VR need more power or gaming on Ultrawide?

Ok, so here is my situation. I jumped on a deal for an RX 480 4GB that was 145AR and came with Doom that I plan to sell for another 15-20$, meaning I got an RX 480 dirt cheap. It just so happened the Rift dropped $200 a day later. I ordered the RIft and LOVE IT, as do my kids. After doing this, I realized the Rift needed to stay in the living room for space and monitoring (don't want kids messing with it without me), so I had to bring my gaming pc into the living and now need to leave it (or another one) with the rift as a dedicated system.

What I currently have:
i5-3570k @ a gentle 4.2ghz
8GB 1866mhz
AMD RX 480 w/ a little memory boost to 2kmhz(this wasn't a high end 480 with plenty of space to OC for heat purposes)

First question - Is that CPU future proof for the CV1 generation of VR?

So far it plays everything great as far as I can tell. Robo Recall is fantastic, and I even bumped up the quality a little over default. However, now that I'm paying attention I do notice a hiccup here and there, mainly when it is first getting going. I am wondering if this is really that new frame tech oculus introduced hiding my system's borderline ability to handle these games. I have been reading and reading, and asking, to figure out how CPU bound VR is. I know the recommended specs, but OC'ing most i5s and i7s generate the same/better performance as a stock 4590. I am torn between building me a new gaming rig and leaving that one to the VR, building a newer gaming rig for the VR and getting that system back, or just buying vega when it hits for the VR system(if the cpu isn't going to limit it) and building me a new system using that RX480. I have looked at upgrading a Dell T3500 system I have here to a six core 3.2ghz x5679 xeon off eBay for around $80, and putting that 480 in it and getting my system back but don't know if that will be enough cpu. I have 16gb ECC 1066 I can put in it. I have also looked at getting an x79/x99 board and unlocked xeon and OC'ing for another system for either me or VR(I have some spare ddr3 laying around for that). You can do an x79 and E5-1650 v1 for around $250, but with Ryzen 5 coming I think even the used market just shifted in value. So many choices and directions, and with AMD Ryzen coming I had also considered just buying all new and getting a 1600x build.


For my gaming setup I am using a 32" 1080p Samsung TV, but I will be upgrading to a 1080p FreeSync 34" Ultrawide playing mostly FPS. So, with that understanding, and what I have, I am wondering if I need to put more into a VR build or into my Ultrawide build? And what will net me the most benefit for the money (used market as well)? If I put money into a new VR system I'm thinking about spending a bit more to hopefully carry me into CV2 gen as well(1700x instead?). Another couple hundred now to avoid a grand later? My head is spinning from all the options and questions and performance variations....ahhh!

So far I have found that VR seems to be GPU bound way more than CPU. 980ti or 1070 would be my minumum for VR. Some games are more demanding than others.
Your CPU is fine.

To be honest, the graphics and CPU grunt you are after is needed in both cases. A capable gaming system and one that handles VR well are pretty much synonymous. In your case though, since you only game at 1080p, you VR sauce on the graphics front is weak. Whatever you do, upgrading your GPU choice for VR will give you the biggest improvements:



Now that the 1080Ti is out, it should be easy to snag a good used 1070 or 1080. The VR experience you are getting from that 480 is definitely sub-par based on its capabilities. I'd recommend at least the 1070 for VR or better. AMD GPU's for VR pretty much suck right now - hopefully that changes once Vega arrives.

I played VR on a Vive using an i5-2500k stock and a rented 1070 (<- LOL My friend bought one while visiting from out west for Christmas, but took it back when he left. It was to show his vive on his dads pc). I played Valves The Lab, and I played Brookhaven. Both very very good, and so far so has the 480 been with even more demanding games like Robo Recall. I've not gotten sick at all playing robo recall, but I did get a little nauseous playing Lucky's tale. I didn't know if that was due to panning around vs standing still like robo recall, or fps issues. I'm too new at VR to know yet, plus no real time comparison. The only time I got barf sick was a roller coaster app I tried on the Vive. I couldn't finish it...The only time that has happened so far. The FPS was terrible from what I could tell on that one.

