Graphics cards

The purpose of this page is detailing compatibility issues that certain graphics cards have with Second Life. Note that officially, we only support what's listed on our System Requirements. However, we understand some Residents want to run SL on unsupported configurations — your results may vary, but hopefully sharing info will give you a better idea of what to expect.

Drivers

We highly recommend updating to the newest stable versions:

• Download Nvidia drivers
• Download ATI drivers

More info.

Help resources

• Knowledge Base - Repository of support articles you can search. For example, "graphics". Some relevant articles include:
  • What is a graphics card? Will mine work with Second Life?
  • Intel Extreme graphics issues
  • Invisible avatar? Try these things!
  • Why is my avatar yellow/green/some other loud color/horribly deformed? - Basically, go to Edit menu > Preferences > Graphics Detail tab and uncheck "Avatar Vertex Program". Generally, updating your drivers fixes this.
  • Errors that mention GDI Generic

• Public Issue Tracker - We use this to help us identify bugs to be fixed. Search for terms like the model of your graphics card (e.g., "X1600" or "GeForce") or related keywords (e.g., "invisible AND avatar"). You can also report a new issue and discuss it with fellow Residents.

• Official Linden Blog - You can search this too. Of recent particular interest is:
  • 1.14.0 Known Issues: Drivers, VBO, ATI X300/X600 notebooks, and other woes

• Technical Talk forums - The forums are searchable. Lindens don't really check here.

You can also contact our Support. Remember that specific details, and solid reproductions when there are bugs, help us help you.

Personal experiences

We're just getting this started, and hope to better organize this over time. If you're having problems, please list your:

Resident name:

System: (this includes graphics card info, copy-and-paste the info from Help menu > About Second Life)

Driver version: (on Windows, look for this in the Control Panel for your graphics card)

Other details: (e.g., Something that used to work broke recently? If you already reported this in the Issue Tracker, provide a link. If you know other Residents having the same problem as you, list their names and encourage them to post here)