AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance in Trials on Tatooine @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance in Trials on Tatooine - Anyone that buys into an HTC Vive headset will almost assuredly want to wield a lightsaber...for free. This short VR demo built by Lucasfilm’s ILMxLAB aims to put you in a photo-realistic Star Wars environment. Trials on Tatooine is not easy going on all GPUs though and not all will provide a premium VR experience.
 
Nice to see the new Titan X(P) in there :) Looking forward to seeing more on it here. Any chance of getting results for it on Starseed and Raw Data? Wondering how much better than my 980 Ti it is.

Keep the VR reviews coming, love them so far.
 
Wasn't the GTX TitanX the Maxwell version, and nVidia TitanX the Pascal version? Even though it's in the GTX 1080 family, I thought that dropping the GTX prefix was the way the Pascal TitanX was differentiated from the Maxwell version.

And glad you guys snagged one!
 
Hrm.... since I'm going to be making one purchase which will be lasting a good long while... it really makes me consider the 1070 a lot more strongly, when compared to both the 1060 and 480 8GB.

Oh well, we'll see what prices and supply look like closer to Christmas.
 
I recently bought a 1060 for $235 shipped. I've always been a high end buyer for decades, starting with my 3dfx Voodoo and down the line with all the top Geforce and a couple Radeons. This is the first time that I feel the market is mature enough to warrant a non-highend card. I always appreciated the extra power in the top end cards in the past, but the market feels very overkill-ish now unless you're working with 4K, which I have little interest in.
Few sites benchmark titles that I actually play, at settings I actually use..

Still, amazing advances have been made by Nvidia the last few years. Pascal is really something but I expect this to be the last GPU I ever purchase as I'm increasingly satisfied by IGP performance gains as well. A 1060 is pretty big overkill for my uses, but at 235, it seemed foolish to actually spend less considering how powerful it is (and I'm in dire need of some sort of card, any card).

Hoping Rosewill can get a Thunderbolt3 eGPU case out on the market, I'd like to pair it with a Skull Canyon NUC (or it's successor) at some point! Or I'll just sell off the 1060 when I move to a NUC for my next machine.

The fact the modest 1060 is on the VR Leaderboard was the final straw. These are quite a value IMO.
 
Does OC make a difference?

Are you willing to test the 970 and 980 as they were billed as VR ready? I assume the 980 would be somewhere between the 1060 and 1070.
 
Clear concise review, well presented.
Great info.

ps
Theres no mention of the 980ti in GPU Performance Summary.

Stoly said:
Does OC make a difference?

Are you willing to test the 970 and 980 as they were billed as VR ready? I assume the 980 would be somewhere between the 1060 and 1070.
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It would only slightly change things.
The 1060 will likely benefit the most.
AMD cards dont clock much, not enough to really help this.
The AMD vs NVidia performance gap would increase and the performance difference between Maxwell and Pascal would shift a little.
He has already said the 970 wont be tested.
 
I hate to say it, but more and more I want to get a 1070 GTX. I might not be able to play VR now, but at least I know It can. And the 1070 doesn't suffer the async compute issue that maxwell does.

Again great review Kyle. And holy shit I had no idea they had a VR star wars experience...and FOR FREE!! amazing
 
Brackle said:
I hate to say it, but more and more I want to get a 1070 GTX. I might not be able to play VR now, but at least I know It can. And the 1070 doesn't suffer the async compute issue that maxwell does.

Again great review Kyle. And holy shit I had no idea they had a VR star wars experience...and FOR FREE!! amazing
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It's VERY short and not incredibly fun but the whole thing will leave Star Wars fans feeling extremely happy. Or disappointed that nothing else is available yet. Go in without watching videos of the thing; going in with virgin eyes will make it that much sweeter.

When the Millennium Falcon lands in front of/over you it's INCREDIBLE in VR. There is no video that will do it justice.
 
Yeesh, is AMD actually doing some outreach or are they just hoping developers optimize for their GPUs for fun?

