a piece of advice for newer, less tech-savvy players

What I'm about to say may strike you as "insensitive" or "lacking understanding". I completely understand that some of our fellow players cannot afford better computer hardware. I also understand that some players, no matter what I say, will never upgrade their hardware. If you would never upgrade your hardware for "a silly game", then, please, click out of this thread and go enjoy yourself. If there is no way on God's green earth you can afford more hardware, again, please, click out of this thread and go have fun.

Ok, you're still here, so you've been warned. Here are my uber-serious recommendations for playing Second Life and enjoying it:

1- The very best computer processor you can afford.
2- A compatible, late model motherboard, ideally a "gamer one"
3- As much RAM as you can possibly afford. To me, 2 gigabytes is the real amount you need to have fun.
4- The best broadband you can get and afford.
5- The fastest hard drive you can afford. Believe it or not, many times a slow hard drive (like a 4200 rpm one) will be the major bottleneck for players.
6- The best video card you can afford. You do not have to spend $600 to get a decent video card for Second Life. The processor is more important in SL than the video card.

I could go on but I don't want to completely overwhelm you. If you're not into tech stuff, get a knowledgeable friend to help you. Shop long and hard and smart and you can get some good deals. I had mine custom built with my parts I bought and saved a huge amount of money. If you are persistent and shop wisely, you can get a pretty decent machine (custom built) for about $1500 USD. Note I did not say "the best possible machine". Custom built means you buy the parts and get a competent person to put it together for you.

Good luck and have fun, as always

So we need to buy the best of everything? Um, can you dumb it down a little further for us non-techies, I'm not quite keeping up with all your technical mumbo jumbo.

The best you can afford. The very best processor on the market right now is around $1000 USD. Obviously, most people cannot or will not buy that. So buy one for $500 or $400.

The techie friend will understand all of this. You have to buy compatible parts, i.e. an Intel processor needs a compatible Intel motherboard. Also, it makes no sense to buy a $800 processor and then spend only $30 on a bargain basement hard drive. You need to balance your purchases.

I hate to say it, but unless you can get super deals from a friend (or someone gives the parts to you), you have to spend a fair amount of money to get a good machine. Second Life will kill any machine that has less than 512 megabytes of RAM (random access memory).

on edit: Let's say you can afford to spend $1000 USD. Ok, then you find out all the parts that need to be bought and allocate the money accordingly. I hate to go into detail here because then it becomes a pretty technical discussion.

I was running 512MB of RAM and it wasn't pretty. I put in 2 gigs more and SL is running perfectly. I have a P4 3.0Ghz, with an ATI X300 card. Other than upgrading the video card I am in pretty good shape I think. RAM is definitely the cheapest and easiest upgrade.

yep, you're right.

BTW I am not a techie by any means. Installing RAM is simple. On my last machine, I upgraded, the HD, Video Card, RAM modem and soundcards myself. I reinstall the OS at least twice a year. Don't be afraid of it...a lot os it is simple..just read the intructions.

I think it would be more useful to have people understand and be able to recognize the difference between client lag, sim lag, grid lag and network issues and how to deal with each different one and what affects which.

Also be realistic about all the different settings. Just because you can drag the sliders all the way over to the right and check all the little boxes, doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea. The worst help calls were people who simply wouldn't listen to suggestions, but instead insisted on going on about how good their puter was, and how much they spent on it, and how it should just work.

Draw distance really doesn't need to be set to 512 (which taxes both the sim you're on - and adjoining ones), nor does bandwidth need to be all the way up to 1500, when 500 or 750 will actually give a much more reliable result in some cases.

A slow puter with realistic settings doesn't necessarily mean a worse experience than a fast one with crazy settings just because "it should be able to handle it".

