Second Life - CPU or GPU, which is more important

[jmwpom3]

Hey all,
For starters, I don't play this game I'm just trying to trouble shoot for a family member. My question is, does anyone know what the most limiting factors in that game are? Like, if I was to upgrade where would I start? (specifically for Second Life, not in general...cuz this game don't funtion like anything else I've messed with) I can't seem to locate it. Like when BF2 came out it took a bit to figure out that the game really needed 2g of ram to run right on most machines. So, what's the magic trick with this game?

So, the system has:

2.8g pentium d (540? I think)
2g ram (one stick patriot and one ??? some generic ram.. I know but humor me. I could remove the other stick and leave the patriot but trying to get max memory for $0 cost)
8500 512 gpu

So, if anyone has experience with this technically enigmatic game and it's needed resources, I'd really appreciate the help. Please restrain from posting the overly obvious answers...

-"old processor, upgrade it (which means MB upgrade in this case and I'm not sure it would matter in this case)
-"take out the value ram and leave the patriot or match the second slot w/ another patriot stick. (I aggree, but will it FIX THE GAME ISSUES?)
- "8500? why not a 4850 or 9800, etc?" (sure, if that is what the game needs to operate)

Just keep in mind I'm trying to find out what this game taxes the most and in wht order... GPU, then Mem, then Cpu, ... etc. Imagine I don't have a pc and I want to know where to put my money to build a box for this game specifically. That's kind of what I'm looking for.

To answer the question, "What exactly is going wrong with the game now?"
~Too much and too random to get into. I'm looking for a general, "this usually fixes the bsod and crashes/freezes in Second Life..."


Thanks in advance for humoring me. This stupid game is driving me insane. We're on system number 4 I think and these machines would play COD4 and the like but not this silly net app. I've actually had to downgrade machines to get them to run it. How f@#$@# retarded is that? My last reccomendation to her was, "find a new damn game!"

Ok, deep breaths. I leave you to it.

 

[SunnyD]

GPU in this case, definitely.

 

[jmwpom3]

You familiar with the game? Or just in general? I got that card originally becuase it happened to be on their reccomended list.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: jmwpom3
You familiar with the game? Or just in general? I got that card originally becuase it happened to be on their reccomended list.

Both. TBH, the entire system needs to be upgraded, but that video card is ancient.

 

[dguy6789]

The game never really runs well on any hardware. It is more internet bandwidth limited than anything. If it can't download something fast enough, fps suffers. Rate of download is mostly limited to the servers and not your connection either. It's a horribly buggy game. A new processor probably won't help but a new graphics card might help a little bit. Even with a state of the art computer though, you will never come close to achieving a perfect experience in second life. The concept is great, the implementation is horrible.

 

[minmaster]

yeah, time for a new system. just upgrading gpu won't help. gpu will be bottlenecked by the cpu. don't waste any more money on the old rig and start new.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I agree with SunnyD about the video card. It is old and was weak to begin with.

When you say other systems will play COD4 but not this, can you play COD online?
What kind of internet connection do you have, and are you playing through a router??
If the game is slow or hard to get into, it could be either your internet is slow or has too much traffic or the server is too busy. This shouldnt cause a BSOD though.

Have to say I have never played this game, but I have had experienced problems with online play due to slow internet, busy server, etc.

 

[TheKub]

According to the recommended specs that system meets or exceeds their recommendations. That "game" just blows performance wise.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: TheKub
According to the recommended specs that system meets or exceeds their recommendations. That "game" just blows performance wise.

Well honestly - the more video ram and system ram your machine has, the better it runs. But all in all, even those specs say an 8500 is MINIMUM requirement. Upgrade that thing ASAP.

 

[BassBomb]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: TheKub
According to the recommended specs that system meets or exceeds their recommendations. That "game" just blows performance wise.

Well honestly - the more video ram and system ram your machine has, the better it runs. But all in all, even those specs say an 8500 is MINIMUM requirement. Upgrade that thing ASAP.

That depends whether hes got a Radeon 8500 or a GeForce 8500 (which would not be ancient)

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: BassBomb

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: TheKub
According to the recommended specs that system meets or exceeds their recommendations. That "game" just blows performance wise.

Well honestly - the more video ram and system ram your machine has, the better it runs. But all in all, even those specs say an 8500 is MINIMUM requirement. Upgrade that thing ASAP.

That depends whether hes got a Radeon 8500 or a GeForce 8500 (which would not be ancient)

Good catch, I assumed Radeon. I forgot there even was a nvidia 8500 card (which isn't decent anyway, but should run better than a radeon 8500).

 

[Fox5]

I'm going to say cpu limited. The game is nothing special graphics wise (though it seems they've improved recently), and probably relies on cpu rather than shaders to do graphical effects. In general, OpenGL is a bit more cpu focused anyway.

I dunno though, both the cpu and gpu are among the slowest things on the market atm.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: BassBomb

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: TheKub
According to the recommended specs that system meets or exceeds their recommendations. That "game" just blows performance wise.