ILMxLABS uses exclusively NV GPUs for development, it wouldn't surprise me if a ton of VR startups are doing the same. But who can blame them when AMD is seemingly doing nothing about it?

Brag about bringing VR for the masses then put all your dev resources of the year into Hitman, Deus Ex, Civ 6 and Total War... all non-VR titles?
 
AceCR42 said:
Yeesh, is AMD actually doing some outreach or are they just hoping developers optimize for their GPUs for fun?
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At this point there's absolutely jack all AMD can do about games made on Unreal Engine 4. It's auto-NV win big time.

Epic Games + NVIDIA is a long partnership, one that has resulted in PhysX being the standard physics engine and GameWork libraries being built into the platform.

Here's a fun fact most people don't know, in more recent PhysX versions, CPU physics calculations can be automatically offloaded by CUDA-compatible GPUs. Without special coding for it.

GDC 2016: PhysX GPU Rigid Body and NVIDIA Flow | PhysXInfo.com - PhysX News

Collision & body physics, something which used to be CPU only.

It could well be AMD's fault, they should have worked harder to collaborate with Epic Games. But the end result is the current reality, all UE4 DX11 games run very poorly on AMD GPUs. Is it something AMD can improve on? Don't know, but given that this has been occuring for a long time and still is a problem, it suggests to me that AMD is just screwed when it comes to UE4. Auto-forfeit basically.
 
AceCR42 said:
Yeesh, is AMD actually doing some outreach or are they just hoping developers optimize for their GPUs for fun?

ILMxLABS uses exclusively NV GPUs for development, it wouldn't surprise me if a ton of VR startups are doing the same. But who can blame them when AMD is seemingly doing nothing about it?

Brag about bringing VR for the masses then put all your dev resources of the year into Hitman, Deus Ex, Civ 6 and Total War... all non-VR titles?
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AMD is marketing towards to idiots who want the buzzword over the substance.
 
Ocellaris said:
AMD is marketing towards to idiots who want the buzzword over the substance.
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Like any company, AMD is marketing as best they can with the little they have. Dont blame the marketing department for AMD's poor engineering performance.
 
AceCR42 said:
Brag about bringing VR for the masses then put all your dev resources of the year into Hitman, Deus Ex, Civ 6 and Total War... all non-VR titles?
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The bringing VR to the masses was always really an advertising angle.

On a practical level AMD's own previous entry to VR was the $330 MSRP R9 390. The real cost savings for the RX 480 would be basically $90. Given VRs other costs and barriers to entry and that the buyers at this moment are going to be the enthusiastic adopters with higher allocated disposable income for this venture, how likely is that $90 savings actually going to be an impact?

A better <$300 headset with less limitations is what can drive VR to the mainstream and bring it to "the masses." Not a <$300 graphics card.
 
I checked twitter to see if Raja had responded to this article.
Seems there's no updates since Aug 5th, but I'd be curious if there's some reduction on the reprojection at least in the next driver.

After all - isn't that the whole point of RTG? Quicker and more nimble responses in driver updates and optimization?
 
limitedaccess said:
The bringing VR to the masses was always really an advertising angle.

On a practical level AMD's own previous entry to VR was the $330 MSRP R9 390. The real cost savings for the RX 480 would be basically $90. Given VRs other costs and barriers to entry and that the buyers at this moment are going to be the enthusiastic adopters with higher allocated disposable income for this venture, how likely is that $90 savings actually going to be an impact?

A better <$300 headset with less limitations is what can drive VR to the mainstream and bring it to "the masses." Not a <$300 graphics card.
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It needs to be cheaper in general, really. The price barrier is currently gigantic across the board.

They're trying to provide a solution to a problem that won't exist until headsets don't cost as much as the computers you need to run them. And they're not even doing very well at it right now.
 
Spyhawk said:
Like any company, AMD is marketing as best they can with the little they have. Dont blame the marketing department for AMD's poor engineering performance.
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I always take the marketing message into account when I write about parts. Remember Intel saying the 4960X was the ultimate gaming CPU? We beat them into the dirt on that because it was horseshit. And they did not sample us the next time around, I sourced it in China and launched our review 3 days before embargo. Point is, if you are going to make incredible marketing statements, I am going to hold you to those.
 
