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graphics solution caused it to run second life at almost 1 4 the speed something i personally found kind of alarming was the fact that our brand new quad core dell desktop didn t perform as well as my 2 year old dual core gateway notebook with a lower clock speed at the low quality setting although it did do a fair amount better at ultra quality my guess is that some of the computation heavy operations involved in the high quality graphics settings benefited from the extra cpu cores while the low quality settings weren t using all the power the cpu had to offer but i don t know why the dell would perform worse than the gateway at any setting the results were consistent though the dell was simply slower i will note that the dell seems to play world of warcraft about 15 20 fps faster than the gateway at comparable resolutions there s something about sl the dell just doesn t like apparently the dell is running vista which supposedly doesn t perform as well on games as windows xp but i don t think that alone accounts for the discrepancy with second life the single core systems all performed worse than the multiple core systems that had 3rd party graphics even though their cpus all had comparable clock speeds the single core systems also tended to have less ram than the others none of the computers in the test had less than 1gb of ram so the effects of memory aren t very pronounced in the results three of the bottom four computers only had 1gb but they had slower processors and worse graphics cards than the others too i will probably do a future article about getting the best performance out of second life but for now just know that while vista requires more ram than windows xp vista actually makes better use of available memory than any previous version of windows there are still a lot of people out there with 512mb or gasp 256mb of ram and i feel for those residents i really do notice that of the three fastest computers in the test the one with only 128mb video memory did fine at the low quality settings but terribly in comparison with the others at ultra quality this may be because ultra increases second life s draw distance which means the program displays things further off in the distance while the draw distance was low the display adapter s video memory was adequate to hold all the textures it needed to display on screen but once i bumped things up to ultra and more prims came into view the display adapter ran out of memory and had to start loading the extra textures from system memory slowing everything down buying recommendations who makes the best computers every major computer manufacturer makes desktops and laptops capable of playing second life just fine you should base your decisions on things such as reputation price features and aesthetics there are boutique shops like alienware and falcon that make super duper fast computers for super duper high prices but when you consider that any computer is going to start showing its age within the first year or so of ownership i just can t justify the expense of some of those places of course if it s a desktop you re after a savvy techie type can build her own system for less than it would cost to buy an equivalent system from dell or gateway or whatever doing it right is harder than most people seem to think however and i personally like having 24 hour tech support which is something i wouldn t have if i built my own what about apple the new intel based macs are not the fastest computers in the world but they re damn nice it seems that mac support for second life seems to lag behind pc support so if you re buying a computer mostly to play sl you re probably better off sticking to a cheaper faster windows based system even though i have no real problem with macs you really should not bother with any of the pre intel macs these days though the latest sl client versions don t seem to run very well on them from what i hear laptop or desktop unless you re the hardest of the hardcore gamer a good notebook is going to deliver all the performance you need in a portable convenient form factor anyone who says laptops aren t powerful enough for gaming has never used a powerful laptop a notebook with a wireless connection will connect to second life from anywhere in your house or even from starbucks or the airport i personally value this flexibility over anything else and i will never buy a desktop computer for my own personal use again the fact that all the technology of a laptop is crammed into such a tiny area means that notebooks are not very upgradeable in fact the only things you can normally upgrade on your system are memory and hard drive and wireless card often but that s normally not necessary the small size also results in a higher cost you can easily spend twice as much money getting a laptop as a desktop that meets or exceeds the same technical specifications get a desktop if you re more concerned about future proofing you can replace any component of a desktop for better parts as they become available and bigger models have plenty of room for expansion they also cost less than notebooks and are usually performance leaders the fastest desktop at any given time is going to be faster than the best performing notebook that s just how it works out laptop minimum requirements when choosing a notebook computer make sure that the computer you select meets or exceeds these recommendations any other options available from the manufacturer are irrelevant to gaming although i can promise you that a lot of the cruddy software they ll preload on your system is unnecessary and will steal memory and cpu cycles from your games until you clean up your computer a bit remember these are minimum recommendations if you can afford better go for it display the computer must have ati or nvidia graphics with at least 128mb of video ram 256mb is recommended as you won t be able to upgrade your video later on cpu choose an intel dual core cpu with a clock speed of at least 2 0ghz for the past couple of years intel processors have consistently delivered the best performance power efficiency and features if you re really strapped for cash and you find a super cheap amd based system go for it it won t be too much worse than an equivalent intel system ram for windows xp get at least 2gb ram for vista you ll see the best performance with 3gb less will be tolerable so long as you don t run any programs in the background and more than 3gb won t make a noticeable difference just yet hard disk if you can afford it pick at least a 7200rpm hard drive faster drives are usually smaller i wouldn t want to have a hard drive any smaller than 60gb 80gb or more is better wireless adapter pretty much all notebooks include wifi capability you want 802 11b g at a minimum 802 11a is kind of useless while the faster 802 11n is growing in popularity unless you know you need bluetooth or wimax capability you can pass on those options operating system even though i personally kind of hate vista and it still doesn t perform quite as well as windows xp any brand new computer is going to be designed for vista and support for it will improve over time if you can afford it get vista home ultimate edition because ultimate includes all of the media center features of the premium edition plus remote desktop which is one of the most useful home networking features microsoft has ever produced if you don t need remote desktop then vista home premium will suit