[#VWR-7376] Large performance drop within 20 minutes leading to glacial frame rates then crash

1. Second Life Viewer - VWR

Large performance drop within 20 minutes leading to glacial frame rates then crash

Created: 22/May/08 09:28 PM Updated: 17/Aug/08 12:35 AM

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Component/s:

Performance

Affects Version/s:

1.20

Fix Version/s:

None

Environment:

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Second Life 1.20.7 (87883) May 19 2008 21:40:37 (Second Life Release Candidate)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1794 MHz)
Memory: 3070 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8600M GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.1
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.15342 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.13_0000000000)

Issue Links:

Duplicate

This issue duplicates:

VWR-2997 Second Life Client Severe Memory Leak Problems and Repeated Crashing - SL Use Now Becoming Impossible/Unbearable

Relates

This issue Relates to:

~~VWR-6851~~ Memory leak: SmartHeap reports Out of Memory

~~VWR-5991~~ Serious Memory Leak that carried over from the RC to the new release

Linden Lab Issue ID:

DEV-15811

Description

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Previous 1.20 "RC"s have had a time related performance degradation, but this "RC" exhibits it fairly quickly. When launched, the frame rate is relatively OK. I run with all shaders disabled so it's likely not WL fanciness. After about 5 minutes, the frame rate drops noticely, and after around 20 minutes, the frame rate drops to around 4-5FPS. This happens on various SIMs from extremely lightly loaded ones ("WildeFleur", "The Faery Crossing"), open SIMs, and mainland SIMs "OakGrove". The rate drops seems correlated with vehicle usage; that is, a cummulative drop happens when the scenary is changing. Also, the repro is consistent. It happens every time.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 23/May/08 01:40 PM

The performance loss is still the same in RC8. On that one, it seems to be correlated with either a memory leak or a changed behavior in the in-memory texture cache. I see committed memmory start at 100MB upon launch. It then quick climbs to around 400MB. Then it continues to climb at a rate of 1MB/5seconds. If I just spin in place, i can accelerate that memory growth at which point the frame rates drops to around 4FPS. Another way to demostrate the effect quickly is to fly or sail across many SIMs, The memory climbs rapidly, in my case it goes over 800MB. By that time the frame rate is so low (less then 2/sec) that the viewer becomes totally unusable.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 23/May/08 01:56 PM

I just tried this with 1.19.0.5. In both cases, the texture disk cache is set to 700MB. I do not see the progressive perormance loss that has occured with all of the 1.20 releases (albeit in RC6 and newer releases it got much worse). Upon launch the memory starts at 90MB, climbs to 300MB. Travel across SIMs, etc. build up the memory to around 520MB and it remains relatively stable at that level.

This behavior which the precipitous frame rate degradation is likely the reason for many of the lag complaints.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 11/Jun/08 12:04 PM

The problem remains in the latest beta:
Second Life 1.20.9 (88980) Jun 3 2008 19:25:06 (Second Life Release Candidate)

It gets bad quickly when sailing across SIMs. At this point it is no longer possible to sail across SIMs or host sailing events that cross them.

I had hoped to sponsor some Relay For Life sailing events but with this problem present, doing so is not feasible.Furthermore, my sailboat sales have totally tanked. I received a query from a would-be customer asking if my "broken boats" would ever get fixed. She heard from others that they caused people to crash or made them lag so bad they had to relog. Explaining to them this was an SL bug did not help, no sale. Fixing this problem (and the other SIM crossing bugs) would revitalize lost enjoyment of SL.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 17/Jul/08 05:40 PM

This problem remains in the latest release candidate:
Second Life 1.20.14 (92115) Jul 14 2008 15:20:29 (Second Life Release Candidate)

The behavior is different though in that the frame rate drops as I mentioned in previous comments, then after a while the slowdown ends. This slow/fast behavior cycles. I'll try to get memory working set data or perhaps a PerfMon trace to see if there is some garbage collection activity taking place in the viewer at those intervals.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 23/Jul/08 11:54 AM

Adding additional environment observation: This problem is not related to theopenspace SIM performance cycling problem. I experience the periodic slowdowns on full SIMs too.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 27/Jul/08 03:16 PM

The problem is worse in the latest standard viewer:
Second Life 1.20.15 (92456) Jul 18 2008 10:58:42 (Second Life Release)

Before, the viewer would slow to a crawl, now it eventually dies with a massive memory leak (crash dumps sent).

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 27/Jul/08 03:19 PM

Updated title to indicate crash, raised priority to critical since it affects the main viewer.

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Balpien Hammerer added a comment - 17/Aug/08 12:35 AM

I just tried running Second_Life_1-20-12-90824_ReleaseCandidate_Setup.exe, after changing the channel to SL RC no memory leak, and this RC works oh so much better. RAM usage (for me) stabilizes at around 600MB. No granted there were many bug fixes between RC12 and the latest viewer, at least this one does not rat-hole into glacial fgrame rates nearly immediately when it encoutners new textures. It does have a small memory leak, but seems manageable as a mitigation.

Also, looking back at my blog comments, I asked our LIndens why they hadn't done a diff to see what broke between RC12 and RC13. It definitely got much worse in RC13. Actually, just having a response as to the progress if this problem would be helpful. Given the official 1.20 is totally fubar, I am no longer running with it. 29 crash dumps seems plenty good for debug analysis. It wojn;t fix my toitally tanked boat business but at least I can enjoy some inworld sailing again, broken SIM crossings notwithstanding.

This bug reads "fix pending". I'll be happy to test an internal fix.