Best single graphics device for VR? (August 2017)

[Enride]

I have a radeon 290x that is a few years old. Even from the start it was giving me problems but nothing that couldnt be handled by MSI afterburner.
Its also been performing really well in both regular and VR gaming. Of course I often need to tweak some settings but ive been more then satisfied with its actual ingame performance.

Lately ive been having issues I link to the graphics device that I cant seem to solve with software and Im under the impression my card is failing, or at least starting to show signs of it. So im looking to possibly get myself a new one this fall/winter and at the same time perhaps update a few other bits n pieces of the rig.

So two rather simple question;

What is the best single graphics card I can get today for use with VR?
And what is, in YOUR opinion, the most affordable in the same regard?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Zeeman]

Titan XP (the second Titan X Pascal variant)
Otherwise, pick your favourite 1080Ti...

Z...

 

[Kingtutuk]

I have a 1060Ti that works just fine, and plays all other vr titles I have with little or no problems.

 

[Ulysses_W]

For the affordable option;

I'm happy with my Gtx 980.
I run it at VR Medium
HMD Quality at 1.25
SS at 1.0

And I'm enjoying the visuals immensely. Personally, I can't justify the expense of buying a new Gtx 10x0 for a few extra fps that I don't really need right now. I imagine the ti version would be a tad better.

 

[D4RK5T4R]

I am considering a VR set, but have only one eye. Can anyone that has a headset let me know if it looks playable with one eye shut?

 

[Ulysses_W]

I am considering a VR set, but have only one eye. Can anyone that has a headset let me know if it looks playable with one eye shut?

I think only a person with the same issue can answer that question reliably. If I close one eye, the world seems to odd to me, but if it's something you lived with for a while I guess the experience would be much different.

I'd recommend trying a VR headset out before you buy. (I'd say that to anyone, but I would emphasise the same advice to you)

Good luck!

 

[Enride]

I am considering a VR set, but have only one eye. Can anyone that has a headset let me know if it looks playable with one eye shut?

I dont think you would have any issues using VR with one eye that you arent already familiar with using regular screens. Maybe the loss of pheriperal on one side is a bit more prominent since you experience a more "in game" visual as the screen(s) are really close to your eye then you do with a screen placed in front of you clearly visible in its entirely through your working eye but ive tried closing an eye and aside from not having your experience with it I dont see why it would work just as well!

Perhaps you could try VR somewhere, local store or a friend, and see how it feels before shelling out a lot of money for it!

 

[Tikigod]

Without any mention of what the OPs budget is, it's pretty much impossible to answer the OP.

I mean overall for performance vs cost, the single most worthwhile GPU on the market currently is a RX Vega.

However if you have extra money to burn on something that will be made redundant in the coming months when Nvidia release their actual card architecture that doesn't either just poorly supports various DX12/Vulkan processes or uses 7 year old duct tape solutions borrowed from AMD as a stop gap, then you could always just go for a GTX 1080/ti providing you're happy with buying something for £700+ that you'll be needing to replace within 12 months due to lack of proper future support capability.

As that is essentially what Pascal is... a "Just throw anything out" placeholder architecture to take market share from AMD's Polaris, whilst they finish off consumer-grade Volta cards that weren't ready for market at the time. With the Volta range hopefully having a whole lot more long term future proofing to them than Pascal-based cards have... for now Pascal-based cards are great at just brute-forcing performance out of most of what's on the market today but that's not going to hold out for long as more games come to expect efficient handling of DX12/Vulkan, so they're especially not something where you should be thinking you've got a GPU to last you another 2 years or anything close to that even at their price point.

Nvidia have tried to patch it up as much as they can with various DX12/Vulkan optimisation driver releases which they claim "fix the problem" across the last 12 months, but Pascal-based cards still don't handle such things properly (And can't in the case of things like Asynchronous computation where Nvidia decided to copy a idea from 7 year old AMD GPUs rather than offer proper Async computation capability in Pascal cards).

