Multiple Threaded Rendering???

Anyone know what that means exactly? I found it under the Debug Menu, under Client > Rendering > Run Multiple Threads.

I have a vague idea about what it means, and when I turned it on my graphics seemed to get sharper/crisper, and my FPS went up. Looked Really really Nice!!!

It means SL starts using multiple CPU cores, meaning more power to the game, meaning faster rendering times.

Sweet!! I had an idea thats what it meant. *singing* Oh Happy Times in SL for Meeeeeee!!!

woot! cpu use 100%. finally

I'm just curious folks... when you did the multi-treaded did it use more than a full processor the whole time? Or jsut for little bits? I tried it on my Mac Pro and i didn't notice much of a difference.

Shar

I see zero performance difference with multi-threaded and I have a multi-processor machine, in fact, when I switched it on my LOD immediately set everything to low detail, it was horrible. I'm hoping there is a lot more development to do and that's why it isn't a proper option yet!!!

But then hell, I can't seem to get more than 7fps anywhere anyway once textures have loaded. In a small room in a mostly-empty sim I get crappy FPS, when occlusion culling was introduced I would happily get 30+ in my home which at the time was just a nicely furnished box. I don't even know what the issue is any more, but I'm guessing that all this work to get faster rendering is going to waste because it seems to all be communications issues. SL is just a non-stop pain for me at the moment, and it's not fun.
My current SL time goes along the lines of:
- Open up SL
- Endure lag for five minutes
- Close it and do something else, unable to manage my business, build anything or speak to my friends in-world

I can get 7 FPS running 4 copies of the regular client (each). o..O

Hmmm..... I didnt bother to check the CPU Usage. I DID see a change in the graphics and my FPS went up, so all seems well here!

NOTE: AMD Opteron 170 (2 Ghz Dual Core) with AMD's Dual Core patch already applied.

I have the mac book pro and did not see any difference in the FPS if anying it seem to have fallen a little. Now I was testing in on the windows side at the time and have not on the Mac. I believe at the time there was something about the bootcamp setup did not having fully supported driver for the dual core.

Has anyone noticed that muliple thread mode uses a lot more cpu time, making other processor intensive programs like a voice to text program bog down?

I don't have any numbers but this seemed to be the case to me.

Umm...is this a pc client feature only? I couldn't find it in either the main or the first look Mac viewers. I'll go look again...

Which I did, and then I saw it

Duh, you're giving it free reign over your entire processor, it's going to SUCK IT DRY. There aren't any free CPU cycles left on a whole core to give other programs room to fluctuate in need, thus bogging them.

other non intensive programs work fine with it enabled. intenet explorer, media player, yahoo messenger...
when it is enabled sl will use as much as it can, but your system should take some away for other programs as needed. depends on your system as to how well it does this. you should make sure your bios and your processor drivers are up to date.

Wow, blistering barnacles! Now I'm getting consistantly high framerates where before I'd experienced max of 17FPS or so and now up to 27FPS with everything turned up O.O

Thank-you LL, made my day. Only a week after I upgraded my PC to dual core too!

I have to set my affinity to only 1 core other wise SL lags pretty bad. Does checking this option change that? Would I want to allow SL.exe to use both cores with this option enabled?

Ayane- Do you have an Intel or AMD Processor? If you have AMD, there is a patch on their website that will fix all the "Set Affinity" stuff so you don't have to do it anymore.

Not sure if Intel has the same problems?

Bolded key phrase. Because you'd essentially be running with no free cycles, you have to free them from one program and give them to another, which might not be a fast progress and you have to do it constantly. Running without SL look at the graph that the Task Manager has and watch your CPU ussage fluxuate, every time it goes up when running SL the system has to shuffle things around.
Haveing bios and drivers up to date might help, but there's probably bound to be some bogging.

AMD, And I thought that was a problem limited to SL. I will check this out tonight. Does the fact that I am running Vista factor into any of this?

Vista? Possible. There's been a few kinks in Vista working with stuff.

Well I had this problem with XP too, what I meant was is there anyone using Vista that has tried this AMD fix? If I can get out of the habbit of not having to set SL to use 1 core and try the toggle mentioned in this thread I would love to.

Where is this setting I have a AMD dual core with low FPS I would like to try it
thanks

Hmm, I think I've found where my FPS troubles are coming from. It seems that over one of the last few versions, rendering of spheres has become horrendously inefficient. I wear fairly complex armour built from cut spheres, it's not completely over-the-top, but still a fair few of them.
This has never been a problem before, the impact from wearing it has been minimal.

However, it now reduces rendering performance significantly (with multi-threaded on or off), if I take off all the armour pieces I get a good 30fps, but otherwise I'm stuck on 7fps. I used to get perfectly playable framerates wearing my armour before (otherwise I wouldn't wear it).
Annoying thing is that it happens even when the armour is hidden (ie I'm still wearing it but all prims are invisible) as SL still renders completely invisible objects

For your AMD Dual Core CPU's, go to AMD's Webpage. Find your Processor type: Athlon 64 X2, Opteron, etc. Then on that page look for the Link to "Utilities, Updates & Drivers".

That page will give you a list of stuff for your Processor, including a fix for Dual Cores.

2 worth installing (if this is your CPU):


AMD Dual-Core Optimizer (definitely THIS one!)

AMD Athlon™ 64/FX Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version (x86 and x64 exe) 1.3.2.16

I have an Opteron 170, but I still installed the Optimizer as well as their lil' "fix" on the Utilities page, near the bottom.

Seems to me other programs could do the same thing to SL.

Obviously SL doesn't get to hog all the processor time.

Well, technically, yes they do bog SL, but because it doesn't need all the power it has, the 1-5% loss on its side is not even noticable.