You can get good instructions for doing all the above in magazines and on the internet. Here is a quick and dirty summary of the parts you need:

1- CPU/processor = the brain of the computer
2- Random Access Memory = RAM = the part that helps your programs run more smoothly
3- Motherboard = the part that the CPU fits into, that big flat thing
4- Cables = pretty self-explanatory
5- Case = the box that holds the guts of the computer
6- Power supply = the box that converts household electricity into a form your computer can use
7- Video card = the thing your monitor plugs into
8- Monitor
9- Broadband router (to me mandatory if you have DSL or cable)
10- Hard drive = the part that holds all your data and programs
11- Operating System = Linux or Tiger or Windows XP/Vista
12- Mouse = the clicky thing
13- Mouse pad = Not mandatory but makes life nicer
14- Keyboard = self-explanatory
15- DVD (digital video disc) or CD (compact disc) player
16- Sometimes the darn manufacturers insist you have a floppy disk. You can buy these today for $10 USD or less.
17- Fans for the processor and case (they're pretty small)

I might have forgotten something.

I was trying to run SL on an iMac, because my laptop couldn't even load it, and finally made the decision to upgrade to a decent desktop PC that would run SL well.

Given a limited budget for this move, I decided to build my own in order to get the best possible bang for my buck. I ordered a copy of "Building the Perfect PC" and set to work learning from the ground up. I won't soft-soap how hard this can be for someone without ANY hardware background, but if I can do it, it's pretty much in reach of anyone who has the patience and dedication to read and learn.

For about $1,000 in hardware (not counting the OS), I was able to build a solid computer that runs SL very well, even when other people are having problems. If I had to do it over again, I'd make a few different choices (a better graphics card, a 3rd hard drive), but I'm still really amazed at the difference this computer makes in my SL experience. And the 20" wide screen monitor is sweet! The cost covered every single component, from inndards to peripherals like keyboard, DVD, speakers, etc.

Pertinent specs:

Antec P150 Case
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor
ASUS A8N-32 SLI Deluxe motherboard
GeForce 6800XT (256mb) graphics card
2 Seagate Barracuda SATA drives (7200 rpm) in a RAID configuration
2gb of RAM

True all that. My subject here was the hardware, of course. Settings are important too, especially if you cannot or will not upgrade.

Very nice machine. Like that RAID there. I need to upgrade my RAID.

Steve, I think you're doing a lot of people a big favor. Good for you.

Unfortunately, the hardware is the dirty little secret of Second Life. It's a lot more comfortable to talk about settings and software and the easy things to do.

I understand and know what you are saying is valid. My machine is custom built about 6 months ago........a simi gamers computer built with SL in mind. Six months ago it rocked on SL.........with very little problems. I doubled the system requirements LL lists on the website thinking I would be good to go for a year at least before any thoughts of upgrading again to stay ahead. Well, that thinking has turned out to be wrong.......it's already time to upgrade with recent upgrades LL has put out. That's my problem with LL. They put more and more pressure on everyone's computer to play their game. It gets rather expensive to keep up. Very few can afford to replace their machines every 6 months..........and many who can afford simply won't on principal.

Linden Labs should upgrade their minimum system requirements if their software changes that drastically...........but they won't do it. It would interfere with the new signups. It seems right now my doubling 6 mos ago is now close to the minimums. That being a P4 3.06 dual core Intel CPU on an Asus MB, 1 gig DDR2 RAm, nVidia 256 DDR on board ram, 160 gig SATA hard drive spinning at 7200 rpm, all in an ATX case with 500 watt PS and 4 cooling fans. Somehow I think my computer should be good to go for SL for another year........but I'm figuring a couple more SL updates and I'm junk. That is just pathetic.

And I got this all custom built for a little over 800 USD. But that did not include a monitor, keyboard, audio card, DVD +- drive and several other pieces of hardware. I put those in myself scavenged from my older machine. I might get more RAM soon........but I'm not going much beyond that just to keep up with SL.

Not meaning to hijack Steve's hardware thread, but...

I have a dual-core system and a broadband connection. How would one determine the optimal bandwidth setting? If not maximum, do you have any guidelines for the best place to set that little slider?

