Please help me find best bang for bucks CPU etc

[VR StarLightPL]

Doesn't matter for VR or not, the most current VR game engines, or game engines in general being Unity and Unreal are very very multicore capable, I don't think you would have cores not being leveraged even with a top end threadripper.

As for the industry, they are reaping what they sowed, and I'l happily throw gas on the bonfire.
Bethesda, EA and the lot of them can burn in the hell they made themselves, computer games and VR will outlive them.

The question is, are VR plugins of these well known engines also optimised. Because in my experience they are not. My friend had an i7 and we didn't notice significant differences except for min. fps. Granted we didn't do proper "lab testing" but it wasn't that the difference was "night and day" between his fairly new i7 and my old i5. The biggest gain was me moving from 1070 to 1080Ti (no wonder, thats approx. +70% performance jump), which allows me to pull much higher supersampling than before.

As for DCS, they are moving too slow. Not so slow like FDev-slow but I can say that nothing changed since the introduction of F18, and the problems with their engine are known since moving engine to 2.5 if I am not mistaken. F18 is borked, something is really off there, and they are not looking into it because they're busy bringing weapon systems etc. leaving us VR users in the dust. I still like to fly it though, and can't be bothered learning keyboard shortcuts to use in mig29 in VR as the cockpit is non-clickable. Despite being able to touch type well, this just isn't comparable to throwing switches in the cockpit.

As for the AAA industry, it's the stock market that is the root of all evil. If decisions are made by board people who only play golf while discussing their next business move, and companies are all about profit and not about the customer, there has to be a point where it crashes. My only fear is that we will again see the decline in available titles, and especially the decline in quality VR experiences. That's because only bigger players will have the resources to develop for such abysmall market, and from financial standpoint it will be only for "bragging rights", similar to what RTX is now. I wouldn't like to see VR market slow down even more because the tech is amazing. Things will most definitely change when people upgrade their systems organically, to pascal-level graphics. It is enough for VR and then we will need for VR headsets price to catch up; Oculus is doing that now by slashing Rift's price again to $349 and supposedly 399€ for us poor EU citizens. But unless our market will grow significantly I can't see many more companies investing in it. There will be low-quality indie titles and a few great ones for sure, but I can't say if they're doing us a favour or not.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Hello again!

Here is an update JIC anyone is remotely interested...

Got the pieces bit by bit. Once I had received them all I swapped the parts over. Installed the RAM modules last because it was easiest.

As I opened the RAM I noticed one of them had a mini post-it note stuck on in with a hand written 'DEF'. Defective? Tried them anyway and the BIOS recognised them no worries!

Mate has given me an SSD so tried to install W10. It didn't feel right, things took too long but it eventually installed.

Installing chipset drivers and W10 BSOD a couple of times but thought it might be because I had a Device Manager or something.
Attempted to update 1070 drivers. The NVidia installer stopped at the compatibility saying I didn't have any compatible HW!
Tried a different older driver and used driver removal software in Safe Mode. The unzip part failed.
Tried again! This time it got passed the zip but failed to install any of the bundled drivers included within NVidia's graphic driver.
Took out the 'DEF' RAM module. All worked. System felt stable.

So have ordered some new RAM - ugh!

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Yeah that definitely sound like a wonky ram stick and by no way you should be for it's replacement.
And then I would never buy anything from that place again.

The entire slowness of things could probably be explained by that stick of RAM.

And I would recommend completely reformatting that drive and reinstalling windows again, probably not a single driver has gone in without introducing errors.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Post-it note on RAM. Oh $deity... Refund or exchange both sticks if it were sold as a bundle. Sometimes the RAM sticks won't cooperate, experienced this myself back in the day. Separately they worked fine, together they crashed. Had to prove it and haul my mobo and hdd to another city, such were the market conditions back then. You definitely want to have even number of sticks to take advantage of Dual Channel.

Also I second TorTorden advice, format and reinstall that windows 10, it doesn't take much time now and it will save you lots of potential problems down the road.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Yeah a clean win 10 install on that should possibly take 10-15 minutes.
I also recommend using the Microsoft media creation tool.
That can create a usb flashdrive image with all but the last few weeks minor updates.
So you won't have to download and install five billion windows updates one at a time.

Gosh the hours I have wasted starting from scratch because windows update commuted harakiri after a fresh install...

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Finally got everything all set up. New RAM, fresh install.

Love it!!!!

I am still getting ATW / ASW whatever Oculus calls it in the station but even that feel strangely smoother! Placebo?

GPU maxed out at 79% and CPU cores were at worst 50% with most around 30%.


Now gonna test on AC and PCar2. The real reason I bought this bad boy.

Edit
PCars and AC similar story
GPU 90% and CPU kinda all over the place but never once 100% In AC one of the cores had a bunch of peaks and troughs and some of the peaks looked close to 100%.
Super smooth though!

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I am still getting ATW / ASW whatever Oculus calls it in the station but even that feel strangely smoother! Placebo?

GPU maxed out at 79% and CPU cores were at worst 50% with most around 30%.

Now gonna test on AC and PCar2. The real reason I bought this bad boy.

Yeah it's normal. Station interiors suck. There are also probably recommended settings for rift somewhere on the forums, also there is a way to improve the blacks after 3.3 update: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/468293-Tone-Mapping-Let-s-Make-Space-Dark-Again-Mk-3

Don't have PCar2 but AC should FLY on that setup. I can recommend settings for that by another vr enthusiast from our polish forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wajDiw93ZM, however that setup is for Pimax 5k+, so YMMV. Specifically he's advising using openvr because oculus' rendering mode is not compatible with pimax, so you can of course scratch that. He also recommends using mods. Give it a like if it helps you

Hope you enjoy your new VR rig

 

[sgurr]

Finally got everything all set up. New RAM, fresh install.