From what it seems, my current system looks to be good enough but might need some more Ram and I can see I do need a much better GPU. However, the 480 is great for the amount of gaming i do on a monitor so I'll probably do a Ryzen build and use that 480 there, and I'll upgrade the GPU soon for VR ( waiting for Vega to see what it can do for the $$). I'm also kinda lingering wondering if AMD will come out with that crossfire VR driver. I Know they have talked about it, and rendering one eye per card. For that, a second 480 is all I would need for a great time, but I don't know what that will involve and what would support it (like normal gaming issues).

I'd say your CPU's enough, unless you're asking for something like "constant 90 FPS in DCS World in the middle of an AI skirmish while flying low", which just isn't happening on any CPU in existence right now, VR or not. Timewarp/Spacewarp/Reprojection is your only saving grace in that sim.

Whether you want to shoot for the moon and nab a 1080 Ti, or even wait for NVIDIA's Volta and AMD's corresponding next-gen architecture after Vega, is your call.

But here's the important thing: on a conventional monitor, you don't notice frame drops nearly as much. With a VR HMD strapped to your face, any judder is downright nauseating to the point that Timewarp/Spacewarp/Reprojection are all frame interpolation methods specifically designed to avoid it in the event of missed frames, such that you may not even notice that it's happening while you look around. Anything that disrupts your view's head-tracking is an immersion breaker.

In other words, consistently low frame times are the most important thing with whatever card you use, regardless of high average framerates. What's bad on a monitor is downright unbearable in VR.

Supercharged_Z06 said:

Now that the 1080Ti is out, it should be easy to snag a good used 1070 or 1080. The VR experience you are getting from that 480 is definitely sub-par based on its capabilities. I'd recommend at least the 1070 for VR or better. AMD GPU's for VR pretty much suck right now - hopefully that changes once Vega arrives.

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Its amd, they won't change shit until they get raked over the coals for it. Look at crossfire microstutter.....

I never saw a lower priority game with issues being addressed.

Hell, I'll never forget the gsod issue. How big did the thread need to get on this forum and Kyle asking questions directly before the issue was acknowledged?

I've owned a lot of AMD gpus. At this point they would have to seriously undercut Nvidia for me to consider another one.

https://hardforum.com/threads/sandy-bridge-vs-lynnfield-benchmarks.1614809/

I gave AMD another go after this thread. Not only were any of those games not any better but I always used a framerate cap with my 7950s. Moved to a 120hz catleap and that just wasn't an option. Fcat was released just after I sold the cards, they got raked over the coals and after years finally addressed the issue. I mean years! I tried 4870x2 for a couple of days and sold that crap off since it felt slower than my gtx280. Didn't know why at the time.
I dealt with their random desktop artifacts on 7950, actually sent in a card for an rma over it. Took ages for that issue to be acknowledged, I never saw a fix. Dealt with the DX9 artifacts with those cards. That thankfully got fixed, took a while and a lot of heat on the forums though.
Open gl support never changed. The guy who developed darkplaces (an open gl quake sourceport) used a 5870 for ages and it still ran like crap on amd hardware. I have never ran an open gl source port that just worked great on an amd card. Even eduke32 saw slowdowns for me.

I've spent far more time with Nvidia hardware and the only serious issue that I ran into was the gtx680 vsync issue. It did force me to sell the card. At the time capping my 7950s was by far the lesser of two evils. That vsync issue took far too long to fix. Still kind of upset about that one actually. Then there was the early windows 7 driver issues. I was actually stuck on the famous card killing driver for months, probably six months. I didn't have to worry about it since I use using an aftermarket cooler at the time. 191.07 iirc?

AMD puts out some great hardware. I just don't trust their software support. Especially with niche tech or games.

CompletelyBrokn said:

I have looked at upgrading a Dell T3500 system I have here to a six core 3.2ghz x5679 xeon off eBay for around $80, and putting that 480 in it and getting my system back but don't know if that will be enough cpu.

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I know of someone who has had good success with VR on two Dell T3500.

Specs on both = 12gb ram, W3670, Zotac 1060 mini 6gb, ideapro USB 3.0 card.

Also, at that price you should consider the 3.6ghz X5687 instead. Not likely you will see performance increase from 6 cores in games.

