[sldev] Re: Texture caching, pipeline, memory

[Argent Stonecutter]

> One thing of note is that when SL started, it was mainly accessible to
> those who had fast DSL lines. The general public at the time didn't  
> have
> fast DSL. It wouldn't even support dial-up. However now, I see LL  
> saying
> that it needs to support win 98 and computer with only 256Mb.  I just
> went priced systems last week and a PC with at least 1GB mem,  
> 3.06Ghz+,
> 200GB drive, Gforce 7 series, and built-in surround sound can be  
> had for
> less than $500. I didn't include the monitor in that and meant to keep
> it a sepate issue. That's a pretty decent system to have at the price.

You're forgetting laptops (which tend to be slower AND harder to  
upgrade), Mac users (a pretty recent Mac mini has a 1.42 GHz PPC with  
a Radeon 9200 and no upgrade path), international users and users on  
a fixed budget.

> Like ZOMG, i see these littel iPod and MP3 players with more GBs of
> memory than your typical desktop computer. People are going to  
> start to
> wonder why!

Um, no, you don't. Your typical MP3 player has a megabyte of RAM, a  
40 MHz RISC CPU, and a few gigabytes of NAND flash that can only be  
read and written in fixed blocks - basically RAM-disk-only.