One is the actual sustainable download speed of your connection in kilobits or megabits per second. The other is to just experiment.

Just to add, if you're going to build a new machine or upgrade a significantly old machine, the best power supply you can afford is also probably necessary. Cheap power supplies are nothing more than a waste of money - they'll rarely deliver enough power for your machine to run properly.

Remember that a power supply's rating (e.g. 480W) is how much power it can deliver in a lab under experimental conditions - no power supply will ever deliver that much in real life. But some are more reliable than others.

That said, I think (and someone will correct me if I'm wrong) that the reliable power supplies are ones branded Antec, Enermax or Coolermaster. Anything else is a bit hit and miss.

I'm not sure about otehr countries' prices on power supplies, but I'd aim for something that in Britain would cost at least £50.

I was just thinking the other day that I needed a more powerful power supply. Mine is rated at 550 watts and I run two video cards. One day I may upgrade to a 1000 watt.

Me too, though just the one video card (and that AGP since my motherboard has no PCI-E... I just need to upgrade everything )

With that in mind, though, maybe I was underestimating things a bit with the £50 thing...

The main reason for large capacity power supply is efficiency. You load your PS to somewhere about 75% and it will begin to loose some of it's efficiency due to heating up under the load and you start to get into an area where weirdness starts happening to the boards and things requiring the power delivered by the PS. I picked 500 watts because I wanted more fans than my case came with plus the ability to put in a second HD at a later date. My calculations put that requirement to be 250 watts.........so I doubled it to 500 watts. I can see the need for a 600 watt if I wanted to put in another grapics card and possibly run a few more USB devices........but unless I wanted a liquid cooled case and some fancy liights and "cool" looking bells and whistles a 1000 watt PS is pretty much a waste of money as far as I can see.

But you can spend your money the way you want.....it won't hurt anything. With a little shopping you should be able to pick up a good 600 watt PS for under 100 USD.

It probably depends what graphics card(s) you're using, too. My 480W was perfectly adequate for my FX5200, but it's not enough for my 7300GS (with nothing else in the machine changed). They say (or did a year and a half ago, anyway) to allow 50W for a graphics card, but I'm sure it must be more variable than that.

As for 1kW... if it's durable, you won't need to buy another one for quite a while, at least. It seems like overkill, but I'm fairly certain it won't always be. The real question is: will it live long enough to become underwhelming?

Actually thats only half the story, there's a lot of bull when it comes to the REAL amount of power being drawn, its much lower than most people realise even with the latest hardware.

A more expensive but high quality components filled power supply of a lower Wattage, will easily be as good as a cheaper one that offers much more. It's a case of the cheapo one who's components can't really take much strain at all, but the watts amount is so high it'll never get close to using 75%, versus the one that can deal with very high loads up to the stated spec cause of its quality components.

I run AMD dual core with Nvidia 7600GS 512mb, 2gigs Ram and I find my 460 Watt power supply is more than enough to handle the load, its a very well made one by QTechnology with 120mm fan (nice and quiet too).

The listed system requirements for SL are comical:

Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
Computer Memory: 256MB or better

Even the "system recommendations" are a bit of a joke.

I have a 2.6GHZ P4, and 1GB of ultra-fast RAM and it still runs like dren most of the time.

If it's even mediocre quality I'm sure it will outlast the computer it's installed in. But, if you are going to purchase a new computer because it's become obsolete it just doesn't make sense to me to opt out of a new PS at that time and put your old one in it......that's kind of like buying a new car and not getting an engine with it because you already have a powerful in your old car. Power supplies are probably the cheapest component (even the high end ones) in the computer.

I suggest you put what you need plus room for expansion. Keeping in mind how long you anticipate your computer will last before obsolescence. But that's my way of doing stuff. Like I said before...........spend whatever you want on your power supply. It's your money and it will not hurt a thing to be over powered........but the opposite is true if you are under powered.