Verified answer

There are many things that can make SL run slower for you, and by the same token many things you can do to make it perform better.

First - if you can't afford a new graphics card right now, find the website of the card you do have and check for driver updates. These can make a huge difference.

When you have SL running, try to lose as many background programs as possible. Yahoo Messenger takes up a lot of processing power just to be sitting there behind you, as does things like Internet Explorer. Log out of YM and Skype and turn them off.

In SL, click on the Edit menu at the top and then choose Preferences. When this box opens up, click on the Graphics tab and check the Custom box to open the advanced menu. The lower the sliders are and the more options you uncheck from here, the less lag you will suffer. It becomes an acceptable trade off between graphics and performance.

Whilst you are in Preferences, click on the Voice Chat tab and disable voice. Then on the Audio & Visual tab, uncheck streaming media (just remember to put it back on if you want to watch movies in SL). Finally, hit the Network tab and hit the Clear Cache button. Remember to hit 'Apply' and then 'OK'.

Now log out of SL and restart it, but only go as far as the login screen. You now need to do a disk cleanup on your operating system (they are in different places in XP and Vista, but on both it's located in system tools). Trash offline webpages, temporary internet files and trashcan at the very least. Now you can restart SL.

The thing about clothes isn't the standard SL clothes like shirts and pants - it's the clothing, hair and other attachment made from prims. The prims themselves are not so bad (unless there are a heck of a lot of them) - the real issue is things like scripts and alpha textures in/on these prims. There is something called Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) and this will give you a good idea how laggy you are. Look at the top menu options. Do you see an option called 'Advanced'? If not, press Ctrl, Alt and D together and you will see it. To get your ARC, follow this menu path:

Advanced> Rendering> Info Displays> Avatar Rendering Cost

Click on Avatar Rendering Cost and you will see numbers displayed above your avatar's head. If the numbers are low and coloured green, you are good. If they are yellow, you are OK. If they are red, you are not so good. You hit red at around the 2000 mark and you should aim to not go over 3000 if you can.

Hair and jewellery are big culprits here. Zero Style hair is wonderful, but that can add between 3000 to 8000 to your ARC. TRUTH and 69 hair is better, adding no more that between 1000 to 2000. Maitreya hair is even better, adding no more than 500 to 1000 usually.

Earthstones jewellery is beautiful, but hundreds of tiny parts and resizing scripts adds a lot to your ARC - all slowing you down a little bit. Have at least one set of low prim, no script jewellery to wear.

Every item you wear with multicolour or resizer scripts is going to slow you down a little bit more, as are flowing dresses with lots of prims. If you are in a place with lots of people all with a high ARC, they are going to have an impact on you too. The addition of revolving lights and moving objects on sims can make you grind to a halt in some places.

In laggy areas, I go for Maitreya hair, simple, no script shoes and jewellery and jeans and a top rather that skirts with flexi prims. I refuse to give up my facelight or AO, but they don't add a lot to my ARC. Even then though, my ARC is usually still red and around the 3200 mark.

The latest optional viewer has dealt with a few of these issues and makes life a bit easier.

http://www.halocrusades.com/?x=3893