Tweaks
This forum is dedicated to solving the phenomenon of Second Life CPU and GPU utilization mysteries. For instance, how in the name of Frankenstein is it that whenever I play Second Life, my CPU cores are thrashed out yet my GPU is practically not even being used? If you or anyone you know can solve this amazing mystery, post your insight right here…in The Bot Zone.
Comments
Hi Little Lost Linden,
Your CPU usage seems to be normal with 29% usage — usually SL uses a lot more than that. As for the GPU the Catalyst Control Center is correct as it shows you the `Overdrive` capacity of your Graphic Card – which means how much it has been `overclocked´. Now if you really want to see what SL takes from both your Video cards, then you will need a tool such as CPU-Z. I am sure SL will make your Video cards to work at full usage = Clocks Core at 850MHz and Memory at 2x 1200MHz.
Hey Steve. Thanks for the update.
The thing is, I wasn’t overclocking, the little key was still in place as you can see from the photo (default settings). And, the indicators on that screen still all work, even though I’m not overclocking it. And I can get the Activity indicator to go up to about 40% when running Second Life, but not much higher and not sustained. I would think I should be able to get it to go up to 80% or so but it usually never gets up that high. Usually the 4 cores of a Q6600 spike up way past 29% when there is heavy graphic activity with Second Life, instead of the GPU going up anywhere near it’s limits.
I’m going to be doing some more tests with Viewer 2.x and I’ll post some more snapshots soon as well as some comparisons to other games, but for the most part, it still seems like SL uses way too much CPU and not enough GPU. I’m not sure if that makes sense but it is what I have been noticing for over 3 years now with different combos of hardware. When I upgrade from an HD3870 to an HD3850, I was lucky to get an additional 2 to 4 fps improvement.
With most other games, I would see at least 30 extra fps in the same resolutions. Something just doesn’t seem quite right and I’ve seen this same scenario on many forums before. I’m hoping to find some locations\forums where people are really pushing SL to the limits and posting CPU\GPU performance, etc. but I never really found many for the standard SL viewer. Do you happen to know of any?
Yes, I know you were not overclocking it. The screen you´ve posted is where ATI Radeon does a tweak to overclock the video card, tough it doesn´t work as it should.
Anyway, if you are using just 40% of your graphic card while runing SL, then you are lucky! You have 2 video cards in crossfire, eh?
There is a thread at SL Blog (http://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/18876?tstart=0) where people started to talk about video cards, but at some point it turned to a benchmark discussiion, and many posted their results while in SL at a given location, with the same graphics settings, etc.
Hey Steve.
Yeah, ATI Crossfire or Nvidia SLI is the way to go for most PC games.
Thanks for the thread, it confirms the same thing I have been witnessing with SL’s performance problems. Most of the users on the thread have run into the same exact thing I have with SL using too much CPU and not enough GPU. Here is a post from the thread you sent. I think it might just take a while for SL to reverse this trend of not using enough GPU and using too much CPU. I keep holding out for it. Maybe some day.
“Anyway, if you are using just 40% of your graphic card while runing SL, then you are lucky!”
I guess you could call it luck, but it really is very wasteful in a sense. My video card should be using much more than 40% and giving me a much more visual experience instead of capping out at such a low percentage, but because SL doesn’t utilize a GPU as it should, I am basically wasting the extra performance the video card could be giving me, and that performance it does give me, with any other game, except SL.
This post is pretty much spot on in terms of CPU and GPU performance evaluations. Very good forum thread indeed. I’ll have to start posting there as well.
May 12, 2010 6:10 PM in response to: DMC Zsigmond
Re: Has anyone tried SL with the new Nvidia 470-480 cards? SL has always been CPU/memory dependant with the power of the video card falling in second. A fast CPU with oodles of fast memory but a lower end video card will perform significantly better than an older/slower CPU and cramped, slow memory coupled with the fastest video card. In other words, if you have a super fast CPU with 8 gigs of memory and a 260GTX it may not make sense to buy a 480 GTX just for SL. An 8600 GTS yes, definitely. A 9800 GTX? Probably not. A 260-285 GTX, no.
I think the problem with SL is that it is not multi-core CPU compatible — it is multi-thread tough.
Speaking of multi cores, I sure wish the Hexacore’s would come down in price (Intel version). $900 for a proc is too much.
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