DK2 and GPU(s)?

[Thespen Tombs]

I plan to get a DK2 for Christmas and given the smallish price difference, which of the options below do the forums think would be best?

2 x GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics or 1 x GTX 980 Gaming Edition 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card?

If really needed I could buy 1 GTX 980 now and get another later next year?

 

[jhondidfool]

970 is more bang for your money, but VR SLI is not coming in quite some time (we all know how Nvidia works), so the 980 is a better bet, because you can play with EVERYTHING MAXED, even downsampling from 4K. At 1080 is smooth as butter, and at 4K the judder is minimal. I've heard a lot of judder from 970 people in the Oculus forums.

 

[StuartGT]

With VR-SLI you'll still have some added latency with 2x 970s/980s compared to a single card, so I'd personally recommend only getting one for now - get a second card when the drivers (and VR-SLI specifically) mature. As to which card to buy, it's simply whether you think the 980's 10% performance advantage over the 970 justifies the higher price. Both will power the DK2 in ED brilliantly.

but VR SLI is not coming in quite some time (we all know how Nvidia works)

VR SLI is already available in Nvidia's current drivers, and can be enabled in the Control Panel - but only if you have a pair of 970s/980s. I'm hoping they'll support earlier generations soon too. --- THIS IS TOTALLY INCORRECT! Could have sworn I'd seen a screengrab somewhere of the setting, but according to the Oculus forumites it's not there yet: https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=15702

 

[saviornt]

If you're strictly gaming, I would probably go for the 970's due to the cost efficiency. However, if you do any video editing / streaming / rendering / game design, then I would go with the 980's.

 

[Distance]

The smart money would be to go with the 970's (I own one myself and they're awesome) but to play devils advocate it might be good to get a 980 and overclock it now and then when cv1 comes out or when vr sli is working better the prices of 980s might have gone down a bit and you could get a second one then.

 

[jptreen]

in case anybody is looking at this thread wondering whether they can get away with a cheaper alternative, I have run a DK 2 on a 750ti and it still works, albeit on the lowest settings with some judder, but nothing I find disorientating or stomach churning.

It's a perfectly playable experience, which when I have shown it off to other people (non-gamers) has still proved mind blowing to them.

Then again, I'm just borrowing my rift, if I'd actually paid for it I might be more hawkish about getting top quality graphics from it.

 

[kyoseki]

For what it's worth, I'm running twin 780 GTXs in SLI and don't notice any major latency issues, it's buttery smooth with almost everything turned on (not running DSR however, that's been giving me serious flicker issues any time I try to use it).

 

[Thoemse]

For what it's worth, I'm running twin 780 GTXs in SLI and don't notice any major latency issues, it's buttery smooth with almost everything turned on (not running DSR however, that's been giving me serious flicker issues any time I try to use it).

The added latency does not make it less "smooth". It doesn't feel right though.
Try a game that runs at constant 75 FPS with one or two cards and try it. Disabling one card will make for a much better experience.
In some games it will even make the difference of feeling sick or not (nausea).

Nobody knows how VR SLI will work and how latency will be. Going single GPU ist being on the safe side.
That being said the 980 GTX is not strong enough. Whoever was talking about 4k downsampling with the 980 GTX is lying to himself. It's a juddery mess. To me a GPU is fast enough for VR if it can keep 75 FPS during all situations including stations and asteroid fields.
I'd rather have max detail as well if possible.
That GPU is not available just yet though.

 

[NoiseCrime]

Personally I would go with a single GTX970 for now.

My reasons being that ED is still in a state of flux, we still waiting to see what nvidia's VR Direct will do and how well it will work with Oculus. While a GTX980 is impressive its not hugely faster ( I seem to remember 10-15% in gpu benchmarks, but costs 40-50% more) than a single GTX970 and ultimately it may not be capable of driving current VR experiences, let alone future ones, especially if you are considering upgrading to CV1 when Oculus release it (hopefully by end of next year).

Going with a single GTX970 now means you can enjoy ED with mostly high settings (shadows seem to be the main killer and setting them to low doesn't really affect the experience) and once ED is released or other games come along you can make an informed choice as to whether a second GTX970 is worthwhile or not. Indeed the CV1 may well go beyond needing current cards completely, considering there is talk of it going to 2560x1440 at 90Hz, that is a huge jump in the amount of pixels to fill each frame, which will be even worse if you still need to supersample and of course more frames to fill every second.

Obviously it depends on how much disposable income you have, if you can buy sli 970 or 980 now and next year buy another 980 or next gen gpu's then it doesn't really matter.