Love it!!!!

I am still getting ATW / ASW whatever Oculus calls it in the station but even that feel strangely smoother! Placebo?

GPU maxed out at 79% and CPU cores were at worst 50% with most around 30%.


Now gonna test on AC and PCar2. The real reason I bought this bad boy.

Edit
PCars and AC similar story
GPU 90% and CPU kinda all over the place but never once 100% In AC one of the cores had a bunch of peaks and troughs and some of the peaks looked close to 100%.
Super smooth though!

Good to hear it was worth it

 

[erbse-1]

I will probably switch from my 3570k @ 4.8GHZ to an 8600k as it is, to my knowledge, an 8700k without HT. I expect a lot from it to overclock it to 5ghz. You can get it now and then for about 200 Euro. I am a little surprised that it was not recommended here.

 

[CylonSurfer]

Yeah it's normal. Station interiors suck.

I wish I could figure out what the hell is wrong with them. Looking at SteamVR last night I had ~7ms in stations so bags of headroom yet I still saw stutter in game....I was also monitoring GPU / CPU / RAM usage, again loads of headroom but still frankly poop performance when entering a station. Oddly I always find the journey out to be a much smoother ride...

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Finally got everything all set up. New RAM, fresh install.

Love it!!!!

I am still getting ATW / ASW whatever Oculus calls it in the station but even that feel strangely smoother! Placebo?

GPU maxed out at 79% and CPU cores were at worst 50% with most around 30%.


Now gonna test on AC and PCar2. The real reason I bought this bad boy.

Edit
PCars and AC similar story
GPU 90% and CPU kinda all over the place but never once 100% In AC one of the cores had a bunch of peaks and troughs and some of the peaks looked close to 100%.
Super smooth though!

I noticed a huge drop in ASW artefacts after I upgraded as well.

Before on the i7 4790k, triggering ASW was instantly recognisable and uncomfortable.

As it is now i can barely tell if it is engaged or not.

 

[Benji85]

I got the i9 9900k a few days ago and it's bloody awesome. Doubled my fps coming from 2700k @4.7. I run 1080ti

 

[Benji85]

I will probably switch from my 3570k @ 4.8GHZ to an 8600k as it is, to my knowledge, an 8700k without HT. I expect a lot from it to overclock it to 5ghz. You can get it now and then for about 200 Euro. I am a little surprised that it was not recommended here.

You want HT for elite. It likes cores

 

[erbse-1]

I hope six cores will be enough. Are there comparisons in Elite with ht on and off at an 8700k or 9900k?
4 cores, however, are definitely too few for elite. Near stations with a lot of activity I have mostly around 95% cpu load, but also 90% gpu load (1080ti @ 2100/6300).

 

[Milner]

I will probably switch from my 3570k @ 4.8GHZ to an 8600k as it is, to my knowledge, an 8700k without HT. I expect a lot from it to overclock it to 5ghz. You can get it now and then for about 200 Euro. I am a little surprised that it was not recommended here.

The 8600k is £260 in the UK, it's not that it's not a good processor (the 8 series i5 CPUs are probably the most common gaming recommendation for 2d gaming) but elite in VR uses alot of threads and amds offerings are cheaper.

If it comes up for 200 euro please do share, that seems to good to be true!

 

[Milner]

I hope six cores will be enough. Are there comparisons in Elite with ht on and off at an 8700k or 9900k?
4 cores, however, are definitely too few for elite. Near stations with a lot of activity I have mostly around 95% cpu load, but also 90% gpu load (1080ti @ 2100/6300).

I'd also be keen to know if the 6 core i5 is enough and how much headroom it's got in elite VR.

 

[CMDR M Kozak]

I noticed a huge drop in ASW artefacts after I upgraded as well.

Before on the i7 4790k, triggering ASW was instantly recognisable and uncomfortable.

As it is now i can barely tell if it is engaged or not.

I agree as well. I cant tell when the shift from 90 fps to 45/asw happens when docking at a station. On the i5 4460 it was very noticable.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I wish I could figure out what the hell is wrong with them. Looking at SteamVR last night I had ~7ms in stations so bags of headroom yet I still saw stutter in game....I was also monitoring GPU / CPU / RAM usage, again loads of headroom but still frankly poop performance when entering a station. Oddly I always find the journey out to be a much smoother ride...

Same thing can be observed in different games. For example DCS can have low fps output and headroom in both CPU and GPU. People signalled that to Eagle Dynamics over and over. Rise of the Tomb Raider, the "tutorial tomb" has a sunlit place with hieroglyphs, framedrops to 30, cpu at 30%, gpu at 40%. Maybe some busy waits or something else, I don't know. And I always got stutter while looking at "srv panel" on my knees in stations in ED, regardless of graphical setting. It's not like VR is a priority for FDev anyway, and Braben thinks "it's a wonderful niche which is not there yet" (QFM) which translated from business speak is: we are only maintaining it now.

 

[A D]

Everyone will have a view. Me too.

I say:

- i7 is highly desirable (almost required) for VR.
- Any model that has 6 cores (2 extra cores makes a big difference).
- A plus if clockable, but not a deal breaker.

 

[Benji85]

Get the 9900k guys! Itssss sickkkk xD