Though I suppose they might pull another stunt like they did with the current Titans a few weeks back when AMD showed they had real competition to Titans in performance but at a lower price point, and Nvidia announced they'd suddenly discovered they could ramp up Titan performance by a factor of 3-5 times in a single driver release that same day..... and they certainly haven't been screwing over everyone with majorly restricted consumer hardware that they've been forcibly setting to under-perform compared to what it should be (Whilst still ramping up the price) for years now just so they could continue to peddle Quadro GPUs to other sectors for £1,000 - £3,000 more.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

Titan XP (the second Titan X Pascal variant)
Otherwise, pick your favourite 1080Ti...

Z...

^This. I am having a blast with Elite in VR on the 1080ti. It was a massive leap in performance and quality, coming from a GTX970.
If i was asked to recommend, i would totally repeat Zeeman here.

 

[Crank Larson]

I bought a 980Ti for around £400 just before the Vive was released. Got rid of the Vive, but kept the card. I wasn't sufficiently impressed with the Vive resolution for E: D (I note that there is still a stickied thread regarding resolution issues in the Vive - were these ever resolved?), though the room scale stuff was excellent (whole family enjoyed that).

I bought a Rift last week, and it is much better than the Vive for E: D (I don't have to lean forward to read the UI, for example). It doesn't feel as well built, but is lighter and more comfortable (most likely due to the weight), so I'll be keeping this one. My 980Ti handles it quite nicely (though have been playing with graphics settings to optimise planetary settings, which can push things slightly at ultra).

I was surprised when in comparison the 980Ti is not actually much slower than a 1080 (around 10% in most comparisons I have seen), so I have no intention of upgrading until the next generation of cards. If you keep an eye on Ebay, you can find 980Ti's come up for a good price (that is where I got mine). Beware scammers, though - my first Ebay purchase of the card was a scam (though covered by Paypal, so no loss to me). It seems that high value computer components attract the wrong sort...

EDIT: It should be noted that CPU is also important for VR, as are chipsets (the higher bandwidth, the better). What system are you looking to upgrade?

 

[Mxpower76]

I have a 1060 and have most settings on med-high. Frame rate is pretty solid in most situations. I wouldn't looking at anything below a 1060 6gb. Then it comes down to how much money you want to spend.

 

[Bladesteel]

I am considering a VR set, but have only one eye. Can anyone that has a headset let me know if it looks playable with one eye shut?

There was a post (on reddit I think) by a one eyed guy. VR worked fine from him. He gets the same parralax effect when moving his head as he does in the real world so aside from distance information from his eyes focus muscles he gets the same as he's used to from real life.

And if you search around you might buy a dirt cheap used headset where the sceen or lens you don't use has been damaged.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

OP asked a simple question.

"What's the best gpu for vr?".
Simple answer : The most powerful one you get which has been answered already.
The Titan Xp.
Followed by 1080ti, followed by 1080.
Then I suppose the vega comes between 1070 and 1080, cost about as much as the 1080, and draws as much power as a titan.

 

[Enride]

Alrite tnx everyone for the input.

1080ti looks to be the purchase for me then, a lot of people are satisfied with them and performance looks good.

 

[Crank Larson]

Alrite tnx everyone for the input.

1080ti looks to be the purchase for me then, a lot of people are satisfied with them and performance looks good.

You aren't just upgrading the card, though? If your system is the same age as your current card, then you'll lose much of the performance of the 1080Ti due to the rest of the system not being able to keep up...

 

[VonBlade]

1080Ti is ludicrously good and will pump out mental frame rates on anything upwards of a G3258 or i3.

edit I assume you've got an SSD btw. The difference having your OS on a SSD makes is beyond count.

 

[Henri]

Without any mention of what the OPs budget is, it's pretty much impossible to answer the OP.

I mean overall for performance vs cost, the single most worthwhile GPU on the market currently is a RX Vega.

However if you have extra money to burn on something that will be made redundant in the coming months when Nvidia release their actual card architecture that doesn't either just poorly supports various DX12/Vulkan processes or uses 7 year old duct tape solutions borrowed from AMD as a stop gap, then you could always just go for a GTX 1080/ti providing you're happy with buying something for £700+ that you'll be needing to replace within 12 months due to lack of proper future support capability.