My only other comment would be is that i've seen a whole range of opinions from players using GTX970, SLI 970 and 980 and i'm not convinced that you can guarantee that any of them are going to give you robust 75Hz at high settings. Some people have claimed they can, whilst others have said they couldn't. This could of course be dependent upon other system hardware as well as what players find acceptable in terms of quality vs stuttering.

When I was comparing 970 vs 980 and looking at gaming stats for 4k I found very few modern games could mange above 30 let alone 75hz, so in my opinion GPU's for 4k gaming is some way off still. e.g. this link - techpowerup study on SLI 970's comapres them to single 980. Obviously it depends on game settings and things like x4 AA is going to be demanding at 4k, but still the current gen GPU's have problems hitting 60Hz. I think thi is relevant since supersampling or Nvidia's DSR is effectively going to be equivalent of pushing 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 (i.e. 4K) type resolutions for a DK2 1920x1080 screen.

I've just bought a whole new system with a single GTX970 and find the game runs pretty much well with some specific settings lowered/disabled. My plan being to go SLI once we know the requirements of ED and if VR Direct works or ideally just wait it out till oculus CV1 is released at which point you may need sli next gen cards anyway.

 

[kyoseki]

The added latency does not make it less "smooth". It doesn't feel right though.
Try a game that runs at constant 75 FPS with one or two cards and try it. Disabling one card will make for a much better experience.
In some games it will even make the difference of feeling sick or not (nausea).

I'm pretty sensitive to latency induced nausea, but as I say, running SLI on the 780s doesn't induce enough latency for me to notice because it appears that the increased frame rate offsets a sizeable chunk of the added latency due to SLI/AFR.

 

[atlas974]

VR SLI is working with 970/980gtx (of course there still improvments to be made), added latency isn't noticable and before my SLI of 970gtx i used to play a lot in the rift on ED with a r9 280x! Never saw a difference, just make sure to have VR pre rendered frame to 1

 

[DarthBeavis]

Personally I would go with a single GTX970 for now.

My reasons being that ED is still in a state of flux, we still waiting to see what nvidia's VR Direct will do and how well it will work with Oculus. While a GTX980 is impressive its not hugely faster ( I seem to remember 10-15% in gpu benchmarks, but costs 40-50% more) than a single GTX970 and ultimately it may not be capable of driving current VR experiences, let alone future ones, especially if you are considering upgrading to CV1 when Oculus release it (hopefully by end of next year).

Going with a single GTX970 now means you can enjoy ED with mostly high settings (shadows seem to be the main killer and setting them to low doesn't really affect the experience) and once ED is released or other games come along you can make an informed choice as to whether a second GTX970 is worthwhile or not. Indeed the CV1 may well go beyond needing current cards completely, considering there is talk of it going to 2560x1440 at 90Hz, that is a huge jump in the amount of pixels to fill each frame, which will be even worse if you still need to supersample and of course more frames to fill every second.

Obviously it depends on how much disposable income you have, if you can buy sli 970 or 980 now and next year buy another 980 or next gen gpu's then it doesn't really matter.

My only other comment would be is that i've seen a whole range of opinions from players using GTX970, SLI 970 and 980 and i'm not convinced that you can guarantee that any of them are going to give you robust 75Hz at high settings. Some people have claimed they can, whilst others have said they couldn't. This could of course be dependent upon other system hardware as well as what players find acceptable in terms of quality vs stuttering.

When I was comparing 970 vs 980 and looking at gaming stats for 4k I found very few modern games could mange above 30 let alone 75hz, so in my opinion GPU's for 4k gaming is some way off still. e.g. this link - techpowerup study on SLI 970's comapres them to single 980. Obviously it depends on game settings and things like x4 AA is going to be demanding at 4k, but still the current gen GPU's have problems hitting 60Hz. I think thi is relevant since supersampling or Nvidia's DSR is effectively going to be equivalent of pushing 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 (i.e. 4K) type resolutions for a DK2 1920x1080 screen.

I've just bought a whole new system with a single GTX970 and find the game runs pretty much well with some specific settings lowered/disabled. My plan being to go SLI once we know the requirements of ED and if VR Direct works or ideally just wait it out till oculus CV1 is released at which point you may need sli next gen cards anyway.

SLI Titans are good for 4k due to their 6 gig frame buffer. I manned the 4k Surround gaming demo in the NVIDIA booth at CES 2014. We ran 4-way SLI Titans pushing three 65" 4k tvs in surround at 60hz. I currently am running 4-way SLI Titans as well on one system (34" LG Ultrawide monitor) and have a LAN rig in testing with a TitanZ (the rig I am using for OR).

