Video Card 256MB or 512MB?

Still trying to get my (old) system better equipped for SL without building an entire new one.

I have a P4 1.8Ghz cpu with 756MB PC2100 ram and a Geforce FX5200 256MB video card AGP4X.

I was thinking to upgrade my video card.

My question is does it make a difference with the client to have a 512MB card as opposed to 256MB?

I've looked through some of the other threads and my head is spinning with all the Geforce models...7300GT, 7950GT, 8500GT, etc....heeeeelp.

Which research on various places showed provided the best performance for the price on SL (ie, you can get better performance, but it will cost ya big!) For a machine of your vintage (similar to mine) I feel a more powerful card would be a waste of money.

me:
AMD Sempron 2400+ (1.6GHz); 1G DDR.400 with good timings; 7600/256 GPU
I get around 24fps in a built-up but not highly AV populated sim (ie my home).

Bottlenecks for SecondLife

Valen Leinhardt

Bottlenecks for SecondLife are in this order
- Graphics Card
- Mainboard memory (RAM)
- Harddrive thruput
- CPU/Mainboard speed/ability

1. Graphics card. This is a no-brainer. For SL, because of the sheer number of textures used in SecondLife and the sheer number of polygons rendered, you are far better off with a video card that has a higher amount of memory rather than a faster rendering rate. If you're debating between two cards, one with 256mb and one with 512mb, but the 512mb one is a bit slower than the 256mb one, get the 512mb one anyway. I've tested this with numerous cards, and I find that a GeForce 7600GT 512 beats a 7800GT with 256 each time. Of course, your mileage may vary.

2. Mainboard memory. Your RAM needs to be fast. SL keeps a HUGE cache on textures on the harddrive, which in both Windows and Linux, the operating system will cache all of the recent disk activity to RAM. So having both a large amount of ram (at least 1gb) and really good quality RAM (not just MHz either-- most AMD systems are at 400Mhz RAM but it's the more technical CAS Latency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency) that really determine's a stick of RAM's performance ability. In fact most DDR 400MHz RAM still outperforms the DDR2 533MHz RAM simply because the CAS latencies in the DDR2 are still so high. So think twice about getting that $50 stick of RAM that's on sale just because it's cheap, make sure to read the latencies too, or you'll end up causing slowdown. But of course, on the flip side of that, if you are on a real tight budget, slow RAM is better than too little RAM at all.

3. Harddrive thruput. If you have a slow harddrive, your texture cache will perform poorly. Harddrives have four major areas of performance: Controller, Seek, Rotation, Cache. Controller refers to the type of harddrive, eg IDE, SCSI, SATA, SATAII, etc. By all means if you can get SATA-II drives, do so. They're getting cheap now and IDE is getting obsolete. SATA is just fine as well, as most realistic disk drives can't push much beyond the standard SATA drive speeds to really untilize SATA-II speeds yet, unless you want to shell out a couple hundred dollars for fast drives. Which brings me to the next two that sorta go hand-in-hand, Seek and Rotation. Rotation is the marketing gimmick one: 4200rpm, 5200rpm, 7200rpm, 10krpm. Rotation does matter, very very much. A 7200rpm drive will vastly outperform a 5200rpm drive. A 10krpm drive will get you even more of a speed boost as long as it's got a good seek time as well (some don't--read the fine print.) Seek time refers to the average number of milliseconds it takes to go from some random point A on the drive to some random point B. Lower seek times mean both that the drive rotates faster AND that the circuitry on the drive can actually pick up the data efficently. You can spin a harddrive at 100kRPM if you wanted, but if you can't read it that fast, it's a waste. The final one is likely overlooked, the drive Cache. This is a small set of built-in memory on the drive that is blazing fast, usually comes in 2MB, 8MB, and 16MB varieties. This will likely enhance your drive speed more than anything else--always get the high-cache models. It adds very little to the cost of the drive and is always worth it.

4. CPU/Mainboard. The CPU itself doesn't need to be excessively fast in SecondLife. It needs to be able to keep up with some physics calculations, and I guess if you're doing something like flying or driving vehicles or you participate in the various combat systems in SL (especially guns) and want really fine movements and such you might want higher CPU power, but for the average SL user, you just don't interact with that many objects that use Physics. Your mainboard is very important, however, and I know so many people skimp on this when they build a PC, often choosing the cheapest mainboard they can get and then adding a really beefy processor. The Mainboard has the task of managing the communications between your various components. If you have a blazing fast CPU and blazing fast RAM sticks and a blazing fast video card, and put it in a mediocre mainboard, you're shooting yourself in the foot, as not a single component will be able to be used efficiently. The Mainboard houses your harddrive controller which if it's slow you won't get maximum performance out of your drives, your memory controller which manages the data flowing between your CPU and your RAM...and if that's slow then your whole computer will be slow. It also manages the data flowing from your CPU to the graphics card. So put some thought into it and research what chipsets provide maximal performance.

Thanks,..very helpful stuff

I'm going to buy a bit of RAM and then try SL for a few weeks. If I still think it is a worthwhile system, I will look into building a new system...I have to admit mine is fairly old by now.

Thanks LaeMi, you have clarified some questions I was having. I am about to upgrade the video card and now I know where to start.

I can thoroughly confirm this.

Running on a celeron 2.2 GHz / 1 GB Main Memory / NVidia FX 5200 128 MB, I more than doubled my FPS in SL by replacing the main board with a good one (since destroyed due to my dumbness ).

