I will not need to dump hundreds more into a faster video card and/or CPU in a year's time.

It just makes more sense to me to buy nearly the best stuff on the market (since the absolute best is an outrageously bad value), and use it for two years, rather than skimping now and having to spend extra time and money later on. I also don't want to sit around kicking myself for buying cheaps**t parts, and doing with less performance, when for a bit extra, I could have got quality parts.

Also, this is my first AMD machine. I really wanted to stay with Intel, since they are a known quantity for me, but their dual-core CPUs are just not as good a value, and they are not as energy-efficient as AMD processors. I really have to scoff at the idea of spending $1000 on a new computer, and getting a crappy Celeron CPU and low-end graphics card. (And juarez, let's not forget that.) It would be like going to all the trouble of running 4 1/2 miles in a 5-mile marathon.