Grid Load affect Sys Requirements?

Hi all,

Not been on SL for too long but something I've noticed. I run SL normally on a laptop that is below specs. I understand that I won't have excellent performance. But I've been quite surprised how smoothly it runs.

Weekends are another story. As more concurrent users come online, the laptop rig completely fails to run SL. If I can log on, it practically freezes trying to run it.

Now, I have a desktop rig that far exceeds SL specs. On weekends, when I experience crippling lag on my laptop, I would expect the desktop to have the same problems, thinking that the problem is with the grid and not with my rig. But lo and behold, while my laptop locks up under the strain of SL on weekends, my desktop logs on without any problem. I have full functionality via the same internet connection but with a different system.

Does the crush of weekend users somehow make SL demand more and more system resources, effectively upping the system requirements?

I noticed this as well, lots of problems i attributed to "just lag" are gone now that I upgraded to a new and more powerfull laptop... I think that a system already straining to keep up does an even worse job when it also has to face lag issues, whereas a more powerfull system has more "headroom" to deal with the extra strain by lag.

Well I definitely notice an impact when the grid has heavy load. Usually my framerate linger somewhere around 20 or a lot more, when there are really few avatars in the area.

However, when the grid load is high I also notice a framerate way below the sim framerate. I am happy at sunday afternoon, when the framerate lingers between 15 and 10. It can be less with many avatars.

And this is not lag caused through the server or network (at least not directly) - that kinda lag looks different. It just seems as if the client simply doesn't perform very well in this situaion.

I think at the most basic level, if your laptop is choking at drawing/rezzing whatever with the server waiting to fill it with data you will run slower than a higher powered PC.
When you have the server lagging, your laptop is still struggling to draw but when it asks for more data, the lag slows it more. The high power PC will 'suck' the server as quick as it can by comparison.
Well .. I know what I mean anyway

Once you understand that the internet is a series of tubes it all makes sense.

When the tubes are less clogged, a lower-powered computer manages just fine because the CPU (which is really a data pump) has less work to do in order to suck the images and words through its tube.

But when the tubes get full and there are too many words and pictures, the data pump has to work much much harder in order to suck the stuff you want through the tubes. This strains the little datapump, it gets hot, the fan starts up (the fan is like an auxiliary data pump, it keeps the cpu pump primed) and the whole thing begins to overheat and suffer.

This is where a big desktop computer with lots of horsepower is valuable. It has a much, much bigger cpu/pump, and many newer ones have more than one, having dual pumps, dual pump pairs, and even quad pumps are coming out. The desktop computer also has room for more and bigger 'fans' which help keep all those cpu/pumps primed and running at peak.

This is how the desktop is able to work better under tube-clogging conditions.

-Atashi

p.s. apologies to all -- needed some levety for a Monday morning.

there is indeed an impact of network handling connections. This impact is higher with windows PCs, when the server-side is doing bad. the windows TCP-stack (at least the TCP-stack) seems to run into performance problems, when needing to handle a lot of slow or even dropping/timeouting and resetting connections.

(I do preformance-testing at work and ran into problems with windows clients eating up performance under stressy situations on the server, where Linux clients seem to perform nicely. Note that the CLIENT experiences problems, when the SERVER is not able to handle connections smoothly anymore)

In this regard it would be interesting if Linux users actually experience a performance hit, too.

However, usually I'd experience such a massive amount of impact only in really high-load situations, and I don't see that actually happening, when using only a Bandwidth of 0.5 mbit. Not even with 2 Mbit - which is the utmost I can get. So I have some doubts as to that alone being the problem.

However it might be that the way SL is designed, with more people online - a lot more people - excess data is sent to clients to decide if they need to handle it - or maybe they even do need to handle it, even if there is no visible presentation for the user.

Primarily, a laptop is a compromise and always playing catchup when compared to a desktop. The target of the manufacturers is to try and become a 'all rounder' with the prority of user lap space and transportability, somethings have to give.

At weekends and evenings (given your own countries time zones) little johnny down the road sharing the contention ratio of your connection, is downloading and updating his iTunes/Pod, creates bottle necks. The packet loss and failure rise meaning the system has to keep resending requests for new ones. Each 'dead' packet has a shelf life (otherwise the internet would grind to a halt with full caches of timed-out packets of now useless data), moreso critical in a time sensitive online interactive game such as Second Life.