Overall performance due to PBR
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CatalinaHunter Resident
I have an 8 core Intel i7-9700K CPU, 32 GB RAM and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GPU.
Not a bad PC setup. Sure, a few years old, but still good.
I can play loads of games on Ultra, do my 3D mesh building and Photoshop editing, and make and upload videos with ease. SL up to now has been fine, using Firestorm. I tried the new LL viewer over the past couple weeks, and installed the new Firestorm view yesterday.
I have turned off mirrors, and set the graphics to the lowest possible settings.
My PC has crashed 3 times, and when it is not crashing, the GPU is running so hot I can cook my fried eggs and bacon on it. When SL is open, the fans all ramp up to max even on these low graphics settings.
This is nuts.
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Kyle Linden
needs info
Hello CatalinaHunter and everyone else following this issue,
Thank you for your patience while we urgently fix the bugs that have impacted viewer performance. Firestorm inherited these issues from our code too and are pulling our fixes in as quickly as they can.
We did address these issues in our blog here https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15924-an-update-on-second-life-performance-enhancements/ and would hope that you may try out the new builds and let us know if your performance is coming back up.
Thank you
CatalinaHunter Resident
Hi Kyle, thanks for your reply. As I mentioned before, I solved the issue for myself by buying a new 1,200 Euro Graphics card. My old RTX2070 was fine before, but the PC crashed when the PBR viewers (LL viewer and Firestorm) were released. A new RTX4080-S solved the problem. A pity it had to cost so much to do that. I've seen quite a few friends drop off SL in the past couple of months due to the PBR update. As a builder, I now have to build for both PBR and non-PBR, which is somewhat of a pain, as I now know, almost half the SL population is not keen on upgrading to PBR.
Kyle Linden
needs info
Hello CatalinaHunter and everyone else following this issue,
Thank you for your patience while we urgently fix the bugs that have impacted viewer performance. Firestorm inherited these issues from our code too and are pulling our fixes in as quickly as they can.
We did address these issues in our blog here https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15924-an-update-on-second-life-performance-enhancements/ and would hope that you may try out the new builds and let us know if your performance is coming back up.
Thank you
FabianaCastello Resident
Kyle Linden I bought a new and powerful gamer lap top just to stay in SL, and was working great with the past PBR viewer (SL and FS), but not with this second one LOL really this is super crazy and frustrating, my FPS go down again, this time not so low, just by the 25% or 30% this time. Also some friends that are not able to get a better PC or Laptops are now out from SL and that is so sad.
Maeve Balfour
Have you disabled Ambient Occlusion? That is a pretty massive hit on the graphics card, especially if you have LODfactor set to maximum and long draw distances.
The Firestorm PBR viewer is a hopeless mess loading textures (I'd been using their PBR beta for the past half year until recently).
I switched over to Kokua and Alchemy and textures load up fine in those viewers.
(In Alchemy I have to use the vsync option to cap my framerates due to their framerate limiter being buggy for the moment).
Jenni Darkwatch
The biggest impact should be disabling mirrors and limiting FPS or using vsync (if your monitor doesn't have super high refresh rates). I think on Windows you can also limit FPS for SL via the nVidia control panel.
Cube Republic
Yeah this is a problem I'm coming across more and more. The Dell XPS 8950, although coming with a gaming card isn't really set up to cool said hardware if I'm seeing the correct case on the internet. Sticking a 3090 into this case probably wasn't a good idea. Furthermore the cooling included for a CPU will have a hard time when on load as SL is utilising more of the cores now.
Dana Enyo
...and I'll bet you have air conditioning! I live in a tropical zone and my room temperature is typically in the upper 80s (You get used to it.) So my fans run a lot, but the CPU and GPU report temperatures well within limits.
I have to ask something obvious: do you ever clean the inside of your PC? If the thing has dust everywhere inside, nothing will cool as it should. We do that twice a year around here to get the salt (from our air) out, but you might be grossed out by the dust that builds up inside. SL aside, it's good PC hygiene.
Cynos3D Resident
Your 3090 isn't going to burn down from running SL, i'd be more concerned about potential faulty power cables if you have one of those cards with the 12 pin connectors than the GPU''s actual temperatures, there are safety measures in place to throttle it in case the heat goes above 95'C
If your GPU hasn't given you any issues before on other games SL isn't what's going to cause any trouble.
SL Feedback
Merged in a post from Raina Anatra:
Title: Computer Fan Racing after PBR update
Details: I have a Dell XPS 8950 gaming pc with 65GB of ram and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. After updating both on the second life viewer and Firestorm, my computer's fan races like mad unless I limit the frame rate to 21 and turn off mirroring, transparent water and other settings in that area--presumably all the new improvements. Even on my homestead sim, a lot of the textures don't fully rez, even after I stand right next to the object. I've taken the steps recommended like whitelisting and limiting VRAM. I see no explanation for how to best limit texture sizes. My computer is what I use for my business, so burning it out with a hot-running fan is not an option. I've been in Second Life for 16 years, and I'm hoping to continue.
CatalinaHunter Resident
Hi Dan, and anyone else following this.
I solved the issue of the overall performance of SL due to PBR.
I did this by buying a new Geoforce RTX 4080-S Graphics card. This cost me about 1200 Euros.
My old Geoforce RTX 2070 just didn't cut it.
Maybe you need to update the minimum requirements for running SL.
As I make a living building boats and planes and selling them in SL, I see this as a cost of business, so I can justify it. But it is quite a lot to shell out just to have the same performance that I did before PBR was let loose on all the residents. I don't recall speaking to anyone who really wanted it.
Alex Bader
Hi Catalina. Sorry to hear you had problems. But just to provide a different experience for anyone interested - I just sent my i9 RTX4090 PC back to get the CPU replaced (Intel faults) and have been working on my old i7 GTX1080 (slightly less performance than your RTX2070). I've noticed no significant drop in viewer performace or stability. PBR runs just fine at the same settings. This is on my private sim where I have a tonne of 2K PBR objects flying around in test mode. AND I'm using my newer 4K monitor. So I'm very happy to report PBR is working well on my 6 year old machine. For me, PBR has been an absolute joy and is enabling me to make products for SL that I have dreamed of for years! Finally I can make SL products at a similar quality to other more modern platforms I have worked with. And I know from my sales that there is a high demand for PBR products. Anyways... I hope you get things settled down soon.
Dan Linden
Hi CatalinaHunter.
We've just released the Atlasaurus RC viewer that has some fixes related to performance. It's available on https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer.html. Please let us know if this improves the framerate for you.
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