There is a real misconception about how well coded for multi thread CPU’s ED is. It doesn’t throw everything at one or two cores/threads like you think at all. Probably a couple of threads on 12 are used a bit more than others but it is actually balanced quite evenly. Unlike in some games where one thread is pegged at 100%.
That said waiting is pretty sound advice but need to bite the bullet at some point.
I was talking about VR in general. Usually we deal with pretty hackish and unoptimised implementations, which rely on the fact that most VR users have killer rigs (because if you have disposable income for a VR headset like Vive you are assumed to have a killer rig anyway ;-) )
Core count and ghz is at best on par in importance right now.
Give a year or two anything under 6 cores will be seriously anachronistic.
Bang for buck is easily the new Zen's and you will want 3000mhz+ RAM yes it does matter.
Especially in VR.
Relevant to the thread- The go to for Intel gaming is the i5 8400 or similar, I'm not sure 6 cores is really enough for VR, but I've never found any benchmarks for it. The i7 is starting to get beyond bang for buck.
While what you write is true, and multicore is the way especially given the AMD success with Zen architecture, I am still not convinced that "VR in general" will "automagically" benefit from core count or hyperthreading. And there still are badly optimised titles like DCS's F18 module which will eat anything thrown at it including an i9 and 2080Ti. VR is nothing "magical", it doesn't require SETI-level of computations, it's just tracking the components and rendering two frames instead of one (I know I am oversimplifying to illustrate my point). The real onus of the CPU work for VR is that it has to rely "messages" between GPU and RAM pretty fast to match that magical 11ms frametime. In this aspect it is not much different to hundreds of other processes that run on your system while you are reading this post. I suppose if you have more cores you can peg the "vr backend" tasks (compositor) to a core separate to game process, but it can be seen as a move to try to squeeze last ounces of performance for a demanding title. Other than that, "VR" in terms of
running VR doesn't have tasks which would benefit from higher core count. Individual software titles might have those optimisations and I am sure after 2019 and widespreading of faster multi-core CPUs games will start demanding it more. That is if we survive the impending AAA games industry crash which is touted throughout 2018 fiascos like Fallout 76, Battlefield V or Diablo Immortal ;-)
I don’t think it’s that big a gamble. If you upgrade to an i7 6700K then you are doing a dead end upgrade. If you got a Ryzen then you still have the upgrade path to Ryzen 3 when it comes out.
Also the Ryzen is around £100 cheaper in the first place. I do understand the reservation though as I chose an i7 over a 1700X but AMD have closed the gap a fair bit. I also agree with TorTorden that anything less than 6 cores will be outdated soon.
Golden words. Yes, I suspect 2019 will be the year of great AMD comeback on consumer desktops. I'm barely looking at intel platform now, which locks the cpu to the socket and is way more expensive. They might be technically in the lead for the fastest CPUs on the market, but most definitely not with the "bang for the buck" category.
What programs do you use to track CPU and GPU load?
For VR there is
an excellent piece of software which can be bought on steam called fpsVR. It gives you all-you-need readouts (temps, cpu / gpu usage, ram usage, frametimes, fps etc...)
inside your VR headset in a convenient form and cost around 3GBP. Hardly bank breaking. It is a great utility and well worth the money. Caveat - WMR support is experimental from what I read, but on my Vive it works flawlessly. I can't recommend it enough!
Having it conveniently in VR allows you to finetune your graphics settings to the max by having information always available to you at a glance.
Another method though not that convenient would be
MSI Afterburner + Riva tuner (they're bundled). Don't be "scared" by MSI in the name even if you don't have MSI GPU, it is
THE GPU overclocking and monitoring standard (just switch the interface to another skin, because the default one is aimed at juveniles
). It gives you a very nice customizable on screen display which can be seen on the display mirror on monitor, including the graphs if you wish.
It's a shame you didn't wait for the 7nm architecture launch, the base Ryzen prices are expected to drop when it hits. Hopefully ;-).
