Lag problems

I am not exactly sure where I am supposed to post this, so if this is the wrong place, I apologize. I just recently joined the SL community and am excited about the possibilities this game presents. However, I am having a hard time playing due to lag issues. The game seems to crawl at a snails pace which makes it hard to even move around. Here are my system specs..

Win XP
512 MB DDR RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro
Cable modem (Excellent rating at Broadband test website)

If anyone has any suggestions so that I may play this game to its fullest, please help me out.

Thank you

press ALT+1 and open the basic bar. from there, what is your framerate, your ping, and the server's ping? this will tell whether it's a client issue or a connection issue...

Ok..I did what you said and the information i recieved is as followed.

FPS= 3.0 to 8.0
kbps= 350 to 475
Ping User= 106 to 200
Ping Sim= Same as above
Packet Loss= 0%

okay, that's a client-side problem... (low display framerate) what processor do you have?

1.6 Ghz Pentium 4..is that what you mean? Sorry, im not too wise with computers..lol.

That's a real P4, right? not a celeron? if so, i'm not sure what your problem is... how many icons do you have in the system tray (the area on your screen where the clock, and probably a little gray speaker icon are)? if you've got more than four, part of the problem may be that you have too many background tasks running. another thing to check would be to right-click on a blank area of your taskbar and choose "Task Manager", then go to the processes tab, down in the lower left corner it should say how many processes you have. If you've got more than about 30 running, i can 95% guarantee that's your problem.

if you do find you have too many processes running, we can work at figuring out which ones you don't need, and then i can help you remove them from startup (the programs will still be there if you do end up needing them, they just won't be running all the time when you aren't using them)

i've got 1GB RAM and an AthlonXP2200+ running windows2000, and i find that if i go over about 40 processes i start bogging down. i have way more than four icons in my tray, but i use every one... hence why i'm looking at tossing in another stick of 512MB

Yeah its a real P4 not Celeron. I did have about 7 items in the taskbar and was able to cut that down to 3. As far as processes. I have 31 running. By the way, thank you so much for all your help.

np... has that helped speed things up any?

Nope, its still the same. I wonder, does each different area have different possible things to create lag? What I mean is, I have spent most of my time in Outland's near the area the WWII Online people have setup and they have a large amount of billboards (some with Japanese men in underwear..whats up with that? lol) could that create alot of lag with all those billboards?

yes, Jessie has a very low sim FPS (open the "Simulator" status bar, below the "Basic" bar that shows your FPS and bandwidth and such). Jessie averages between 25-75 sim FPS, while most areas tend to average well over 200. try going a few sims away, and check the sim FPS, until you find one with a high sim FPS. if your lag goes away when you're in a sim with high sim FPS, then the problem is just that the server is overloaded (each sim is on it's own server if i recall correctly). not much you can do about this, until the lindens add more sims to ease the burden .

I am having the same types of problems with the lagging. I tend to log off and back on again. This is sometimes a real problem and I waste a lot of time doing so. I will look into the processes that I have running and try to close some of them. Can you tell me which are standard and absolutly safe to close out while running SL. I do hope that SL adds more sims to help remove these issues. The lag is the ONLY draw back I see to this game. I believe this problem will be fixed very soon. This development team never stops amazing me

Cat

What is your guys draw distance set at?

If you havn't changed it, lower it. A good draw distance is generally around 128m for a good system, 96m for a poor system.

At 128m standing in the middle of a sim you can see all but the corners of that sim. At 256m you can see all the way accross 2 sims if you stand on a sim border (1 each way). At 512m you can see all the way accross 4 sims (2 each way).


Due to the dynamic nature of the game you will get not only video lag from such a high draw distance, but also network lag. Even at a max network setting it will take a while to download that much information.

Because this is the single biggest cause of lag, I would make an Official Request that the default draw distance be lowered from 256 to 128. People who notice can change it up, but less people will find the game unplayable on first log in.

Good idea I will post that in the suggestions forum... standard draw distance of 128

Also if you have problems with lags... update to the best drivers ( I think catalyst 3.1 for your card)
and make sure that AGPx4 and Fast Write is enabled in your bios.

Ama..you are a champ! I changed my draw distance and went from 3 FPS to 35 FPS!!!! I can finally enjoy the game now..thank you co much! Also, thanks to everyone who came here to help me out..I can see already this game has an awsome community.....well except for the WWII Online guys..they keep killing me..lol.