Part 1-How to Speed up your PC for Second Life – shaneos howlett Reporting...

In this report we will take a look at how to speed up your experience within SL .

 You will get the best information possible from a trained computer technician that has a degree in information technology. This is the first of a 2 part series – the next will take a closer look at what type of computer you need for SL.

The SL Viewer program – How to upgrade and make significant performance modifications

First, make sure you are using the very lastest SL viewer program – the later versions can have speed improvements over the older versions you can download the latest version from here:

http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/

To reduce Bandwidth usage, disable the audio if you do not want or need to listen to music.

Streaming audio takes up bandwidth – if you turn off the music it will make your SL experience quicker you can disable the following two settings.

Click on Me then Preferences – then Sound & Media – and then un-tick Streaming Music

Click on Me then Preferences – then Sound & Media – and then un-tick Media

Another solution is to adjust your bandwidth settings for your internet connection

There is a bandwidth adjustment setting – you can change this depending on how fast or slow your internet connection is – it ranges from 100 KBPS up to 10,000 KBPS

If you are on a Wifi modem you can set it to 300 – 500 KBPS

If you are on ADSL-1 you can set it between 500 KBPS up to 5 KBPS

If you are on ADSL-2 you can set it between 1000 KBPS to to 10,000 KBPS

Have a faster / higher setting will mean that the SL viewe will download more data and you will be able to load your environment up quicker.

NOTE: If you have other programs running in the background that take up bandwidth like Yahoo Messenger / Skype then adjust your settings accordingly – for these you can lower the maximum bandwidth to the following.

If you have Wifi but programs in the background – set it to 300 – 500 KBPS

If you have ADSL1 with programs in the background set it to 500 KBPS to 2500 KBPS

If you have ADSL2 with programs in the background set it to 500 KBPS to 5000 KBPS

Next we take a look at the system cache.

The cache is a buffer – The SL viewer program uses the cache to pre-load some of your previously accessed areas – having a larger buffer will make your areas load quicker next time around and will give you a nicer SL experience.

To adjust the cache size click on Me – then Preferences – then Advanced – then edit the cache size change the cache size to the maximum amount of 9984 Mbs – you will need to make sure you have 9984 Mbs of free space on your hard drive before you can change this amount – if you have less than 9984 Mbs free space left – set the amount to 1024, 2048 or 4096 instead.

Let’s  take a look at the graphics settings

 This is one of the major settings within the SL program – set this too high and the viewer will slow down until you can almost not use it, while have the setting too low and the graphics will look really terrible.

The automatic settings work just fine for the most part – you can change the graphics performance depending on how fast your computer is – generally the best performance settings are between Mid to High with Ultra being reserved for really high end I7 computer systems with dedicated graphic cards.

There are a lot of small changes you can do to your computer to make sure SL runs at the best performance possible – do not have too many TSR's loaded (Terminate and Stay Resident) background programs like Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft Messenger and the like.

Follow the above settings and you will be well on your way to experiencing a faster and more pleasurable experience within Second Life.