Second Life/The Ship

OpenGL OpenGL: User Software
1

I’m not sure what the problem is, but my computer will not render almost everything in Second Life, and will run 2-3 FPS in The Ship.
It is the Compaq Presario v2000, AMD Turion 64, with windows xp, but it is ATI’s Radeon xpress 200m. Is there anything I can do to fix this or am I stuck with trying to find a new video card that works? Thank you.

2

Have you updated your drivers?

https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

Some other useful info.

(Game updates and system requirements)
http://secondlife.com/community/support.php

(Radeon Xpress 200m)
http://www.ati.com/products/Radeonxpress200m/index.html

(Graphics hardware information)
http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/viewreport.php?report=1597

I’ve always been a little suspicious of notebooks, being a desktop man myself, but at a glance that one seems up to the challenge.

Cheers

3

Yes I’ve been all of those places and none of them help. I’ve also seen a few other people with the same problem, most notably:
http://forums.devshed.com/multimedia-hardware-107/ati-radeon-xpress-200m-second-life-316677.html

I haven’t updated my ATi driver, but seeing as the notebook is 6 weeks old I didn’t think I needed to.
I did, however, change it to a DNA-ATi driver last night seeing as the ATi one wasn’t working.
(DNA Drivers: http://www.dna-drivers.com/index.php?m=single&id=1314 )

It actually helped a little bit, but noticably. Still not enough to even think about playing the games, though.

Any other ideas? Thank you!

4

And now I’ve updated to ATI’s most recent driver but that is a year and a half old.

5

A couple of things:

  1. Make sure your PC is NOT running in power saving/stepped mode. This is a huge problem for gaming on laptops, because one instant you’re running at 2.4 Ghz, and the next…800 MHz. So make sure you have the latest drivers installed from AMD for the Turion 64 chip.

  2. Make sure you have the latest PCI Express drivers installed from Compaq. They will probably all be available as a massive download, so just download and install.

  3. Download Omega drivers, if they’re available. The Omega drivers are always 10-25% faster than stock ATI drivers.

  4. If 1, 2, and 3 don’t work, contact Compaq. If the laptop’s only 6 weeks old, it’s still under warranty, and there may be something wrong with it.

  5. Download an ATI overclocking tool. No ATI Mobile video card have “stock” speeds…ATI leaves this up to the laptop manufacturer. Step it up slowly, and never go too far. It won’t help tremendously, but it should speed it up a little.

Can’t think of anything else. I hope you get it/got it sorted out. :slight_smile: