"Should I upgrade to a more powerful computer and video card?" This is a question that most Second Life members ask at one time or another. The answer isn't always easy to come by. This writer has just finished rebuilding another Second Life member's Dell Dimension and took this opportunity to compare its performance in Second Life to his own custom computer. There wasn't time for thorough testing; this is simply a quick test of older and newer systems and how they perform in two ways: visual quality and rezzing time.
The Dell is a 4 year old Dimension 4700, with an Intel 2.8ghz single core, 2.5gb RAM, Windows XP Pro, and an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 512gb video card. The other computer is a custom computer that this writer assembled himself for doing presentations to groups about Second Life. It has an Intel 3.0ghz dual core CPU, 8gb RAM, Windows 7 Pro, and a Zotac NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 1gb video card. All tests were run using the standard Second Life viewer, with Second Life environment set to noon, and visual comparisons were made using a Samsung 24" monitor.
My custom computer is considerably more powerful than the Dell in three crucial ways: video card, memory, and processor. The ATI Radeon 1650 is an older generation video card than the NVIDIA 9500GT in the custom computer.
The first picture shows a scene generated by the custom computer and the second picture is the same scene generated by the Dell. The differences are negligible, even in the full size .png originals. The main difference is in the green landscape texture, which is somewhat more pronounced in the custom computer than in the Dell. This writer was surprised at how little difference there was in the scene, even when viewed on a 24" monitor.
These two pictures were made with Second Life graphics set to their maximum settings, including Ultra and Custom, lighting set to nearby local lights, Anisotropic Filtering enabled, and Antialiasing set to 16x. The only setting not set was the hardware option Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects, which was not set for either test because it caused the older video card in the Dell to generate a fractured image.
If rezzing time is not taken into consideration, the two computers functioned almost identically well, despite one of them being significantly more powerful.
As impressive as it is that an older generation video card and less powerful computer could images that look as good in Second Life as on a newer and more powerful system, it's not very meaningful in everyday use. Rezzing time is a bigger problem in Second Life than video quality, and this is where the older system falls down. The third picture, of a Christmas scene, had many lights and details.
The difference in rezzing time is significant. The custom computer rezzed this scene completely in one minute forty seconds. The less powerful Dell took much longer, five and a half minutes, and even then the scene had elements that had not completely rezzed.
Similar but more subjective results were observed during a 23 minute flying carpet ride over a recreation of Moorish Spain in the Al Andalus sim. Using two computers and two side-by-side monitors, two avatars rode the magic carpet while this writer observed differences in how quickly objects rezzed as the carpet flew past them. Objects rezzed considerably faster with the more powerful computer system, though the older system did surprisingly well.
Second Life members can ride the flying carpet by teleporting to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Al%20Andalus%20Alhambra/60/151/47.
Although the older, slower system can generate graphics that are the equal of the newer, more powerful system, rezzing time makes using higher graphics settings an impractical choice on the older system. No one wants to wait more than five minutes for a scene to rez.
This picture and the next show what the two systems look like at the default Second Life graphics setting for the older system, at the "Mid" level, with all default settings and no hardware options enabled. At this setting, rezzing times are reasonable, and once again the two systems generated equivalent quality graphics, but the draw distance is much shorter.
This picture was created on the custom computer.
This picture was generated on the Dell. At these settings, the picture isn't quite as good as on the custom computer, but is acceptable. The main problem on both computers is the reduced draw distance at this graphics setting.
The conclusion this writer reached was that if you aren't moving around a lot, the older system will work quite satisfactorily, even at fairly high graphics settings. However your rez times will be a lot longer for the older system, and to bring rez times down to an acceptable level, you'll need to use lower graphics settings and shorter draw distances.
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All photographs in this report are by ©2009 by Erik Gordon Bainbridge. All rights reserved.
Comments
OR, they could spend alot less money, $299, to get a PS3 and fee access to the Playstation Network and go to Playstation Home to walk around as an avatar.
Or they could stick with the computer and get the most out of their money!
Apollo, any thoughts on the visualizations mac v pc?
Rose, I use a PC and although I've used Macs, I've never used one for graphics, so I don't have an opinion. I build my own desktop PCs and I use my laptop primarily for writing, so I've never had much incentive to buy a Mac.
Apollo is right about the advantages of a computer with more bites in the hard drive, memory, and graphics card. My experience in buying a new computer system (with advice from a Web Wizzard friend) has been the startling. My virtual world experience has been 1000% better--no exageration.
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