Can You Do VR On A Budget PC?

[HardOCP News]

Is it possible to do VR on a budget? John Gatt over at VR Jive set out to see if it was possible to build a budget system for VR gaming and, from what I can tell, he seems more than a little pleased with his findings.

To test the experiences and games I have on the HTC Vive I wanted to come up with a way to show you and tell you about my experience in VR. Benchmarks in the usual sense can’t demonstrate what the experience is actually like. I chose six different VR games or experiences that exemplify the broad range of VR titles I have been playing around with. I then deliberately picked a section of the game or experience that I could repeat over and over.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Your goggles will cost you more than a budget PC, the answer is no. Once you add the headset, your PC is no longer a budget PC.

 

[bigdogchris]

According to AMD you can ....

 

[Chebsy]

Wonder why he didn't use a GTx1060 which is not much different in price to the 480. The 1060 would have given him a better VR experience.

 

[Cr4ckm0nk3y]

 

[cptnjarhead]

Would like to see the 8370 paired with a gtx 1060 6gb for comparison

 

[JohnnyGatt]

Wonder why he didn't use a GTx1060 which is not much different in price to the 480. The 1060 would have given him a better VR experience.

As an old AMD fanboy I had faith and got the RX-480 the week it hit shelf. Knowing what I know now I might have gone for the 1060 just because of the software support. But the 480 has surprised me in some things. reprojection is not that bad if you are standing still shooting stuff. Valve do an amazing job in the Lab and the the Portal 2 VR mod runs well too. I also want to do some 1060 tests.

Thanks for the link Steve!

 

[MavericK]

Really should have tested some more intensive titles like he did SSVR. Raw Data and Onward would have really forced that card to its knees.

 

[Dullard]

Thanks for the rundown, Johnny. I have some family that's interested in getting a VR rig up and running, it's nice to see some of the titles run.

 

[Track Drew]

I haven't experienced VR (and don't have a huge desire to), so I don't know what reprojection looks like etc.

I'm just guessing that majority of users who experience VR will be on something like the Samsung Gear VR or Playstation VR. Are the AMD cards better/worse/on-par with those solutions? Obviously you can't compare apples-to-apples...

Is it a stretch to call Polaris a "Premium VR Experience" compared to those solutions? Are textures/polygon-count/etc that much worse that the two aren't even in the same ball park? Are Samsung and Sony's solutions straight garbage?

Is this like saying you can't call a low end Lexus/Acura a luxury car when one can buy a Rolls Royce?

Genuinely curious - I see a lot of flak towards AMD's "Premium VR Experience" label and wondering if it's a issue of semantics.

 

[JohnnyGatt]

Really should have tested some more intensive titles like he did SSVR. Raw Data and Onward would have really forced that card to its knees.

I am doing more tests including Raw Data and Island 359. I wanted to get the first part out and see what people thought of the way I was testing as it takes time to edit the videos. I will have more out later this week.

 

[MavericK]

I am doing more tests including Raw Data and Island 359. I wanted to get the first part out and see what people thought of the way I was testing as it takes time to edit the videos. I will have more out later this week.

Didn't realize you posted above or I would have addressed you directly, sorry!

That sounds great! The Lab and Zombie Training Sim are definitely fun titles but they seem far less intensive than many of the newer titles coming out. Looking forward to further review!

 

[JohnnyGatt]

I haven't experienced VR (and don't have a huge desire to), so I don't know what reprojection looks like etc.

I'm just guessing that majority of users who experience VR will be on something like the Samsung Gear VR or Playstation VR. Are the AMD cards better/worse/on-par with those solutions? Obviously you can't compare apples-to-apples...

Is it a stretch to call Polaris a "Premium VR Experience" compared to those solutions? Are textures/polygon-count/etc that much worse that the two aren't even in the same ball park? Are Samsung and Sony's solutions straight garbage?

Is this like saying you can't call a low end Lexus/Acura a luxury car when one can buy a Rolls Royce?

Genuinely curious - I see a lot of flak towards AMD's "Premium VR Experience" label and wondering if it's a issue of semantics.

All the google VR stuff is not in the same ball park it's little league VR. OK for 360 videos but i'm not a fan of the fish eye view. As for games and other apps you get lots of crossovers and I have tested the Disney app on both and most of it is 360 video the only true VR animation looks amazing on the vive but just OK on Google cardboard. the Rollercoaster stuff again is fine on Google VR stuff but its not at the same quality level as even a budget HTC Vive setup.

 

[jbc029]

Raw Data is pretty rough on anything below a 1080. Even a 1070 can't stay out of reprojection unless you dial back some options.

