Am I alone?

I'm running XP home with a ATI video Card 9800. For the last week I have been crashing like crazy. So I called Dell, got an upgrade on my Video Card Drivers. Then I say, well had my card like 3yrs maybe I should update the hardware. To my surprise because of my video slots (AGP) im unable to use Nvidia or any of the newer video cards made by Radeon. Anyone else out there using a Dell Dimension 4600 having the same problem? Cant believe they (Dell, Radeon) just left me hanging out there like that. I like my XP..and seen like SL doesnt really support the New Vista. And OMG! my pc still under warrant.. not looking to invest in a new one. Look like my SL life is coming to an end

Unfortunately, the AGP standard for video card interfaces lost in the battle against PCI and PCI-Express. Your old Dell is the equivalent of a Betamax video recorder. Great gear for playing those old favorites, but incompatable with the new standard. Eventually you will have to get a newer computer to support the current PCI-Express standard. As I understand it, the Nvidia cards support SL better than the ATI cards, especially if you end up running Vista. (You still can purchase new systems with XP pre-loaded as the OS, but Vista is rapidly taking over).

There are other AGP cards that you may be able to purchase used that may be more friendly to SL. I would suggest you post on the technical forum and ask for advice there on which AGP cards support SL the best, then get one of those cards on e-bay or from some other seller of used/reconditioned parts. There may even be some manufacturers that still make new, high-end AGP cards. Certainly it is cheaper to purchase a video card than to replace the whole computer.

I have a thread in the First Look forum where I asked for guidance on which video cards run SL the best. You may want to look there for ideas.

Good luck!

Although AGP has been on the way out for a while, you can still get a GOOD NVidia graphics card for your AGP slot. (And I'd recommend NVidia over ATI any day.)

For example:

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=13498
512MB XFX GeForce 7950GT
AGP 8x
512MB GDDR3
Dual DVI

That is a fantastic card. Hunt it out in your country, and if you can afford it, buy it and get somebody to fit it for you. If I was your neighbour I'd do it for nothing. (My neighbours drive me nuts with computer maintenance and upgrades but I always give in. )

I'm in the same boat, but I was able to get an nvidia 7800 agp/8x card and it works very well even though I only have an agp/4x slot to put it in. That means I'm not getting full use of the card but it was still a big improvement over what it replaced.

My wife's computer has an AGP slot and we replaced the 9800 she had with an NVidia 6800GT with 512mb. Second life runs a lot better with that card than it did with the 9800.

While there are not as many AGP cards out as PCI-E, there are still a good number of them available. Second Life isn't the most graphic intensive 3D game, so a high end last generation card or a mid level current generation card will do quite well.

Hello Jaylin, I opened up my fiancees Dell Dimension 1100 the other day to find it doesn't even support AGP. PCI only - I couldn't believe it!! Well, I upgraded her DRAM to 2 Gb which improved matters somewhat.
My own machine (generic PC) I put a ATI Radeon 9500 AGP card in last year and even with just the 1Gb DRAM, runs circles round the Dell. I have no hesitation in recommending this card if you can find one still.

If I remember AGP well enough, the speed improvement was only marginal at 8x and often made your PC less stable. I do recall leaving mine at 4x most of the time and didn't feel like I was missing much.

Not sure if this will help you but it has helped me.

For weeks i was crashing like crazy (every 10 minutes or so after the upgrade to 1.15) and after updating graphic drivers, sound drivers and anything else i could find i was still crashing all the time (and it was only with SL everything else worked fine)

Spending a long time searching the forums/ knowledge bases i eventually came across something in the support documentation for what all the configuration options do under preferences (it was buried very deep)

basically it said this

# Bump Mapped & Cloth - Avatars will be displayed with clothing wrinkles, and hair (not prim hair) and loose clothing (like poofy skirts) will sway in the wind. (KNOWN ISSUE: selecting this may cause a crash.)

Under preferences go to Graphics and see if you have "Bump Mapped & Cloth" turned on, if you have try changing it to "Bump Mapped". Hopefully this should stop you crashing.

Hope this helps

Buffy

Sorry Buffy that doesn't help either. I have "normal" selected and still craching on an ATI 9600/256 card.

And for those who suggest it:

NO! Changing Motherboard + videocard to get PCI Expess is NOT the solution. Since every other game runs well on the machine, IT IS OBVIOUS that SL has a problem NOT the videocard.

My primary machine has the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 card. It also has an AMD64 3200+ cpu.

When the SL client v1.14 was introduced, my machine started to crash on a regular basis even requiring hard boots to correct. At the time I was running Windows 2000.

Note: My video card only seemed to have problems while running SL, not other graphic intensive games (like Silkroad).

Well, from reading the technical forums, I saw a reference for the Omega Drivers. I uninstalled the ATI drivers and installed the Omega Drivers. This resolved my crashing issues.

So, if you haven't tried the Omega drivers, I suggest giving that a try.


On a new note, a couple weeks back I decided to upgrade my OS to XP on this machine. Now, I find that my video blacks out (4 or 6 times over a about 5-10 minute span). And eventually blacks out and won't come back. I end up having to use the key sequence to shutdown the system inorder to recover. Now, neither the ATI nor Omega drivers resolve this problem.

Also, this problem is occuring when I run Silkroad too.

My choices seem clear; 1) Go back to Windows 2000 and the Omega Drivers, or 2) Get a new AGP video card.

Jaylin, I still recommend trying the Omega drivers, if you haven't yet done so.

For me, I'll try getting a new video card, and in the meantime run SL from my other machine.

Edit: Corrected CPU reference

The issue is that ATI 's drivers for their chipset do not support Open GL all that well, and unlike most of the other video games that you may be used to, Second Life is heavily dependant on Open GL to operate. That is why, for some people and for some combinations of OS and ATI cards, going to a third-party driver set like the Omega Drivers can clear things up and make SL run well.

ATI does not try very hard to support Open GL. Nvidia, on the other hand, does a very thorough job of Open GL support, and as a result SL runs well on most Nvidia cards.

In the long run, it's more a problem with what ATI cards will support than it is what SL can do. But SL could certainly improve their own software's ability to at least recognize and cope with the limitations of non-compliant cards that are as popular as ATI's cards are.

Ceera, you made me think...


I don't want wonderfull skies. If I want that I'll play Guild Wars.

I don't want fast action. If I want that I'll play Counter Strike.

I don't want intriquing graphics. If I want that I'll play Lineage2.

I don't want huge wars and fights. If I want that I'll play WoW.

I don't want voice. If I'd want that I'd download R Vilco or Teamspeak.


We will never have the graphics other games have. We don't want them in fact. Sure it would be great... but it's not a priority for us. We want interaction and friendship with others even if graphics are not so "cool".

I JUST REALISED LINDENLAB DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEIR USERS WANT!


It's bad.. very bad! I'm close to a week since I couldn't play normally, because I crash anywhere from 1 second to 30 minutes (most frequently somewhere at 10-15 seconds after login).

Oh, she may need to upgrade her power supply as well. A top end card like that sucks a lot of juice -- minimum I'd recommend is a 430W.

Yeah Omega drivers don't help either. Creashed immediately as I installed them and Started SL.

The truth is that I'm not pissed because SL wants bigger and better videocard. I'm mad because of this:

"The following hardware and software is REQUIRED to run Second Life successfully. If your computer doesn't meet these requirements, you may not be able to participate in Second Life:


PC Minimum System Requirements:

* Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL
* Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
o OR Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4)
NOTE: Second Life does NOT currently support Windows Vista
* Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
* Computer Memory: 256MB or better
* Video/Graphics Card**:
o nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better
o OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better"

Yeah well, mine is:

Internet Connection*: Cable
* Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
* Computer Processor: 3GHz Pentium 4
* Computer Memory: 2GB
* Video/Graphics Card**:
ATI Radeon 9600 256Mb


Wich is over their requirements.

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. Finally a Dell Tech called me back. suggested that I use the Pny Verto GE Force Fx 5200 256 PCI. It is suggested that it runs well with SL. And as for the slot. I was told since I dont use the modem I i could remove it and use that slot for the video card. hopefully this will work out. I shall see in a couple days.

I can vouche for the Radeon 9250 PCI card. That is the card I used on my old computer with only 512 megs of RAM. SL ran pretty good on that machine too.

the FX 5200 is really slow compared to a radeon 9800pro. if you have an AGP slot the some good and cheap (now a days) cards would be a 6800gt, or an x800xt both of which you can get for $100US or less now.

Just be careful that your 4600's power supply can handle the upgraded/new video card you put in. When I wanted to upgrade mine, the required power supply requirements exceeded the power supply present in the machine. The rear of the machine is die cut so you can't get a new power supply off the shelf and Dell doesn't offer an upgraded one. Long and short of it, I got a new machine.

Char

There's a place that sells higher wattage power supplies to fit proprietary systems:

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/products/power_supplies/selector/dell.htm

The Dell Tech I talked to assure me that my power supply could handle the card im gettin. Thank you

from what im hearing from everyone. I have a powerful video card in the radeon 9800pro but fact is that the nvidia just run SL much better. even if its less powerful. At this point i'll try it. And at the price of $59. if It dont work.. I havent lost that much. Thing is up til this recent new version my card worked just fine. event though it was only 128MB DDr. so im hoping the Nvidia 5200 which claim to run well in SL along with the 256MB DDr.. will do the trick for me. Fingers Crossed

same here; Unless im on my private land. I crash anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds after I land anywhere. so im confined to my SL home merely chattin in IM

Not sure what Dell support is trying to sell you but I certainly wont buy individuals components from Dell even I have 3 Desktops which I got from Dell.. For components their choices are limited and is probably overpriced.
You should go to some place like newegg.com to order your card. For Nvidia 5200 they have 19 different cards, they have both PCI and AGP card and price start from $29 to $75.. and Dell is charging you how much??

On the other thread someone claim that he run SL on an 9600Pro without problem after update the driver
/327/1a/190105/1.html

and by the way there are still a lot of cards available in PCI/AGP. And if you really dont want to spend money on a new card, go download Linux and install a duall boot machine. Run SL on Linux.. you probably has a better chance getting SL to work on Linux.

My Radeon 9550 fell over a couple of months back with an update but upgrading my OpenGL to v2.x solved it.
And I'm with Jack here about buying components from Dell. I just upgraded fiancees Dimension RAM with Kingston ValueRAM and it was half the price Dell was asking!