Built brand new core i7 machine, so pretty clean Windows XP SP3 install.
Putting it simply, Second Life is unuseable. It keeps crashing, sometimes I'm in world 3 minutes, sometimes if I'm lucky maybe 15 minutes, then it just crashes. Sometimes when I adjust graphic preferences before even loggin in the whole window goes a wierd white colour with unreadable text.
I've tried everything I can think of including tweaking the Catalyst openGL settings.
I've turned off anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing in SL preferences. VBO is turned off too of course.
I've tried the drivers that came with the graphics card, the latest drivers from Gigabyte, then I tried the latest release drivers from the ATI website, which are currently Catalyst Version 0.97 (OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8787).
Max temperature the graphics card reaches whilst in-world is 56C , so its easily within its safe operation levels. Case has more than adequate cooling. Nothing in this system is overclocked.
Please help find a solution to this problem as I simply cannot use Second Life right now on whats supposed to be a pretty high spec new machine.
Ok, so I just downloaded the latest Snowglobe alternative viewer and.... THAT WORKS!!
Snowglobe works great with this ATI HD4850 with latest drivers, I could even turn on anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing, ran just fine nice high frame rate.
Whatever magic code they're currently using in snowglobe, i hope they transfer over to the main second life viewer code because all those people with ATI HD cards out there need it!.
Sticking with snowglobe for now