Some newbie tech questions for fellow Universal testers

Hi, all - I'm Miller Copeland, a BRAND-new resident (two days in the main grid and counting), playing with a new Mac Intel Mini (solo processor) and the Universal Binary Alpha software. I hope you all will forgive me for what might be some stupid questions below, but I just wanted to see if I might be able to get some feedback from Mac veterans...

1) Do any of you veterans have recommendations at this point, as to the best settings in "Preferences" for the new Intel Macs? The Mac recommendations page at the SL wiki is unfortunately for the pre-Intels only; not sure how much of that is still applicable for these much faster new machines.

2) I noticed that before the Intel Macs, it was highly recommended that Mac owners not play in full-screen mode. Was wondering if any of you have now tested full-screen mode on the Intels, and what you think?

3) Should the Mac Minis have the "Avatar Vertex" option checked or not? I have no idea what this means.

4) The old Mac guide also recommended deleting your Library>Cache files regularly. Is this still an issue with the Intels? Should I still be doing this, or does this no longer apply?

Thanks very much for whatever response you might have. For those who are curious, by the way, the UBA software has been working just fine on my solo-processor Mini; full renderings, nice frame refreshes, no bugs yet (fingers crossed). There's been some varying opinions among RL gaming magazines, I've seen, about whether the solo-processor Mini is good enough for the SL software, or if you need the dual-processor; from my experiences, though, I've found the solo-processor so far to be working just fine.

that guide is still pretty good overall.

the guide isnt really mac per say, but low performance machines. I use most of the same settings on low end Windows machines.

the Avatar Vertex i havent noticed does anything but make clothes wavy in the wind and slow down your machine. It says faster, but its faster unchecked.


full screen or windows wont matter, just use very low settings and a low res, as the GPU in the Mac minis is very low end.

on Mac or Windows, or even the Linux client, its best to clear cache from time to time.

your Core Solo processor will run just as good in SL as the Core Duo, because SL only uses one core anyways. Youll only see a differnce if you try to multitask when SL is running. ON the Core Duo machines you can run 5 or 6 other programs while SL is running, and not even be able to tell that SL is even going.

Yeah, that's something I've noticed already too; that I pretty much have to have every other application on my Mini solo-processor shut down, in order to run SL. Thanks for all this information!

Okay, so I've been playing around with the Universal release more, and think I can start to answer my own questions from the beginning of this thread:

1) I've found the draw distance in the Preferences to be of crucial importance to the speed of my play. In crowded situations, for example, on a Mini sole-core processor, I'm pretty much hopeless unless I dial down the draw distance to its minimum, 64 meters. Out in the wild, though, or when flying and sightseeing, I've been able to bump that up to its maximum, 512 meters, with no problems at all. Would love to hear opinions from people who have been trying out shiny versus non-, bumpy versus non-, etc.

2) Full-screen mode works great for me on an Intel Mac; I heartily recommend it to others.

3) "Avatar Vertex" doesn't even seem to be an option in the Universal build, so this is a moot question.

4) I have not been deleting my cache files, and things seem to be working fine. Admittedly, though, I cannot have any other apps open while playing; plus if I log out, I usually have to reboot the computer if I want to play again with any fast refresh rate.

Anyway, hope this information has helped some of you fellow Universal testers, and please feel free to add your own observations to this thread.

You seem to be on top of things Miller. I find draw distance the variable with the most effect. Otherwise, turn everything down, and turn parameters up one at a time til your framerate is too low to bear.

And don't got to clubs or the welcome area if you wanna keep the framerate up.