Second Life Viewer Benchmarks Part Deux – Macbook Pro
I have run another set of benchmarks running the Second Life™ viewer on my Apple Macbook Pro™ under both Microsoft Windows XP™ and OS X.
Hardware/Network Environment:
- Apple Macbook Pro with Core 2 Duo processor at 2.4GHZ (Santa Rosa)
- 2GB of Ram
- Nvidia GeForce™ 8600M GT w/256MB
- (1) 150GB 5400RPM SATA drive
- Gigabit Ethernet connection
- Internet connection via Verizon FIOS 50Mbps/15Mbps (bridged business class w/static IPs)
Operating Systems (Dual Boot using Boot camp – each OS in seperate partition on same drive):
- OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) w/all updates as of 13-May-2008
- Windows XP w/SP2 32-bit and all updates as of 13-May-2008
- Boot camp drivers upgraded to Version 2.1
- Nvidia driver version 6.14.11.6763 (from Boot camp)
Second Life Viewer:
- Second Life Release Candidate 1.20.6 (86925)
- All testing done in full screen mode
- Settings:
- Maximum Bandwidth: 1500 kbps
- Disk Cache Size: 1000 MB
- Disk Cache Location: <same partition as OS Boot>
- Graphics: <clicked Recommended Settings – no changes otherwise>
- Voice chat: Not enabled
Testing methodolgy:
- Teleported to 8 distinct locations in-world w/varying object/texture views
- Stood in same position (via landmark) at each location and faced a predetermined direction
- Monitored Statistics window to wait for network utilization to drop to approximately 20-50kbps to indicate texture/object downloads were complete
- Ensured that no other avatars were in the field of view when noting fps numbers
- All tests were completed within 30 minutes of each other
FPS Results:
| Location | FPS under OS X | FPS Under Windows XP |
| 1 | 30-32 | 53-56 |
| 2 | 19-21 | 15-16 |
| 3 | 41-43 | 53-57 |
| 4 | 34-36 | 47-50 |
| 5 | 34-36 | 48-53 |
| 6 | 50 | 56 |
| 7 | 15-16 | 15-16 |
| 8 | 30 | 56 |
These results are still fairly consistent (though slightly less profound) with the Mac Pro results – in almost all cases the Windows XP environment/drivers outperformed the OS X environment.
Virtual Remembrance Day
On April 17, 2008 some residents of the virtual world of Second Life™ (SL) put together a Day of Remembrance to celebrate the lives of their friends in the virtual world who had died in real life. The event was very well organized and seemed to be well attended by a few thousand people that passed in and out of the regions throughout the day. There were a number of live performers and DJs that utilized the ability to stream audio into the virutal world to entertain the crowds that gathered. In the early morning I had the pleasure of dropping in on a group of live musicians located somewhere in Asia. Various DJs played music throughout the day and several other live musicians and performers shared their amazing talents with the many folks around the real world who chose to come together in a virtual world to enjoy these events.
I know that some people see virtual worlds as “just a game” or view them as “not real” but to many they are a place where they can interact with other real people and build real friendships, business collaborations and all kinds of relationships. Do we view sites like Amazon.com as stores that are “not real” just because they’re made of bits instead of bricks and mortar? It is unfortunate that much of the mainstream press often prefers to focus on the seedier parts of SL, including sex and “marginal activity” when in fact I rarely see this kind of thing going on out in the open in my virtual travels. Thats not to say these things don’t happen in SL – it happens there just like the real world but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the predominant thing that the mainstream press makes it out to be. I think the Remembrance Day event showed the humanity and the real power of the technology to bring people together.
In any event, Corey and I decided to create a small video to document the Remembrance Day event. There are both a low-res/quality Youtube version and a higher quality quicktime version below. Hope you enjoy it!
Second Life Viewer Benchmarks on Apple Mac Pro
I have run some interesting benchmarks running the Second Life™ viewer on my Apple Mac Pro™ under both Microsoft Vista™ and OS X.
Hardware/Network Environment:
- Apple Mac Pro with 2 Quad-core (8 cores total) Xeon processors at 3.2GHZ
- 8GB of Ram
- Nvidia GeForce™ 8800GT w/512MB
- (3) 500GB 7200RPM SATA drives
- Gigabit Ethernet connection
- Internet connection via Verizon FIOS 50Mbps/15Mbps (bridged business class w/static IPs)
Operating Systems (Dual Boot using Bootcamp – each OS on seperate drive):
- OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) w/all updates as of 05-May-2008
- Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/SP1 and all updates as of 05-May-2008
- Bootcamp drivers from OS X Leopard DVD
- Nvidia drivers manually updated to Forceware release 169.25
Second Life Viewer:
- Second Life Release Candidate 1.20.5 (86279)
- All testing done in full screen mode
- Settings:
- Maximum Bandwidth: 1500 kbps
- Disk Cache Size: 1000 MB
- Disk Cache Location: <seperate drive from OS boot in each case>
- Graphics: <clicked Recommended Settings – no changes otherwise>
- Voice chat: Not enabled
Testing methodolgy:
- Teleported to 8 distinct locations in-world w/varying object/texture views
- Stood in same position (via landmark) at each location and faced a predetermined direction
- Monitored Statistics window to wait for network utilization to drop to approximately 20-50kbps to indicate texture/object downloads were complete
- Ensured that no other avatars were in the field of view when noting fps numbers
- All tests were completed within 10 minutes of each other
FPS Results:
| Location | FPS under OS X | FPS Under Vista 64 |
| 1 | 37-39 | 57-60 |
| 2 | 25-27 | 39-41 |
| 3 | 79-82 | 121-123 |
| 4 | 48-50 | 97-101 |
| 5 | 24-25 | 49-51 |
| 6 | 33-34 | 68-71 |
| 7 | 52-55 | 84-87 |
| 8 | 19-21 | 39-41 |
It is interesting to note that on the exact same hardware that the FPS on Windows Vista 64 is on average between about 1.5-2X the FPS under OS X. From reading a number of sites there definitely seems to be similar results running other OpenGL applications under the two OSes. Related to graphics driver implementation issues? some other reason? I would love to hear any insight others may have on this.
No excuses
OK – so Leopard was not really so mesmerizing that I have disappeared for 6+ months. The fact is I have been insanely busy working on some projects and such that winded down in March/April. I promise some updates here, including:
- Areview of my Amazon Kindle
- A review of my Lenovo X300 Subnotebook with Solid State Drive
- Updates on my use of the virtual world of Second Life(TM)
Leopard is here!
Fedex delivered the Leopard box at 9:56AM! Review to come after I open it up and play with it for a few days.
Another Glimpse at Second Life
Some friends in Second Life have created an amazing island to promote turism in Galveston, TX. Check out the movie they commissioned in Quicktime to promote the island. This shows some of the power of the technology!
If Microsoft Made a Music Phone
This is what life would be like.
A New Moblog
Now that Apple has released iLife ’08 with the new .Mac Web Galleries I have decided to start a new moblog again. It can be seen (link no longer available).
Discovering An Old Friend
While cleaning out the closet in my office this week I came across an old friend in a box at the bottom. It is kind of ironic that I found this right after getting the new iPhone from Apple. Times have certainly changed in the last 14 years! (Click here for historical info).