Performance vs Dollar, AMD's RX 480 is the #1 performing card on the market right now. Even in the VR segment. Just waiting til I feel like upgrading, by then, AMD cards will, probably, be in stock, and not for sale @ $399.99 or $299.99 from the dumbass resellers on Amazon.
 
Any idea how they 970 would fair? I know its the minimum. I tried a 970 running a few demos on the Hive and was impressed - the Google Paint program and Nvidia's VR funhouse.
 
steakman1971 said:
Any idea how they 970 would fair? I know its the minimum. I tried a 970 running a few demos on the Hive and was impressed - the Google Paint program and Nvidia's VR funhouse.
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I won't have anything as objective as these reviews, but after I bring my Vive home I'll hook it up to my i3 with a reference 970 and let you know how it "feels"
 
If UE4 is broke for AMD (goes both ways) then testing more UE4 games and concluding final VR performance of AMD is subpar overall may not be accurate. If the developer does not have the resources, payed off, don't care - really does not matter - if the developer does not add in other hardware profiles, what is AMD suppose to do? What have they done? Now being that the PS4 VR is using AMD designed hardware I would think UE4 will just not be used and will be left out until fixed.

That being said, what VR does AMD do good in? As far as I know not much. Would like to see more/other games/engines tested as well which of course takes time.

Seeing SLIVR is very encouraging, if this is better supported with VR it may make my next video card purchase easier to decide - another Gigabyte 1070 G1 (one great cool, quiet well performing card).

Another exciting review - loving these VR reviews.
 
Evil said:
Performance vs Dollar, AMD's RX 480 is the #1 performing card on the market right now. Even in the VR segment. Just waiting til I feel like upgrading, by then, AMD cards will, probably, be in stock, and not for sale @ $399.99 or $299.99 from the dumbass resellers on Amazon.
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Really?? By what metrics are you using to come up with 480 being the #1 performing card for VR segment?
 
Chimpee said:
Really?? By what metrics are you using to come up with 480 being the #1 performing card for VR segment?
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I don't think there is enough tests to conclude much other then that Nvidia seems to be doing well in titles tested which one is not complete and the other is a demo. Too early for me to tell how this will pan out. Will AMD perform much better when the consoles support VR? When VR SDK's use DX 12? To many unknowns for long term prediction. It is getting harder though sitting on the side lines watching VR starting to blossom.
 
noko said:
If UE4 is broke for AMD (goes both ways) then testing more UE4 games and concluding final VR performance of AMD is subpar overall may not be accurate. If the developer does not have the resources, payed off, don't care - really does not matter - if the developer does not add in other hardware profiles, what is AMD suppose to do? What have they done? Now being that the PS4 VR is using AMD designed hardware I would think UE4 will just not be used and will be left out until fixed.

That being said, what VR does AMD do good in? As far as I know not much. Would like to see more/other games/engines tested as well which of course takes time.
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What VR does AMD do good in? Everything else except for UE4 games. That's all it comes down to.

We've already seen it. Unity games (VR or not) run well on AMD & NV. UE4 games run total ass on AMD.

Unity does not use any NV or AMD proprietary features as default. UE4 uses GameWorks & PhysX.

I mean if [H] wanted to do proper tech journalism, why do they not ask the obvious question here, is why is NV working towards fragmenting the PC ecosystem with their closed propriety approach? It's quite clear if you play UE4 VR games, you need an NV GPU.

Should AMD do the same? They sponsor Crytek or Unity, inject in some DLLs that only they can modify and optimize, then the resulting game runs like shit on NV GPUs? How is that any good for the PC gaming as a whole when it leads to an exclusive effect?

I remember tech journalism of the good ole days when they would have jumped all over this as a bad case of optimization for one IHV over the other, and any who did it would have been called out. Certainly Anandtech back then, had the balls to call a spade a spade.