 

[Chris_t0f]

I am new to ED but I am very familiar with rigs builds.
My recommendation, get a single 970 (not even clear DK2 even supports SLI) with more GPU RAM. The difference is not that much FPS-wise with a 980 (ROI does not justify the cost).

With the money you saved, get a HOTAS like the saitek X52 Pro for less than $200. Without it, the feeling of immersion is just not the same...

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

I am new to ED but I am very familiar with rigs builds.
My recommendation, get a single 970 (not even clear DK2 even supports SLI) with more GPU RAM. The difference is not that much FPS-wise with a 980 (ROI does not justify the cost).

With the money you saved, get a HOTAS like the saitek X52 Pro for less than $200. Without it, the feeling of immersion is just not the same...

DK2 and ED support SLI - I'm running dual 680 GTXs and did some benchmarks - makes the difference between dropping into the 50s and stable 75 FPS for me (although performance decreased for me in beta 3). The latency was noticeable at small, abrupt head movements, but doesn't induce nausea or a decrease in the feeling of presence for me.

I wont upgrade now as my system still provides for a well-playable experience. So I wait for the CV1, then build around that with what's available then, and I don't think the 970/980 series is future-proof enough to upgrade now. If I had to upgrade now, I'd still go for a single 970 now, as it's a card you may not want to use for that long.

Having that said, even if SLI wouldn't see a decrease in latency in the future, I would still go for SLI in my own next build, based on my experience with SLI in ED on the DK2.

 

[Amorelia]

970 is better value. Also I don't believe some of the comments here about SLI are correct for the new 9-series GTX cards.

If money is no object, go for 980 with a view to a 2nd in SLI soon. Otherwise, 970-SLI > single 980.

 

[DarthBeavis]

970 is better value. Also I don't believe some of the comments here about SLI are correct for the new 9-series GTX cards.

If money is no object, go for 980 with a view to a 2nd in SLI soon. Otherwise, 970-SLI > single 980.

you do not think a larger frame buffer will help - more ram. Titan > 980 for ram

 

[NoiseCrime]

you do not think a larger frame buffer will help - more ram. Titan > 980 for ram

Not really, a single RGBA32 float buffer at 2560x1440 is less than 60Mb, so even using multiple ones isn't going to add up to much, not when you have 4GB, the extra 2GB on a Titan is unlikely IMHO to add anything.

Now when you add in MSAA and/or SSAA at high multiples like x4 or x8 then memory requirements grow quickly, but even then you are looking at between 1 and 2GB, so worse case you'll have 2GB left over for textures, geometry etc and thats not accounting for the fact that even sli titans would be hard to maintain 75Hz at 1920x1080 with x8 MSAA and x4 SSAA, the shear number of pixels being rendered simply become overwhelming long before you run out of memory.

At least thats my untried and untested opinion.

 

[saviornt]

GTX 980. Getting a second one once VR-SLI comes into play.

 

[Chris_t0f]

I have build dozens of setups with and without SLI. I have arrived to the conclusion that SLI in games is always poorly supported, if supported at all. I note that it, of course, provides fps boosts when fully supported, but my experience is that you can go for the extra buck, get an "better" card for the money, and not worry about this at all.

If you check nvidia drivers updates, most of the fixes relates to SLI, that's a sign. I went for the hassle free config and
I can tell you I got pure 75 FPS with one 970. ( I also use an old 760 dedicated to PhysX - don't know how that impacts it, maybe it does).

Now if you use OBS, maybe that's not the case.

 

[NoiseCrime]

I have build dozens of setups with and without SLI. I have arrived to the conclusion that SLI in games is always poorly supported, if supported at all. I note that it, of course, provides fps boosts when fully supported, but my experience is that you can go for the extra buck, get an "better" card for the money, and not worry about this at all.

Well I've always been sceptical to the value of SLI and certainly would not advise anyone to get it currently, especially if they might plan on getting Rift CV1, but I do think things might be about to change.

I'm very hopeful that nvidia's VR Direct will offer a much improved method of rendering VR via SLI, which I believe is intended to be one gpu per eye. From my point of view this makes a huge deal of sense, not least that it works with current 3d engine design. There will still be the overhead on the cpu for culling and sending data/commands, but i've often seen it said that cpu's (i5 and i7) are not the bottleneck in gaming. I think there is no question that SLI will be needed in order to run the state of the art games at ultra detail and high resolutions ( downsampled), but I also feel most of these games can easily run on a single gpu if you are prepared to drop some settings.

Just going to have to wait and see how well or not VR Direct works and what resolution/framerate CV1 is going to be as to whether SLI is worth it long term.