Well honestly - the more video ram and system ram your machine has, the better it runs. But all in all, even those specs say an 8500 is MINIMUM requirement. Upgrade that thing ASAP.

That depends whether hes got a Radeon 8500 or a GeForce 8500 (which would not be ancient)

Good catch, I assumed Radeon. I forgot there even was a nvidia 8500 card (which isn't decent anyway, but should run better than a radeon 8500).

The OP said 8500 512, which I assumed meant a 512MB 8500GT (since there's no such thing as a 512MB Radeon 8500).

 

[jmwpom3]

Ok, here we go:

It's a GeForce 8500 512m.

Upgrading the system not an option, they have no $$ (just trying to fix the bsod and occasoional artifacts)

I have played COD4 online with this internet connetion (different Machine) and BF2 and both very well. So, I don't think it's a bandwidth issue.

What's frustrating to me is, in that same house, there's a $300 e-machines system that plays the game fine with just some xtra ram and a 9500gt (GeForce). There's also an am2 system with a 7950 1g and a 240 regor maybe? (not sure, but it's one of the less expensive AMD cpus)

In fact, while I'm working the issue out and trying to get her desktop to play the dumb game, she's playing it fine on her mom's dell laptop. This isn't an xps, it's the most cost effective they could get with no upgraded video and mabye 1g ram. Last year cost from Dell of $800. Nothing extreme.

I'm starting to rework the cooling issue tonight. Definately has a heat problem. It idles around 60C (yes, I said 60) I already cleaned the old vid drivers out and updated those. Because of the temps I'm going to play with the system over the next couple days and see if that's the issue. I does hit around 70C when playing the game... and I don't usually like that number. We'll see if maybe the fans aren't working or placed incorrectly and I'll prolly reseat the cpu sink/fan.

Thanks for the help. If you've got any other ideas besides "new system', I'd be glad to hear 'em. Believe me, that was my first thought, but she's family so I'm trying to save a dying system for this one app that my sister in law lives on, literally.
Edit - If I was to go new syetem, i'd probably just buy her another one of those e-machines and drop a 9500gt in there and call it fixed. I just don't want to do that.

Thanks.

 

[jmwpom3]

Fox5,

Thanks for that. THat's the kind of info I was looking for. If I can't make this work I'd like to be able to tell her... look, let me upgrade the MB, CPU etc to this... whatever... and then it should work. I just don't want to spend her money on cr4p that may not change anything.

So, that leaves me with the same question I had from earlier with SunnyD: Are you speaking from experience with this game and what it needs? Or just talking about general theory? It sounds like the latter. And this game doesn't follow normal, logical patterns. Makes no sense whatsoever. ( I had to remove a Readon 3850 512mb and replace with an old 6800 ultra and it worked with the older card and not the new one.)

I really don't get the whole thing. Last time I had a game that gave me small issues, I just let it go. I bought some fps game and it was crashing every time I would be close to death it would just die. I uninstalled and tried again. Same issue.... IN THE TRASH. PERIOD. They need to make this a console game and be done with it.

Anyway, thx for the help. I'll post more.... whenever I get more.

 

[jmwpom3]

For anyone interested, here was the solution:

In the end it was that stupid idea to put that second stick of old kingston value ram in with the new stick of Patriot 667 ddr2 @ 5-5-5-15 ram. This compounded by the extremely out of date nforce4 board by foxconn which was lacking dual core support. Add to that that every single fan in the case was pulling air in other than the power supply and the front case fan which was DOA! .... dumb a$$'s @ best buy

So, here's what I ended up with after $150 total upgrade cost along with a few more grey hairs and a few less all the way around:

1- gigabyte p43-ud3l MB
1- coolermaster hyper tx3 cooler w/ push/pull 92mm fans
1- new intake 120mm fan on the front
1- cardslot fan by thermaltake that did a decent job for 14.99
+ some arctic silver 5 and cable ties.
- Rerouted all the cabling to allow for some airflow and make hte case appear that the person who assembled it actually gave a $h!t.

End result:

GB P43-UD3L MB w/ that pentium D 820 2.8ghz perfectly stable in prime95 at 3.333 ghz (moderate OC), w/ just the 1G of patriot ram @ 5-5-5-15-1t, the 3 new fans, and DITCHED the shroud alltogether but left the side fan as an intake blowing directly down on the TX3. Front fan blowing in, 2 60mm case fans blowing out hte back along with the T1 from Thermaltake and the PSU.
And perhaps most importantly, we're now fully upgradable to a C2D or Q in the future and up to 8G of ddr2 1200.

Game runs stable. Machine now idles at ~38-40C and under full load between 55C-59C.

I still don't like how quickly that dumb game is to push everything to high 50's,, but no more BSOD or artifacts in the graphics even at 1440 x 900.

Thanks for all the replies/suggestiongs. And peopele, please, please, PLEASE stop playing this silly game or start a donation site to get the code reworked so it's not so unbelievably unpredictable and randomly incompatible with everything.

Thank you.