Today, it's the same old bullshit, "here guys, this is our game, NVIDIA sponsored us, and now it runs like total ass on AMD GPUs, enjoy!"... no tech journalist these days bats an eye when they see stuff like this. Instead they blame it on AMD's bad drivers. Yeah, such an easy excuse.

How do AMD's drivers get around being forced to run proprietary code that only NVIDIA decides how well it should run? AMD cannot modify to optimize these GameWorks or PhysX libraries. Only NV can.

Don't you guys see it? When an IHV sponsors a game's development, they have a hand in it and the final product has their say. Hitman runs worse on NV GPUs, is it a coincidence that AMD sponsored it? No it isn't. It shouldn't be at all, but we're so used to seeing AMD & especially NV sponsor a game and it ends up running total ass on the competitor hardware. It's like normality, and acceptable.
 
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Here's the thing with PhysX as the only physics engine. Ultimately, NVIDIA decides how well the game runs because only they can write and compile the PhysX.Dll that gets included in these games.
 
noko said:
...what is AMD suppose to do?
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Realistically, what every other UE4 developer is doing. Fork the Git repo and work on the engine changes, submit them to Epic, and everyone is happy. Epic has been extremely forward in allowing third parties to work on the engine this time around, so AMD has nobody to blame but themselves here. They can blame PhysX, Gameworks, whatever all they want, but they're just as able as anyone else working with UE4 to integrations of their internal technologies (Bullet, TressFX, et al) and convince developers to use those integrations over Nvidia's.
 
So, 3 out of 3 wins for NVidia so far regarding the VR measurents (Raw Data, Call of Starssed, Trials on Tatooine ).
How many other VR tests can we expect at the immediate future?
 
From the benchmarks HardOCP has done my statement seems a bit off kilter. The AMD 4gb RX 480 card however is still $199.99, except right now due to the scalping of resellers of the card price. This latest benchmark is a Unreal Engine 4 game. It uses all the technology proprietary to Nvidia including PhysX. It is going to do poorly on the AMD hardware, unless AMD can somehow convince Unreal to work with them which I doubt as Nvidia is pouring money into the Unreal engine. AMD's R&D is minuscule and tiny vs Nvidia's so I doubt AMD will ever improve in Unreal engine VR games, and if that is all there will be in the VR department then AMD will never do as well as Nvidia. If this is the case, this will essentially kill off all chances AMD had in the VR segment, however the Xbox One and the PS4 both have AMD videocard technology in them, and both of them are aiming towards the VR market, so hopefully something comes out of this. As of right now, from your 3 VR reviews, AMD looks god awful in the VR segment, from the 3 games that have been reviewed using the test methodology that has been used.
 
Bahanime said:
blah blah blah
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So you are saying game makers should spend extra money to allow AMD to compete? Let me laugh a little.

nVidia wants VR to succeed and they are putting $$$ into it to ensure it has the best shot possible. AMD is like "oh, here is our next gen HW and you should buy it even though we put half ass effort into it". The stuff where "AMD does well" isn't that graphically intensive. Shit, of the stuff where AMD does well, I would be better off buying console VR because it would save me a ton of $$$. The [H] did do proper tech journalism. They flat out know and freely admit that nVidia is working harder than AMD to make VR a success for graphically intensive games. When it comes to graphically intensive VR...making AMD look good is like putting lipstick on a pig...it is still a pig.
 
Trepidati0n said:
So you are saying game makers should spend extra money to allow AMD to compete? Let me laugh a little.

nVidia wants VR to succeed and they are putting $$$ into it to ensure it has the best shot possible. AMD is like "oh, here is our next gen HW and you should buy it even though we put half ass effort into it". The stuff where "AMD does well" isn't that graphically intensive. Shit, of the stuff where AMD does well, I would be better off buying console VR because it would save me a ton of $$$. The [H] did do proper tech journalism. They flat out know and freely admit that nVidia is working harder than AMD to make VR a success for graphically intensive games. When it comes to graphically intensive VR...making AMD look good is like putting lipstick on a pig...it is still a pig.
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I've never really looked at HardOCP's reviews as true "journalism." They are telling me what I will get with the money I spend. Not some inflated benchmark or publicist documentation. They tell it like it is when products are great and they've called out the nonsense marketing, but it's never been their job to spin garbage into gold for you to feel better about the brand you chose.

