Performance Worsens with Every patch

Seems like performance is only going one way for me, down. Every patch seems to indicate one thing, the minimum specs WILL be raised to a 6600GT or better. Once again option wise nothing has changed for me and my performance once again drops. I'm now averaging 5 FPS where ever I go, less if there's people in the area. Everything Vertex is disabled, LOD settings are all medium, Terrain Detail is high, and Draw Distance 64. Wth, why not strait out tell us what we are gonna need to play SL already so people can ruin the economy by hording their L$ to cash out for new hardware already.

Current Setup:
CPU: AMD Anthlon XP 2600+
GPU: eVGA GeForceFX 5500 256MB AGP (overclocked)
RAM: 1 Gig DDR

Main grid avg FPS: 17
Preview grid avg FPS: 5

Strange thing...I notice better performance in preview than I do in main grid.

Sandbox Island now, getting between 10 and 15FPS -- better than I get main grid.

system:

Athlon XP 2700+
512MB DDR400
nVidia GeForce4 MX4000 128MB

96m draw distance
nearby local lights enabled
terrain detail high
object mesh detail about 3/4 up
flexible mesh detail 3/4 up
tree mesh detail maxed
avatar mesh detail 3/4 up
AGP Graphics Accelleration OFF (I've found I get better performance off than on -- even though I use an AGP card)

anyhoo, that's my take

CCC

Ron, have you tried switching off flexible prims (or turning down their detail)? The thing I'm noticing is that every time I visit the Preview grid the number of flex-prims people have left lying around has doubled because no-one tidies up after themselves!
Hopping in my occlussion box gives me much the same FPS as before, though I notice that occlussion has got better, it's blocking out more than before (though flex-prims seem to linger a while still).

In fact, weren't flex-prims supposed to be limited to only so many 'flexing' on-screen at once? At least that's what I thought the idea was, due to them being fairly intensive on slower clients? But I seem to be rendering all of them in full flexable motion, even really far away ones.

I think one of the issues is that, with several of the video options that were available in the past versions consolidated, it's not clear exactly what the equivalent set of preference options would be to compare 1.9 and 1.9.1.

For example, shiny is simply on now regardless. Ripple water is now on if vertex shaders is on and environmental detail is turned to medium or higher... etc.

Without knowing what options are exactly comparable to previous options (and it's possible, since things have been made automatic, that this is impossible), it might not be possible to give an accurate comparison of fps pre 1.9.1.

My fps seems comparible when I turn all options available (vertex shaders on, details at medium, local lights only, 64 draw distance) to what I get in the main grid, EXCEPT for densely packed areas such as bonifico and the other original grid sims in that area, where my performance seems worse than the same areas on the main grid. This leads me to believe, with some of the new vertex shader enhancements, that having this option on causes more overhead per prim in view than in previous versions. My occlusion box seems to straighten this out (it goes all the way up to 18-19 fps sometimes, if I'm more than 10m away from prims), but I don't think that will do much good in practice, as I doubt anyone is going to stand for staying in little 10x20 boxes for much of their SL life just to get an 'acceptable' framerate.

-edit: I should have stated - in these areas, my fps is usually around.... 7.

Athlon 2400+
Radeon 9600 128MB
PC2700 1.2 GB RAM
Audigy 2

Flexiprims don't seem to make much of a difference to FPS for me. Rather, they become less flexible and look like they're updating at a much lower FPS than the rest of the view.

1.9.1.13 seemed to be significantly faster than the main grid for me.

1.9.1.16, however, is horrible. Along with the new shader code (that I can't even turn on any more), the Preferences have lost half the things I used to turn down to get a speed improvement, and (sob) I can't turn off Shiny any more!

Not to mention that whenever I go into preview it sets my main grid parameters to "run really slow and make appearance suck" by turning on a bunch of expensive options whle turning down some detail sliders that I normally have rolled all the way up.

I've also noticed some preview/main grid cross talk. My edit window keeps resetting to the middle left portion of my screen, my IM window keeps compacting to its minimum settings, and my detail settings change for some reason. o.O;

I noticed one other thing that seems to be silently thrown in: Avitars are now always Bump Mapped. I've noticed that Preview always seems to affect my option on the Main grid & vice versa. I noticed when I leave 1.9.1.16 and go play 1.9.0 that Avitar Rendering is set to Bump Mapped. Normally I leave this on Normal. After a driver update to the new NGO 1.8456 I gained back some FPS in Morris (from 5 - 12). Wich stayed when I visited Lusk till I ran into people then it dropped like a brick in the ocean(dropped to 6). Setting it back to Sun & Moon I shot back up from 6FPS to 9FPS, a 3FPS difference wich hasn't changed since 1.9.1.10. I think having my avitar & shiny objects bump mapped and 1.9.1's heavy reliance on Vertex Shaders is whats killing me (even though Vertex Shaders are Off).

I agree Ron...The same happens for me as well...and it also looks as if my 128mb radeon xpress just will not cut it when the preview goes public. Guess it will be a LONG break from SL when it goes main.
*NOTE*
1.9.1(13) was the last update that everything ran extremely smooth for me. Guess that went bye bye

SPECS:
ATHLON AMD 64 3400+
2.2GHZ 512MB L2 Cache
1GIG DDR SDRAM
ATI RADEON EXRESS 200

(yes I know i will get negative feedback about my vid card setup..but on the main grid with everything set to medium detail I get anywhere from 10-15 FPS at the minimum in a crowded sim)

I hope they're willing to consider rolling back to .13 and putting the new shader stuff off to 1.9.2, or else it's going to be months before 1.9.1 is ready.

There's people with older and slower cards than me who are getting better preformance, and newer cards who are having bigger problems. This isn't so much "raising the minimum requirements" as "things are sadly screwed up".

That sounds like a good idea to me, I'm not big on the vertex shader stuff (since OS X can't get them anyway yet), it's the occlussion culling and lighting that I'm most interested in and would love to see those out sooner rather than later.