[darcybaston]

I've been using Second Life on my DC G5 2GHz for a month now, and I gotta say it performs terribly. It's a total cpu hog. Has anyone tried it on an intel Mac, like a MacBook, and can tell me what it's like?

I've begun streaming live DJ events into SL using NiceCast and a commercial stream server service, and when there's 10 people that show up at a show, SL starts taking over both cores and my audio apps start to die although they never need more than 50% cpu utilization. I've tried tricks like resizing my SL client's window to 320x200, and making my SL character stare up at the ceiling to prevent any animations from being seen, and that helps, but SL still sucks the life out of my Power Mac.

So I'm considering getting a second computer, like an affordable MacBook to be the SL interface (and new portable workstation for doing REAL shows at other physical locations) while I leave the G5 as my home-studio production machine. Any anecdotal experience with Intel Macs and Second Life is greatly appreciated!

[highstakes]

On my MBP, its almost as good as the PC but things slow down just a bit when you have a lot of people on the screen at once. My biggest rant is that the machine gets extremely hot, hotter than WoW in most cases.

[DrMischievious]

I loaded that game on my 24" iMac. I played it 30 minutes, then quit, stared at a wall a while, wondered if there are really that many pathetic sex-starved people in the world, and deleted it. Freaking weird game. Plus the guns don't do anything. What is the point?

[darcybaston]

I play it meet up with coworkers, look at designs, write scripts, sell real estate and spin music. I know it's a fake world and have no interest in the carnal fantasy pleasures others get into. It's fake.

When playing SL on an intel Mac, did you ever have Activity Monitor, or Top, or iStat running to look at its cpu consumption? That's the information I need.

[DrMischievious]

It used about the same as UT2004, I think. I'm not really sure. I could maybe redownload it for you.