Specs for HTC Vive or Oculus CV1, is GTX 980 enough?

[samssi]

Oculus has specifications out and they are as follows:

• NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
• Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• 8GB+ RAM
• Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• Windows 7 SP1 or newer

My gaming rig hits the mark with all of the specifications except for the video card. With dk2 and GTX 770 my rig is barely capable of handling the job with extreme overclocking and I am still getting quite high persistence with low settings. However jittering is gone with the latest version of Elite.

I am just wondering if I should already go ahead and purchase GTX 980? I could enjoy better framerate with DK2 for the time being and probably higher settings. With GTX 980 I am wondering if it will be able to handle the task with the consumer models of VR and something real like Elite Dangerous? (Most of the Oculus Demos work very well with 770, Elite only moderately)

Other option would be to wait for the 1xxx series which release is no where near when the HTC Vice and CV1 hits the market.

There would be no question at all with this if I could be sure that GTX 980 can really run Elite Dangerous + consumer VR. Are there any users with GTX 980 and DK2 at the moment and what do you think?

 

[callezetter]

I wouldnt buy a new 980 now unless you get a REALLY good deal. That card is way over the horizon on the performance/$ metric.
If you can find a cheap used 980 or 290x to tie you over to Q2-16 when both amd and nvidia release their next gen, you would save
alot of money.

In any case, dont buy a new GPU until you know the headset in on the way. The later you buy the more perf/$ you will get.

 

[crutonius]

If you already have the dk2 and you have a 770 then I think I'd go ahead and get a new video card. The 290 can be had for a good price. Aside from the supercruise bug which will hopefully get fixed soon it handles the game pretty well.

Realistically it'll be almost a year until the consumer headsets get sorted out.

 

[Oheck]

I'm kinda curious with Nvidia shaping their drivers for VR and SLI, would that gtx 770 in SLI work just fine? Could be another option, since the new drivers will allow each card to render the separate screens between them.

 

[Dozer.k.a.o.]

i strongly think is better not to buy anything until VR consumer devices come out.

 

[fitzsteve]

SLI doesn't seem to add anything at all to VR, I had 2 gtx 660 in SLI which benchmark almost the same as a single 970 but since actually upgrading to a 970 my VR experience is much smoother all round. You could try and get a cheap used 970 for now? I'm really tempted to get a 980ti but only because I want 4k gaming too.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I wouldnt buy a new 980 now unless you get a REALLY good deal. .

I agree. I have a 980, and my gut feeling is it will be "ok" but only as a bare minimum. I bought my card on black friday last year for £400 delivered with a view to SLI when CV1/VIVE are out. it was a good price so I have no complaints, however if it was me right now, i think i would wait for pascal to come out. At the very least wait till the VR headset you want is out and there are reports from people.

if you need a card right now as a put you on, imo either get a GTX 970 or maybe even a 2nd hand 780 until pascal launches (sorry i cant comment on AMD, tho am sure they have a card to tick your box as well).

 

[samssi]

Yeah, thanks for the answers to you all. It helped me make my decision.

I will postpone purchasing the video card to a later time unless I find a really good deal which I doubt. In that case I will be asking again on the forums from 980 owners when consumer vr comes out. I too have my doubts about the 980 GTX being able to perform with the consumer devices.

With 770 I can live for now. I get motion sickness quite easily but not in Elite thanks to the in cockpit view. High persistence still really sucks

 

[djbordie]

the concept of VR SLI is enticing though. One gpu per screen (per eye) sounds more ideal.

980s are going down in price big time since 980ti. so either ditch the 980 and get a TI or find a nice used 980 for sli.
would be my opinion/directive on this upcoming tech.

the 9xx series is almost a must due to the technology in the cards and VR implementation.

i have suggest a few friends not to bother with the 970 as an upgrade and rather save a bit for the 980+

then again, with all the dev support and updates in the coming months we may see some massive performance increases, allowing lower end rigs to perform decently. but that is a long ways away.

raw hp is required for vr, that is obvious. how much, is not.

i dont have any doubts the 980 will "suffice".

 

[ZZZRonin]

My advise, wait until the next graphic card generation, for Nvidia it will be a huge step forward because they goes from 24mn GPU directly to 16mn skipping over 20mn production (named Pascal). This result can give us 10x the speed of the actual graphic card. On the other side, it's still not clear if we will have to buy new motherboard with updated chipset or a new way better than the actual PCI-Express to connect this new video card. (sorry for my poor english).

 

[Oheck]

the concept of VR SLI is enticing though. One gpu per screen (per eye) sounds more ideal.

980s are going down in price big time since 980ti. so either ditch the 980 and get a TI or find a nice used 980 for sli.
would be my opinion/directive on this upcoming tech.

the 9xx series is almost a must due to the technology in the cards and VR implementation.

i have suggest a few friends not to bother with the 970 as an upgrade and rather save a bit for the 980+

then again, with all the dev support and updates in the coming months we may see some massive performance increases, allowing lower end rigs to perform decently. but that is a long ways away.

raw hp is required for vr, that is obvious. how much, is not.

i dont have any doubts the 980 will "suffice".

Take a look here, thats exactly what they are aiming towards (gpu per eye)
https://developer.nvidia.com/virtual-reality-development

 

[tresch]

Yeah, the new 0.7 SDK for Oculus already supports the VR SLI modes! I haven't actually tested it yet, because when the modes weren't available previously, I sold my two 970s and went to a single 980. I'm really excited for it, though. As soon as Elite updates to the newest DSK, I'll probably be grabbing a second 980, underclocking them both slightly for the sake of stability and longetivity, and then rocking max details with 1.5 or maybe even 2.0 supersampling

 

[tresch]

That thread is kinda related but not really. I Don't ever loose tracking. It never blips to grey. It's always accurate and low latency... the position just resets, and it resets to strange places. Like... my lap.

I've tried many different camera positions, and it happens randomly. sometimes when I'm sitting still, in a station, just kinda staring blankly at the station services, it'll just pop to a new location and I need to hit my oculus reset button to get it back in place.

In about an hour long session I have to reset my orientation probably about... 1-20 times.