I don't want to put much into this, and the x5687 was around $70 cheapest. I found a W3670 for $43 shipped, so I got one. I also have a Freezer pro 7 rev 2 laying around. That should be fine, and this is going to carry me over until I build a ryzen system later this year, or zen 2 next year. What I decided to do is leave my 3570k system in the living room, upgrade that one with a vega(or similar if vega is a bust), and move the 480 to the Dell. The dell can handle one 150watt card with a 6pin connector so that 480 just will work. I'm not a hardcore gamer, so I don't need top power. That xeon should last me until next year pretty easily. I intend to get a 34" Ultrawide 1080 freesync monitor this year, so along with everything else I have to stop spending money lol.

Cool, that'll work. Mentioned the X5687 since you were talking X5679 which is about the same price. Would also allow 1333mhz RAM where the W3670 is limited to 1033 speeds. No biggie. All depends on what modules you have. Will say that changing from W3565 to X5687 (already had 1333 RAM) upped my Firestrike scores by over 20%. Obviously eliminated some of my bottleneck. And yeah, this system works great with RX 480 , 6-pin to 8-pin adapter. T3500 are a great base for budget gaming system.

I'm not getting picky. This is just going to fill in the gap between now and birthday in Oct or First of next year if ryzen hasn't worked out the kinks.

Right away, I can tell the difference in audio though. This integrated audio sucks compared to the MSI board I have in my ivy bridge system. lol

I have a Zen 1700x and 980ti and boy my Oculus is butter. Keep in mind that if your using oculus you may get what looks like frame drops or graphics lag but its really failure to head track. This is apparent if you are running only one sensor camera. If you buy another or get the touch units that come with one it is waaay better.

I am going to get two more cameras in the next few months and that way I will have a max of 4 sensors spaced so that my goggles never lose infrared tracking by the cameras.

I think the biggest hit for getting sick in VR is high reprojection rates. Reduce those and you are good to go.

my i5 system with a 480 is smooth in most Vr designed games. Games not meant for Vr like Readout but have been added to support it seem to kill the fps. I'm told project cars is like That too.

I also have 3 cameras for 360. I never have trouble with it losing sight.

If you're getting occasional stutter, its either the aforementioned tracking issue or your running into a ram limit on the 4gb card. That cpu is fine and with the latest drivers the 480 looks to be fine, but the 8gb, not the 4gb. If you want to crank visuals up you'll need a high end video card but doubtful you'll run into cpu limits.

bobzdar said:

If you're getting occasional stutter, its either the aforementioned tracking issue or your running into a ram limit on the 4gb card. That cpu is fine and with the latest drivers the 480 looks to be fine, but the 8gb, not the 4gb. If you want to crank visuals up you'll need a high end video card but doubtful you'll run into cpu limits.

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At 1920x1200? I've played with a lot of 3d vision titles. I've never known 3d vision be be more demanding on vram. Gpu, cpu,, and memory bandwith in that order definitely. But vram, I would need to see some proof on that claim. I'm sorry. VR even has more features that should ease up on that burden than 3d vision ever did.

BababooeyHTJ said:

At 1920x1200? I've played with a lot of 3d vision titles. I've never known 3d vision be be more demanding on vram. Gpu, cpu,, and memory bandwith in that order definitely. But vram, I would need to see some proof on that claim. I'm sorry. VR even has more features that should ease up on that burden than 3d vision ever did.

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This isn't 3d vision. Oculus and vive render 2160x1200 and many (most) games super sample above that so that when the frame gets perspective corrected there is 1:1 rendered to screen pixels in the center of the screen, which requires around 50% more pixels than native res. So it's well above 1080p res, close to double the pixels. Occasional stutters instead of general low frames sound like swapping to system ram to me.

I'm getting a higher end card soon. I have 8gb system ram and thought about doubling that if needed. You think more than 8gb is needed?

CompletelyBrokn said:

I'm getting a higher end card soon. I have 8gb system ram and thought about doubling that if needed. You think more than 8gb is needed?

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I had 12gb in my old system and 16gb in my current and didn't have any issues. I would try it and see, but right now you might be ok.