Hopefully, Island 359 has had some significant patching in the last month or two. When [H] reviewed it, the graphics settings didnt actually do anything on AMD cards, if I remember right.

 

[jbc029]

I haven't experienced VR (and don't have a huge desire to), so I don't know what reprojection looks like etc.

I'm just guessing that majority of users who experience VR will be on something like the Samsung Gear VR or Playstation VR. Are the AMD cards better/worse/on-par with those solutions? Obviously you can't compare apples-to-apples...

Is it a stretch to call Polaris a "Premium VR Experience" compared to those solutions? Are textures/polygon-count/etc that much worse that the two aren't even in the same ball park? Are Samsung and Sony's solutions straight garbage?

Is this like saying you can't call a low end Lexus/Acura a luxury car when one can buy a Rolls Royce?

Genuinely curious - I see a lot of flak towards AMD's "Premium VR Experience" label and wondering if it's a issue of semantics.

Compared to Samsung VR and the like, yes, a 480+vive is significantly better. Your car analogy is spot on.

Titan XP/1080 = Phantom
1070 = Tesla Model S
1060 = BMW 5 series
RX 480 = Lexus IS 250
Samsung/PS4 = 2005 Honda civic

 

[MavericK]

I haven't experienced VR (and don't have a huge desire to), so I don't know what reprojection looks like etc.

That seems obvious from your post (no offense intended).

I'm just guessing that majority of users who experience VR will be on something like the Samsung Gear VR or Playstation VR. Are the AMD cards better/worse/on-par with those solutions? Obviously you can't compare apples-to-apples...

Is it a stretch to call Polaris a "Premium VR Experience" compared to those solutions? Are textures/polygon-count/etc that much worse that the two aren't even in the same ball park? Are Samsung and Sony's solutions straight garbage?

Is this like saying you can't call a low end Lexus/Acura a luxury car when one can buy a Rolls Royce?

Genuinely curious - I see a lot of flak towards AMD's "Premium VR Experience" label and wondering if it's a issue of semantics.

The problem with AMD and with performance issues in general in VR is that it's not like on a PC game where low framerate is just annoying, in VR it can make you seriously nauseous. If you are dropping into reprojection or far worse, getting dropped frames, the experience is going to be downright sickening in many titles. Imagine spinning around and having the world that you are seeing blur or not quite follow correctly. It's sort of like being drunk and spinning around - not a fun time.

As we have seen from [H] reviews, the RX 480 is often incapable of maintaining an experience with little reprojection or dropped frames, and as such provides far less than what most would consider a "premium" performance.

It's really not a matter of semantics, it's a matter of performance issues.

One thing that can exacerbate the issue is that not a lot of VR titles have very in-depth graphical options (a lot of Unity games), so sometimes it can be hard to tweak and get it running well.

 

[bobzdar]

See my sig for extreme budget VR gaming (I scored a lightly used Rift for $420 on CL). I will upgrade the cpu in springtime as I'm waiting to see what Zen brings, but for the time being it's a good experience for $680 all in - 1060 6gb was $240, and I had to add a $20 usb 3.0 pci-e card. I mostly just do driving sims like Assetto Corsa and iRacing, but the other few demos and games I've run were fine. I plan to try Kona this weekend so that might be more of a test of it.

I should add the VR reviews on this site are what pushed me to the 1060 over the 480. Cost difference was ~$30 and it seems based on other reviews that the 1060 is less reliant on the cpu, so given it was also better in VR it was an easy choice for now.

For most here, the purchase is solely the headset as any decent modern gaming PC will have enough power, and if you have a decently powerful cpu a 1050ti will just hit the Rift minimum pc spec for pretty cheap. Yeah you'll be using ASW to smooth it out but honestly if you're a graphics whore you'll have (way) more than a 1050ti anyway.

 

[VMaxx]

I wonder if you could get by with a slower CPU and just get a high quality 1070 or better video card and it work ok? I have a really old i7-965 system that has been getting by and wonder if I could update the video card and get a vive or something.

 

[Track Drew]

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Thanks for the replies. This is exactly what I figured. Polaris being "Premium" compared to cheaper solutions (mobile phones and consoles), but falling short when compared to Nvidia's more costly options in the games/software that take advantage of that hardware.

It seems the biggest issue is the cost delta between Polaris and a more VR capable Pascal being less then the cost of the VR headset. If a VR headset was $100, we'd likely be having a very different conversation.

Very insightful.

 

[MavericK]

Thanks for the replies. This is exactly what I figured. Polaris being "Premium" compared to cheaper solutions (mobile phones and consoles), but falling short when compared to Nvidia's more costly options in the games/software that take advantage of that hardware.