As that is essentially what Pascal is... a "Just throw anything out" placeholder architecture to take market share from AMD's Polaris, whilst they finish off consumer-grade Volta cards that weren't ready for market at the time. With the Volta range hopefully having a whole lot more long term future proofing to them than Pascal-based cards have... for now Pascal-based cards are great at just brute-forcing performance out of most of what's on the market today but that's not going to hold out for long as more games come to expect efficient handling of DX12/Vulkan, so they're especially not something where you should be thinking you've got a GPU to last you another 2 years or anything close to that even at their price point.

Nvidia have tried to patch it up as much as they can with various DX12/Vulkan optimisation driver releases which they claim "fix the problem" across the last 12 months, but Pascal-based cards still don't handle such things properly (And can't in the case of things like Asynchronous computation where Nvidia decided to copy a idea from 7 year old AMD GPUs rather than offer proper Async computation capability in Pascal cards).

Though I suppose they might pull another stunt like they did with the current Titans a few weeks back when AMD showed they had real competition to Titans in performance but at a lower price point, and Nvidia announced they'd suddenly discovered they could ramp up Titan performance by a factor of 3-5 times in a single driver release that same day..... and they certainly haven't been screwing over everyone with majorly restricted consumer hardware that they've been forcibly setting to under-perform compared to what it should be (Whilst still ramping up the price) for years now just so they could continue to peddle Quadro GPUs to other sectors for £1,000 - £3,000 more.

AMD is misleading with less than honest launch pricing information, I mean come on pulling the retailer rebate ONE WEEK after release w/o telling anyone (especially reviewers?!)
Their cards run hotter, suck more power and need a whole lot of overclocking to be almost as fast as the 1081 ti.
Also...it is AMD which is pushing DX12 as supposedly their cards become lightning fast using that API - see; Total War Warhammer and Deus Ex benchmarks (Epic FAIL).

Titan XP (the second Titan X Pascal variant)
Otherwise, pick your favourite 1080Ti...

Z...

The MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning Z allegedly passes Titan X performance levels and very rarely hickups when playing Elite in VR, the gaming one look allright too.

 

[Enride]

You aren't just upgrading the card, though? If your system is the same age as your current card, then you'll lose much of the performance of the 1080Ti due to the rest of the system not being able to keep up...

Well I hadnt planned on it since I was under the impression the rest of my rig is up to the job. Currently its an i7-4790K with 16gb and SSDs and I dont know the brand of teh powersupply but its an expensive piece well overdimensioned so it shouldnt be a problem unless it starts to fail.

What would you suggest?

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Well I hadnt planned on it since I was under the impression the rest of my rig is up to the job. Currently its an i7-4790K with 16gb and SSDs and I dont know the brand of teh powersupply but its an expensive piece well overdimensioned so it shouldnt be a problem unless it starts to fail.

What would you suggest?

I'm on the same setup.
I'm running close to ultra settings now with a few tuned down for fps.
And I guess I am one of those super picky people when it comes to fps drops.
I could see someone less picky about that actually being able to run even higher settings.
If they are ok with the occasional ripple.

Truth is the genuine superkiller build for vr hasn't been invented yet.
Maybe in a few years

By which I mean capable of running everything at ultra ultra and supersampling above 1.5
And never drop below 90fps.

 

[Enride]

I'm on the same setup.
I'm running close to ultra settings now with a few tuned down for fps.
And I guess I am one of those super picky people when it comes to fps drops.
I could see someone less picky about that actually being able to run even higher settings.
If they are ok with the occasional ripple.

Truth is the genuine superkiller build for vr hasn't been invented yet.
Maybe in a few years

By which I mean capable of running everything at ultra ultra and supersampling above 1.5
And never drop below 90fps.

Ooh that sounds nice, is that with a 1080TI?

Im not nitpicky with details but very sensitive to framerates and often accept what others perceive to be disgusting visuals to get a smooth gameplay!
But it would be nice for something with so much atmosphere as ED to be able to crank the settings up as well!