you just fine extra power supply optional in order to conserve battery power notebooks automatically cut back on performance when they re not plugged in you will always get the most out of your laptop when it s plugged into a c so it s really handy to have an extra power supply for traveling or if you typically use your notebook in different rooms of the house your computer will come with one power supply and an extra one will probably cost about 50 usd more cooling pad optional 3d games make computers work hard and when computers work hard they heat up and when they heat up performance starts taking a hit when my gateway gets too hot second life performance gets very choppy and big black triangles start appearing all over the screen and then it locks up a cooling pad is a little platform that you set your notebook on that cools the bottom of the computer with some extra fans they draw extra power so they re another good argument for an extra power supply make sure to get one that matches the dimensions of your computer there are special cooling pads for wide screen notebooks for example these cost 20 50 usd desktop minimum requirements display same as for laptops no integrated graphics ati or nvidia only nvidia has been the performance leader these days and supposedly has better compatibility with vista with desktops you have a wider range of choices some motherboards support technologies like nvidia s sli which actually lets you link two video cards together making them act like one super fast display adapter all of your options here are out of scope for this article 256mb video memory minimum cpu intel dual core 2 2ghz minimum ram 2gb for xp 3 for vista hard disk here s another area where you have tons of options some systems have raid configurations which give you a choice of either super fast or super reliable storage while others offer standard sata drives which are similar to those in notebooks the standard speed for desktop drives these days is 10 000rpm power supply get the highest wattage power supply your computer can support the biggest fastest video cards use a huge amount of electricity and getting a heavy duty power supply from the start will help future proof your computer a bit cooling solution just like with notebooks the hotter your computer gets the worse your gaming experience will be there are many desktop cooling solutions available these days some better than others extended service plans every computer will come with at least 90 days service repair but all manufacturers i know of offer extended plans for a wide range of prices some plans actually cover in home support they will contract a local repairman in your area to come out and fix your problems others just offer phone support and parts replacement since i m a notebook user i expect my notebook to become basically obsolete within 3 or 4 years so i won t buy a service plan any longer than 3 years while i typically don t buy service plans for smaller things like ipods i have used my warranty plans on my computers several times so i feel they are a worthwhile if optional expense upgrading an existing system if you re not happy with your current system s performance you might be able to do something about it your chances are much better with an old desktop than with a notebook because there s not much you can replace on a notebook please keep this in mind though the typical expiration date on a desktop computer is about 5 years and for notebooks it s more like 3 or 4 if you re puttering about on a 6 year old system you might be better served saving your upgrading dollars for a new or used computer on ebay or craigslist it really depends on what you can afford and what your options are how do you know what you already have a lot of people simply know they have a slow computer they don t necessarily know anything about the individual components inside the case windows includes a useful tool called dxdiag the directx diagnostic tool which will give you most of the information you need these instructions were written for windows xp but should hold true on vista from your desktop click start and then click run type dxdiag in the open box and then click ok the system tab of the tool will tell you about your operating system how much memory you have and what kind of cpu you ve got in addition to its clock speed and the number of cores the display tab will tell you what kind of display adapter you ve got in addition to the amount of video memory you have please note that some integrated graphics solutions will actually report a positive number here for approx total memory but it s kind of a lie most if not all integrated graphics solutions steal memory from your system they don t have their own hard drive speed is very difficult to determine programmatically luckily most hard drives report their size and speed on a big black and white label on the top of the drive itself upgrading a laptop the only things you can do to improve performance on a laptop other than tweak your software and operating system settings for another article are to add more memory and replace the hard disk with a faster model you can do both for about 400 total your manufacturer will likely have upgrade parts for you but they won t have the best prices for memory go to crucial and for hard drives go to drive solutions they have those usb hard drive transfer kits there too both sites let you look up your computer model and make recommendations based on what your system will support upgrading a desktop while desktops offer more expandability they also require a bit more knowledge to upgrade and aren t always worth the effort the best single thing you can do to improve graphics performance on a desktop is to replace the display adapter or to install one to begin with if you were previously running with on board graphics if your system is really old it might have pci or agp graphics which is much slower than modern pci express graphics and also hard to find replacements for your best bet for pci or agp cards or any other computer parts really would be newegg also remember that the biggest and the best video cards require the most electricity the power supplies that come in most off the shelf computers are usually bare minimum in terms of what they can support make sure your power source can handle all your upgrades memory can be tricky to upgrade because some motherboards have weird requirements like maybe it will only accept 2 dimms at a time or maybe you have to use the dimm slots in a special order you also want to make sure you use the right memory for your system look your computer or motherboard up on crucial s site and that the dimms you have match in terms of specifications you can replace your hard drives or add additional ones but you ll need to know whether your drive uses ide sata or some other form of storage bus but if you currently are running second life with anything less than 2gb of ram you will see improvements with an upgrade it is possible to upgrade cpus but every generation of cpu requires a new generation of motherboards a five year old pc simply cannot support a modern day processor you will need to find either an old processor that fits your motherboard or be prepared to get a whole new board and processor which may mean upgrading other components final thoughts second life is a very demanding application and if you love it as much as i think you do considering how much time you ve just 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