lag hoodoo 9: hardware

Before we get started on the main issue of hardware, a couple of things I've read and discussed with others are worth mentioning.

Zauber Paracelsus, whom I don't know from Adam, published a blog article titled 'Reducing Your Lag!!!' that is worth your reading. While much of what he covers I have already mentioned, he did make one statement about the Maximum Bandwidth setting (Preferences->Network) which made me go back and test a bit: 'Put it below 500 and you'll see a huge performance boost.' I played around with it, and found that, on my system, 500 seemed to give me the best results. It wasn't a huge change, only three or four FPS, but that can make a big difference in feel on an otherwise laggy system. Probably the best setting for your system will depend on your particular network, so experiment with it a bit.

Second, especially if you have a Windows system from a major vendor such as Dell or HP, you may have a lot of 'crapware' being loaded on start up on your system. It's worth taking a look on the Task Manager to see what all may be running on your system that you are not aware of. Take a look at this ZDNet blog entry for more details on how to deal with this.

As you work on reducing lag in your virtual world experience, it's important to remember that you can only do so much if your hardware is not up to the task. Just as a tune up, as important as it is, will not make a Hyunadi perform like a Ferrari, so insufficiently powerful computer hardware cannot perform beyond its limits. Obviously, if money is no object, you can buy a $5000 gaming system and very likely dramatically reduce your lag issues, at least those on the client side. I will not go into huge detail as to how to purchase or build such a system, but you can take a look at the Tom's Hardware Build Your Own website for lots of information on that.

However, many of us do not have that sort of cash ready to spend on such a system. There are strategic upgrades that can be made to maximise whatever money is available for hardware improvement. I do not intend to write an in-depth article on hardware upgrading, but I will touch on the areas most likely to affect the performance of a virtual world viewer. I recommend that you take a look at the vast amount of information available on the Tom's Hardware website.

The key to hardware optimisation is in discovering the bottleneck, and there is generally a bottleneck. With 3d VW viewers, the most likely culprits are GPU (graphics processing unit, the heart of your graphics card), CPU, and RAM (memory). There could also be hard disk, bus, or network speed issues. CPU and RAM are fairly easily checked using a monitoring application, such as the Windows Task Manager, the Mac OS X Activity Manager, or the Linux "top" command. These tools can quickly show you, among other things, if your CPU is being utilised at 100% on an ongoing basis, or if your RAM is being overtaxed. On Windows, for instance, select the Performance tab. If one or more of the CPU Usage History is remaining at 100%, or the Physical Memory Usage History is remaining near 100%, the system has a bottleneck in the affected area.

Memory is usually a fairly easy and not terribly expensive upgrade, and if your system has less than 1 GB, you should almost certainly upgrade it. CPU is usually a more complex upgrade, and may require a motherboard replacement, at which point it may make more sense to consider a replacement system. Network speed is usually a function of what your ISP is providing you, though there can be local network issues that cause loss of information and slow down overall performance.

For GPU performance, take a look at the graphics card installed in your system, and compare it to the Second Life recommendations, which will generally be applicable to viewers for Opensim-based grids as well. If you upgrade your GPU, ensure that your power supply is adequately rated for the demands of your system. Typically the specifications for a graphics card will specify a minimum recommended power supply wattage.

Next week, I will wrap up this serious with a review in the form of a quick checklist of things you can do to reduce lag. Until then, happy avataring!