Talk:Choosing a computer

Share your experiences with various system configs here! - on 2010-07-19 @ 9:58 AM Pacific

Graphics Hardware

The usual recommendation is to use nVidia hardware for the best OpenGL support. This is a combination of the actual OpenGL functions, and the utilities to adjust the display. The DirectX labelling is mostly a guide to the available GPU power for the purposes of OpenGL use.

Many motherboards have built-in graphics hardware, which is, frankly, barely adequate. If your cash-flow is a problem, it's good enough to run SL, and you can add a graphics card later. Don't expect to get a high frame rate. The Viewer 2.x family seem to be setting graphics to get a higher frame rate, and if you're following this approach, you could find detail settings are low enough to be ugly--circles appearing as hexagons--and trading frame rate for a slightly higher detail setting may be worth it.

WolfBaginski Bearsfoot 07:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)