They tell me where I'm best served spending my money and they don't waste my time with speculation on what-ifs, benchmarks, and future possibilities if <insert company> somehow gets their shit together.
 
Stoly said:
Does OC make a difference?

Are you willing to test the 970 and 980 as they were billed as VR ready? I assume the 980 would be somewhere between the 1060 and 1070.
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I second this... really want to know how my 970 stacks up. Sure would be nice if i didn't have to buy a new video card...
 
Milkman said:
I second this... really want to know how my 970 stacks up. Sure would be nice if i didn't have to buy a new video card...
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Since I can just use the built-in frame info capture, I'll hook my Vive up to both computers tonight and run through it to see how my 6th gen i3 with 970 stacks up to my 6700k with GTX 1070 and get some numbers up. Two toddlers may mean a delay until tomorrow, but I'll definitely get it up ASAP.

Edit: If you really really really want to know without the CPU being a factor I can swap the cards around, but I want you to know that it will be a pain in the ass and I will hate you.
 
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noko said:
I don't think there is enough tests to conclude much other then that Nvidia seems to be doing well in titles tested which one is not complete and the other is a demo. Too early for me to tell how this will pan out. Will AMD perform much better when the consoles support VR? When VR SDK's use DX 12? To many unknowns for long term prediction. It is getting harder though sitting on the side lines watching VR starting to blossom.
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That is certainly true that we don't have enough games to test to have a firm conclusion, but to say 480 is a is the best performance/price even for VR is jumping the gun.
 
dergreg said:
Since I can just use the built-in frame info capture, I'll hook my Vive up to both computers tonight and run through it to see how my 6th gen i3 with 970 stacks up to my 6700k with GTX 1070 and get some numbers up. Two toddlers may mean a delay until tomorrow, but I'll definitely get it up ASAP.

Edit: If you really really really want to know without the CPU being a factor I can swap the cards around, but I want you to know that it will be a pain in the ass and I will hate you.
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Ha, you can if you want. The info would be interesting, but NO need to swap cards on my account. I was hoping the [H] would run the tests on the same hardware as the others if possible to get a more specific and clear comparison. Its been said they will not test the 970.. but im unsure why. I must have missed something on that.
 
Milkman said:
Ha, you can if you want. The info would be interesting, but NO need to swap cards on my account. I was hoping the [H] would run the tests on the same hardware as the others if possible to get a more specific and clear comparison. Its been said they will not test the 970.. but im unsure why. I must have missed something on that.
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It's not [H]ard enough anymore?

Or, more probably, newer cards are filling the price/performance of the 970 and there's not enough clear delineation to justify the time spent to test it? The 1060 is comparable and better and is comparable in current pricing.

But hey, at least strangers on the internet are willing to collect the data!
 
schenks said:
Realistically, what every other UE4 developer is doing. Fork the Git repo and work on the engine changes, submit them to Epic, and everyone is happy. Epic has been extremely forward in allowing third parties to work on the engine this time around, so AMD has nobody to blame but themselves here. They can blame PhysX, Gameworks, whatever all they want, but they're just as able as anyone else working with UE4 to integrations of their internal technologies (Bullet, TressFX, et al) and convince developers to use those integrations over Nvidia's.
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Maybe AMD has tried that and was kept out of the kingdom? I am not saying that's what happened but how do you know? Do tell if you do.
 
dergreg said:
It's VERY short and not incredibly fun but the whole thing will leave Star Wars fans feeling extremely happy. Or disappointed that nothing else is available yet. Go in without watching videos of the thing; going in with virgin eyes will make it that much sweeter.
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Does anyone with a VR setup really have virgin eyes, I know the first thing I would try if I had a VR setup... :sneaky:
 
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