FrameRate is MEGA Low

I updated with a fresh install to Ubuntu 8.10, installed the correct Nvidia drivers and all is great...really nice...then I ran SL and got 2fps...and half my options couldn't be enabled.

I have now reverted back to 8.04 and i am back to 12 to 18fps, thought I would give a heads up for any Nvidia users....watch out as the drivers are not very great for some cards.

Kind of sounds like something didn't install right when you tried installing the updated drivers. Could you give us the details about that machine from About Second Life... and throw that here? Also, describe the steps you took to upgrade your video drivers.

Latest Stable Viewer

1. Use CD to format and complete install
2. Check and install updates plus restarts
3. From the Hardware drivers check 177, let it install and restart
4. Load up SL

*note* i am now back to 8.10

I don't use Linux and have no idea if this is relevant, but there have been problems with Nvidia drivers after 175 with Windows. Maybe rollback the drivers would help?

There's also a chance that DRI isn't enabled...

Please check that the following command (run as suer who runs the secondlife client, normally that will be your user)

glxinfo | grep -3 direct


returns (together with some other info):

direct rendering: Yes
GLX vendor string: NVIDIA corporation

Double check to make sure that you are using the nvidia (and not the nv) driver in your X configuration. Also check the README for that and compare it's DRI configuration to what you have. It sounds like you're either using the FOSS driver (nv) or DRI is not enabled.

Despite not being open source, nVidia does allow people view almost all of the source for the Linux driver, and accepts patches for bug fixes. While what you propose is still possible with the Linux version; it is considerably less likely. Peer review of the source code attracts many people to take a look at the code; many eyeballs make bugs very shallow.

Suspected that might be the case, just wondered whether Linux users might have missed the posts about it from Windows users.

I'm having the same issue.

All opengl benchmarks in the phoronix suite ran flawless as before, but SL frame rates drop to about 3.

For me this happens irregularly -- but regularly 2-10 minutes after logging in, sometimes on logging in.

Networking shows downloading and uploading kbps not affected

Funny thing, the beta version downloaded a week before the final version of ubuntu intrepid worked flawlessly.

<shrug> I have no idea and I'm not a coder, I'll contribute what I can.

Framerate drops probably have an other cause then a consistently now framerate! The op says to have the last...

I also have some framerate stutter (where framerate will be great like 20-30 and then for a few seconds drop to 1-2), but that doesn't seem to be the issue here...unless I am mistaken.

I just spotted this - http://albertomilone.com/wordpress/?p=294

I think I will wait and give those drivers a shot, when they are fully into 8.10 just in case its a newer driver thing.

I don't think that aplies to this situation: these are drivers for older nvidia cards, and currently do not work with the current xserver. You state you are using driver 177, which doesn't have anything to do with the bug in the drivers mentioned....

could you try some of the tips given here and let us know the outcome?

-Double check to make sure that you are using the nvidia (and not the nv) driver in your X configuration. Also check the README for that and compare it's DRI configuration to what you have. It sounds like you're either using the FOSS driver (nv) or DRI is not enabled.
-glxinfo | grep -3 direct

should return (together with some other info):

direct rendering: Yes
GLX vendor string: NVIDIA corporation

direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4


and yet still the lovely mise-en-scene of 2 fps

I'm on a 64bit processor if that makes a difference. I know that there is some sort of 32 bit compatibility requirement SL, i ran through that and I 'seem' to have all those libs installed, or some type of 32 bit compatibility libs - not sure how to thoroughly check that.

Watch your machine's hard disk lights when it does this: I suspect your machine is grinding on disk IO when it does this. My machines do this while running SL at the same time as other memory hogs (such as Firefox, Thunderbird (at least with the mail volume I get), Windows (as opposed to Linux), etc.

Could you post your hardware specs from About Second Life please? Hardware is a huge factor, and we don't know what yours is. Remember, good questions require detail and precision.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise



While I don't believe 64-bit environments are mature enough for desktop (much less gaming) use on any OS at this time, I'm not certain this is the problem. You could always try to reproduce it in a real 32-bit environment instead of a 64-bit environment and compare results.

I also don't think the 64 vs 32 bit will be the problem, my experience with that is that it either works for 32 bit programs (correct ia32-lib installed) or will not work at all (when it can't find the correct lib)...

If you have enough memory (i'd say from 2 gb), and you notice the diskio Baloo talks about (allthough having that diskio probably means you do not have enough memory, because the usual cause is writing things to swap (on disk) when you don't have enough memory), you could try to put the SL cache in your memory instead of on disk as described on http://www.glokal.eu/node/39

The script there will
-mount a temporary file system in your memory, so sl doesn't have go to disk for textures etc (that's why it will ask for root rights)
-copy your current cache to that system in memory
-copy the cache back from memory to disk afterwards, so the cache doesn't get lost when the temporary file system is unmounted

Let kswapd do it's job! Items you've recently used on your filesystem remain in memory on Linux until forced out by fresher items or programs needing more RAM. I bet you'll get similar results with less hassle by reducing SL's memory usage from within the viewer using the options at hand.

Will try this soonish, as i rolled back to 8.04 so will do an upgrade soon and let you all know.

the script thingy I linked uses tmpfs, so can also be swapped out when the system determines this is needed. I'm not saying this is necessarily better then just using the "normal" diskcache, but it can offer the possibility to keep the entire cache in memory, therefore also accelerating the first time something loads from there or is written to there, which can be a help when you have a lot of diskactivity....

As I said, I don't guarantee any results, but it's relatively easy and non disruptive to try...