That is sort of true, but not quite what I was getting at. I would 100% take something like PSVR or a cheaper solution over a Vive or Rift on a lower-end video card, simply because the "less premium" headset options wouldn't make me nauseous from the framerate drops.

 

[viscountalpha]

If they can provide a decent experince that doesn't double the cost of my rig or console then Im down. For the time being it's not worth the hassle.

 

[Track Drew]

That is sort of true, but not quite what I was getting at. I would 100% take something like PSVR or a cheaper solution over a Vive or Rift on a lower-end video card, simply because the "less premium" headset options wouldn't make me nauseous from the framerate drops.

Got it, so are these "less premium" headset options better then "Vive or Rift on a lower-end video card" because the content for them is fundamentally different or something else?

With the Vive/Rift price, it sounds like VR game developers don't put in the dials to turn down settings because they assume if you're paying that much for a headset, you're going to be buying a decent GPU too. If someone could dial down the settings low enough in VR games would the nausea issues go away on Polaris? It seems like yes given [H]'s review of Google Earth VR.

Really appreciate the insight. I've never been an early adopter of stuff like this, and prefer to get in on the 2nd or 3rd generation once the kinks are ironed out.

 

[MavericK]

Got it, so are these "less premium" headset options better then "Vive or Rift on a lower-end video card" because the content for them is fundamentally different or something else?

With the Vive/Rift price, it sounds like VR game developers don't put in the dials to turn down settings because they assume if you're paying that much for a headset, you're going to be buying a decent GPU too. If someone could dial down the settings low enough in VR games would the nausea issues go away on Polaris? It seems like yes given [H]'s review of Google Earth VR.

Really appreciate the insight. I've never been an early adopter of stuff like this, and prefer to get in on the 2nd or 3rd generation once the kinks are ironed out.

To some extent...mainly it's that you are pushing a different number of pixels (much more on Vive/Rift versus PSVR or other options, and at higher framerates as well) so performance can become a factor.

I think over time, more developers will start utilizing technologies like single pass stereo and performance should improve on the Vive/Rift titles.

 

[Track Drew]

To some extent...mainly it's that you are pushing a different number of pixels (much more on Vive/Rift versus PSVR or other options, and at higher framerates as well) so performance can become a factor.

I think over time, more developers will start utilizing technologies like single pass stereo and performance should improve on the Vive/Rift titles.

Makes sense, chicken and egg problem too. Not a lot of VR titles because few consumers have the hardware. People don't have the hardware because there aren't a lot of titles, and many seem to be more like tech demos - no "killer app" yet.

Will likely be a totally different landscape in just 2 years.

 

[bobzdar]

Got it, so are these "less premium" headset options better then "Vive or Rift on a lower-end video card" because the content for them is fundamentally different or something else?

With the Vive/Rift price, it sounds like VR game developers don't put in the dials to turn down settings because they assume if you're paying that much for a headset, you're going to be buying a decent GPU too. If someone could dial down the settings low enough in VR games would the nausea issues go away on Polaris? It seems like yes given [H]'s review of Google Earth VR.

Really appreciate the insight. I've never been an early adopter of stuff like this, and prefer to get in on the 2nd or 3rd generation once the kinks are ironed out.

If you look at the new min requirements for the Oculus (i3 with a gtx 960), you can absolutely get a good experience - as in better than the GearVR or psVR - on 'lower end' hardware. Given a 1050ti is only a little over a hundred bucks and is better than a 960 the barrier is more the cost of the headset (and/or ability to install a video card) than having to spend through the nose for a high end PC.

As to what makes them premium - GearVR does not have positional tracking with no ability to do motion control but is high resolution like the premium vr (Oculus and Vive). PSVR has a slightly lower res screen and less accurate tracking than the premium vr but has positional tracking and (optional) motion control, which is good but both the positional tracking and motion control are less accurate than the 'premium' vr. Oculus and Vive have high res with accurate positional tracking and motion control (standard Vive, optional Oculus).

There are other differences but those are the main ones.

I'm an early adopter (been playing with VR since the DK1), and I think your assessment to wait for gen2, or at least to wait until the gen1 stuff is really well tuned in is probably a good one. I didn't have much trouble with getting the Rift up and running, but as I said, I have a lot of experience in that space. It's very close to plug and play now, but the hardware is sensitive enough that some people have issues even if their PC's are supposed to fully work - and some of it is the sensors really needing usb 3.0 and the headsets really needing high hdmi bandwidth with low latency, where there isn't much other stuff out there that requires that yet. Can use it, yes, but not that really requires it.