Tricky to find out WHICH main boards are really good for SL though. With other "good" mainboards I have had much more limited improvement.

What board gave those good results?

The board was a Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK.

It may not be that the board is really fantastic, it may be that the old board was really rubbish!

I agree, the Gigabyte boards are wonderful. But then you're also were on the brain/cache damaged Celeron processors to boot. Even a P4 would get a boost by replacing it with a Core Solo.

Hi Drake.

The computer has been rebuilt with a new motherboard, new video card and new processor.

The new MB is ASUS P4V8X-MX P4M800, 2x512 MB DDR 400 ram.

The new graphic card is an NVidia 7600 GS/256 MB.

The new processor is a P4 3,2 GHz Prescott with hyperthreading (or should that be hype-threading? ).

Funnily enough, it is no faster (not even as fast) as the system I mentioned above! Despite celeron -> P4 etc etc.

The bottlenecks for SL are strange and wondrous to behold

By the way, it IS that same computer cos the casing stayed the same - and the mouse and the keyboard and the power supply

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Pentium 4's are not dual-core and hyperthreading is a joke (it's hardware-based preemptive multitasking). Linux I believe will just turn it off because it's useless, plus the P4's are brain-damaged in their cache. It will be just as slow. Just get a dual-core, like a Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, or Athlon 64 X2.

Don't worry, Drake ... this is not MY machine. I just used SL as a benchmark on it. The user of THIS machine is 13 and plays Flyff on it, but SL has a lovely FPS which tells you what you are REALLY getting out of your Clocks and Bus Speeds and Wow Incredible Graphic Cards.

Mine is listed in the specs on my signature; though the motherboard is not listed. I also got a nice jump in FPS in SL when I replaced my motherboard - I have an EPOX EP-8RDA6+ PRO board now. Edit: The previous one was a Gigabyte, but a cheap one: the GA-7VT600-RZ.

Nice to hear that linux has the common sense to do its own multi-threading .

Not that anything is WRONG with Windows XP, really. Nothing that installing Linux instead can't fix...

If you can find any of the cards you mentioned that are AGP8X version then it might be worth it as they will probably not be around much longer, the best I could find for my AGP machine was a 6200gs in my local shops here.

Otherwise drop another gig and a half of ram (like you said) in and you should see some good improvement.


I swear by asus motherboards...

-whyroc

Sorry for hijacking the thread (a bit).

I have 3 AGP 8x cards I use with SL - NVidia 6800 GS with 512 MB (Palit), 7900 GS GLH 512 MB from Gainward and a 7600 GS with 256 MB from Palit.

In my opininion, the 6800 GS from Palit (ONLY the Palit one, or based on the Palit one) is the best buy, the 7600 GS is cheaper, a bit slower, and the improvement with the expensive 7900 GS only happened when I got the new motherboard, see above.

I had no problems really getting the 7600 GS, or the others. I got them from Ebay, in Ebay shops (New ). Amazon had them too though, and their prices were OK. I am in Germany so if you are in the USA, you should have even less problems, I would think.

The hard part was, as you said, getting my head to stop spinning!

I am considering buying a new video card and I thought this would be a good thread to ask about it... I have decent performance with my current setup, but I'm always wanting to get a little better... So, can someone just look at these specs and tell me whether it would do me any good to upgrade a card, or should I focus on getting more memory?

I have a Dell System with Win XP, Pentium D CPU 3.00 GHz, 2.99 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM.

I'm currently using a Leadtek WinFast PX6800TDH Nvidia Geforce PCI-E video card, 256MB, which seems to do ok, but textures seem to take a loong time to load in SL.

I'm wanting to upgrade to a 512 Nvidia Card, maybe a 7900...But, obviously I don't wanna waste 200-300 bucks on a video card if it's really my memory or something else that needs upgrading. I have no idea how to see if my motherboard is good or not...this is a newer comp that was built by Dell last year. It came with a Nvidia 7300LE 1 gig video card, which I switched out because at the time I was playing Sims2 and it wouldn't even run the game. That card doesn't even have a fan, so I'm assuming it wouldn't be much good for SL either.

much thanks for any advice and help in layman's terms.

Sera,

Could it be your connection to the internet? Granted a graphics card with more memory should help you and more RAM should help you as well but if you've got a slow connection to the internet upgrading those two things would not help you load textures faster at all.

Just my 2 lindens.

ayep

my computer runs SL quite nicely, when i had to run on dialup, it still ran at rock steady, and snappy framerates ... just took an hour to load a scene

Texture Loading WAS a huge issue for a while. Linux was first with proper texture loading, then came the rest

If you have the Debug Menu on, then ctrl shift 3 (I think that's right) shows the texture console. In the old days my SL often choked after a shopping trip, and I could see that texture cache was full.

The slow FIRST load of textures has been a bad packet issue. Some recommend turning maximum bandwidth down to 300 or so to handle this. I got permanent improvement by getting a faster setup - graphic card (512mb bor 256 mb), cpu and a good motherboard. Then the bad packet problems also got less, maybe coincidentally.

It SEEMED (noteEEMED) to me that the rate that textures were coming in when SL first started could be so high that the computer couldn't process all the data, and got bad packets, and stalls on some things rezzing, fixed individually by selecting an item for edit or simply hovering with the mouse over it, or globally by going into "edit" and then selecting everything in sight.

Maybe this will give you some pointers...

PS: ctrl shift 1 (I think) shows the display with the bad packets quantified. In any event you can see a little red histogram top right on the SL window frame that shows bad packets.