Increase FPS in second life

The 420M integrated video chipset is not really designed for gaming -- it is a decent mid range laptop video card but that still is not really made for gaming ( Here is a comparison to other laptop chipsets and as you can see it is pretty much a mid to low level performer among the laptop chipsets which are already poorer performers than their desktop counterparts (since laptops are designed for low power usage due to running on a battery not for 3d gaming !) - figure systems using that chipset will score around 6000 on 3dmark06 compared to an average desktop like my phenomII x3 720 with an ATI 5770 will score around 15,000 and even it will struggle for FPS on more demanding games so your 8FPS sounds about right -- you will probably need to lower settings and keep the after effects (AA, AF, HDR, etc.) disabled or at low multiples to get playable frame rates.

The system recommendations for Second life recommend a 9600 or 9800 or 275GTX for nvidia (and that's the desktop versions not the poorer performing mobility versions) or an ATI 4850, 4870 for decent performance so the 420M is far below the recommended spec for that game !

Sorry, but you only have two choices:

1. Buy a new laptop with a more powerful video card
2. Don't play Second Life.

The set up I have seems to work very well with BF2 and sniper...so not sure...maybe that they are running off of CD and SL is very random online...last laptop i had I was running anout 16FPS....that is a three year old laptop.

I just got my wife a laptop with similar specs had to go to nvidia control panel add program phoenix viewer add .exe and change to nvidia card in profile it runs on high for her with good fps

Second Life is very demanding on hardware. Perahps with some tweaks on the SL Viewer you get some more FPS. Have a look below at some of Torley´s tutorials on that matter.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPlxln8AObE

http://www.youtube.com/embed/1T-XAyKjCdE

http://player.vimeo.com/video/4384096

http://blip.tv/play/gZsWvItAAg

http://blip.tv/play/gZsWw%2B43Ag

http://blip.tv/play/gZsWu_sVAg

http://blip.tv/play/gZsWu_RNAg

http://blip.tv/play/gZsWu_cvAgng