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Damn Portable 3d!
May. 31st, 2007 11:47 pmI want a laptop that will run Second Life.
When Rachel bought her new laptop (for the same reason, to run SL), I inherited the old one. To be fair, it's a great laptop. 1.8ghz Athlon-M 2500+, 512mb of ram, etc.. Does everything I want or need it to (well, it can't burn DVDs, but then, I don't really -need- it to.) The only thing is that it's got an older Radeon IGP 320m chipset.
Technically, SL is supposed to run on Radeons. Except somehow the older IGP stuff doesn't qualify. Although, what gets me is that SL will open, will let me log in, let me enter the world, and render for about 1-5 minutes. Then it just freezes and locks up. So what I don't understand is that somehow the graphics set is enough to run the client for a little while, but then something kills it. I want to know what's killing it. I want to know why, if I can run it for that 1-5 minutes and have everything work until it freezes, why they can't give us options to scale back texture rendering, etc. I've turned everything as low as I can go. I accessed the debug menus and try turning off the rendering of certain unnecessary items (sky, clouds, etc.).
I'm frustrated that like so many other products, Linden Labs doesn't feel the need to try to work to make their program accessible to the thousands upon thousands of people who didn't get a laptop with a specific Nvidia or ATI card (especially when you have to HUNT those out special, 99% of laptops come with integrated chipsets not designed for 3d) and that the only answer is, "Oh, we don't support that. Get a new laptop."
Umm. no. I don't -want- to get a new laptop. I want it to work with what I have, especially as I've proved I have the capability of doing so. I'm willing to live with the horrible framerate, I'm willing to live with crappy graphics, just make it able to work with lower-end equipment instead of telling us to buy a new laptop!
That being said, I'm looking at used laptops. I've found older Thinkpad t30's and t40's that have Radeon 7500's that I -think- will run SL that I can get for $400 or less. I don't want to have to sell Rach's old laptop to "trade over," But again, it seems that if your graphics are unsupported for 3d, that that's your only option in the laptop world.
I know I've got a lot of techie friends who read this -- if you've got any suggestions or ideas where I can get a cheap laptop that has Nvidia or ATI graphics I'm all ears.. otherwise, I'm gonna keep trolling ebay and see what happens.
When Rachel bought her new laptop (for the same reason, to run SL), I inherited the old one. To be fair, it's a great laptop. 1.8ghz Athlon-M 2500+, 512mb of ram, etc.. Does everything I want or need it to (well, it can't burn DVDs, but then, I don't really -need- it to.) The only thing is that it's got an older Radeon IGP 320m chipset.
Technically, SL is supposed to run on Radeons. Except somehow the older IGP stuff doesn't qualify. Although, what gets me is that SL will open, will let me log in, let me enter the world, and render for about 1-5 minutes. Then it just freezes and locks up. So what I don't understand is that somehow the graphics set is enough to run the client for a little while, but then something kills it. I want to know what's killing it. I want to know why, if I can run it for that 1-5 minutes and have everything work until it freezes, why they can't give us options to scale back texture rendering, etc. I've turned everything as low as I can go. I accessed the debug menus and try turning off the rendering of certain unnecessary items (sky, clouds, etc.).
I'm frustrated that like so many other products, Linden Labs doesn't feel the need to try to work to make their program accessible to the thousands upon thousands of people who didn't get a laptop with a specific Nvidia or ATI card (especially when you have to HUNT those out special, 99% of laptops come with integrated chipsets not designed for 3d) and that the only answer is, "Oh, we don't support that. Get a new laptop."
Umm. no. I don't -want- to get a new laptop. I want it to work with what I have, especially as I've proved I have the capability of doing so. I'm willing to live with the horrible framerate, I'm willing to live with crappy graphics, just make it able to work with lower-end equipment instead of telling us to buy a new laptop!
That being said, I'm looking at used laptops. I've found older Thinkpad t30's and t40's that have Radeon 7500's that I -think- will run SL that I can get for $400 or less. I don't want to have to sell Rach's old laptop to "trade over," But again, it seems that if your graphics are unsupported for 3d, that that's your only option in the laptop world.
I know I've got a lot of techie friends who read this -- if you've got any suggestions or ideas where I can get a cheap laptop that has Nvidia or ATI graphics I'm all ears.. otherwise, I'm gonna keep trolling ebay and see what happens.
