is something getting too hot?

After I have been in world roughly 2 -3 hours, I notice the walls on a certain place that I am at decide to go from normal red in colour to flashing all the colours of the rainbow.
I know that its not the wall thats doing it, its obviously my graphics card?
Do you think something could be getting too hot in my laptop?
Ive got the latest drivers for the graphics card and the laptop is less then three months old.
any idea what causes this flashing

Preferences / Adv Graphics - If "Enable OpenGL VBO" is checked, uncheck it

I get this problem anytime there are too many textures, or if they are very high resolution, or if I'm moving/camming around and so loading many textures one after another. One example is Midnight City... there are so many high-resolution textures, I can't go anywhere without seeing at least one or two black-n-rainbow patches. In other places that are more conservative with their use of textures, I don't have any problem at all even staying there for long periods of time.

I don't think it's a problem with overheating, because it doesn't seem related to my cooling fan speed. It just seems to be that my graphics memory has gotten maxxed out. (Admittedly my poor little comp's a bit weak for SL.)

in other words you have toomany 1 CM sized spheres with 512 x 512 textures. man that really pisses me off.

or someone not using the tradition tile really tiny textures to make a bigger one.

Let me guess: You have a mac. Yeah it's a graphics card thing.

This "rainbow" flashing problem is not just Mac-related and occurs on PC's too.

Kitty's advise is correct:



I would add that I have found that just toggling this on-off often temporarily relieves the situation, sometimes for a short while; usually for a longer period of time. (remember to "Apply", after each toggle)

I have also observed that in v1.17, unchecking VBO caused a drastic and immediate drop in fps; although on my PC this does not seem to now happen with v1.18 and fps remains moreorless constant regardless if VBO is on or off.

As an aside, I first started seeing this "rainbow" flashing in v1.14 or v1.15 ~ with v1.17 being the worst for it.

ASUS Extreme Striker motherboard
3 x Nvidia PCI-E 7900GT OC 256Mb
E6600 Dual-core
3Gb RAM
Vista Ultimate

Thanks for the tips everyone, it only seems to happen on the one wall of the place i go to, it never happens anywhere else in SL so it could be a texturing thing? i never really thought of that before.

I dont have a Mac,

It doesnt really bother me too much i just turn away from that certain wall when it starts happening lol.

At least i can rest easy knowing its not my graphics card about to explode

Definitely VBO

Well, half correct. I'm on a Mac (two of them), and have other friends on macs who face this all the time Messing with the VBO setting does not seem to change it for any of us,.

Mari