GPU advice

Bret Riverboat

Bret Riverboat
Hi all.

I bought my pc in June as per the rift specs and I now own a DK2 (yeah, couldn't wait...), but to be honest I'm a little disappointed with its performance and I mainly play using the monitor. Getting judder when I have a mirrored screen and the view is just not quite the same on low to mid graphics settings.

Im going to buy a 120gb SSD and a second 8gb ddr3 ram for my gigabyte H81M S2H motherboard as I feel the pc generally needs this boost, but I've also been thinking of upping the GTX 970 to a 980 ti.

I know the motherboard won't cut it in the future, but for now it seems my wish list will fit and work (pci 2). So, should I buy the gpu now or wait 6 months or a year for price drops when the new Pascal comes? If I do that will I need to change the motherboard as well? If I buy now will I get a noticeable difference?

i was going to run the DK 2 until vr settles down and becomes noticeably better.

Thanks everyone!
 

Mazhurg

Mazhurg
Couple of points:

Oculus support native within the game is still at SKD .5 and does not play well with Windows 10. So the current solution is to use SteamVR (and Oculus .8 SDK) as a shimmy. However it does introduce some performance issues and while acceptable is not a proper solution (for example the extended nature of the crossover support still has limitations on the interaction with the primary display - SLI / Crossfire being one, screen picture capture resolution being another...).

The new drivers implementations have vendors VR APIs that are not being currently used by the game engine, nor by the SteamVR shimmy (still uses legacy extended mode for the rift). This results in a much lower performance that could be achieved.

The incoming GPUs, while forecast to improve things on the performance side are currently only doing that on paper - for the exception of one controlled demo by AMD, and that was not about VR. It is never the less promising and if one has the patience one should really wait until they come out as prices on both legacy and (dare I say it?) new GPUs that can better handle VR will be lower.

Last, referring above to drivers and implementation, and the fact that we know Fdev are VR enthusiasts we can expect some type of update that will hopefully integrate the new tech - hopefully by April (my hope is by 2.1) to natively support direct access.

So yes, DK2 is currently the safest bet until the dust settles. And while it does means some irritation - Pair of 290s here that can't crossfire in game, resulting in some performance hit occasionally - it is the sanest option.
 
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Soda Popinski

Soda Popinski
Bret Riverboat said:
Hi all.

I bought my pc in June as per the rift specs and I now own a DK2 (yeah, couldn't wait...), but to be honest I'm a little disappointed with its performance and I mainly play using the monitor. Getting judder when I have a mirrored screen and the view is just not quite the same on low to mid graphics settings.

Im going to buy a 120gb SSD and a second 8gb ddr3 ram for my gigabyte H81M S2H motherboard as I feel the pc generally needs this boost, but I've also been thinking of upping the GTX 970 to a 980 ti.

I know the motherboard won't cut it in the future, but for now it seems my wish list will fit and work (pci 2). So, should I buy the gpu now or wait 6 months or a year for price drops when the new Pascal comes? If I do that will I need to change the motherboard as well? If I buy now will I get a noticeable difference?

i was going to run the DK 2 until vr settles down and becomes noticeably better.

Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

Before upgrading to a 980, try overclocking the 970. They do quite well. I've got mine overclocked 200mhz core / 600mhz memory. See if you can get the 0.5 runtime working. I couldn't get 0.6 installed, but 0.5 worked (may have used Admin mode).
 

Bret Riverboat

Bret Riverboat
Hi Mazhurg and Soda

Thanks for the replies. For the record I'm running win 7 and the 0.5 run time. I managed to get 0.8 running nicely for about half an hour using the instructions on the forum, but then it went all skew whiff and I'd had enough. My motherboard won't support 2 gpu's so one mighty powerful one is the only option at the moment, I did purchase a 980ti today and I'll sell my 970 on eBay soon after to recoup the finances!

i had a little go at oc'ing my gpu but I have no clue as to what I'm doing and I was scared I'd mess something up. The 980ti looks to be very good, so when it's set up I'll write back to give a verdict.

Thanks once again
 

megadonkeyx

M
Bret Riverboat said:
Hi Mazhurg and Soda

Thanks for the replies. For the record I'm running win 7 and the 0.5 run time. I managed to get 0.8 running nicely for about half an hour using the instructions on the forum, but then it went all skew whiff and I'd had enough. My motherboard won't support 2 gpu's so one mighty powerful one is the only option at the moment, I did purchase a 980ti today and I'll sell my 970 on eBay soon after to recoup the finances!

i had a little go at oc'ing my gpu but I have no clue as to what I'm doing and I was scared I'd mess something up. The 980ti looks to be very good, so when it's set up I'll write back to give a verdict.

Thanks once again
Click to expand...


i tried 0.8 with steamvr and win10 for a while then tried win 8.1 with 0.6 which was much faster and more stable all around but had some weird feeling that the pilot wasn't quite seated right and the cockpit felt smaller somehow.
although this could have been down to 6x cans of carlsberg, vr is always better drunk
 

KaizoMK

KaizoMK
I'm still looking to upgrade my Radeon hd 6700 so I can run a vr setup. Should I pick up the 970 and overclock it? Or should I get the 980 for twice as much? Is there an equivalent to the 980 that isn't like $500+?
 
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Xebec

X
KaizoMK said:
I'm still looking to upgrade my Radeon hd 6700 so I can run a vr setup. Should I pick up the 970 and overclock it? Or should I get the 980 for twice as much? Is there an equivalent to the 980 that isn't like $500+?
Click to expand...

I don't know if you mean 980Ti for twice as much or regular 980. Here in the US at least, the 970 is ~ $329, the 980 is 50% more, and the 980Ti is about 2x more.

If you mean regular 980 -- it's not worth 1.5-2x as much as a 970; you can safely overclock a 970 to perform about the same as a stock 980 (non-Ti). Some stock OC'd 970s are already this fast.

If you mean 980Ti -- this is a worthy step up from a 970. The 980Ti should be better than 2 x 970s in SLI because although the 970 SLI is about 15% faster in raw framerates than a single 980Ti; the copying of data across the PCI Express bus adds latency that cancels this out. I think a single 970 or 980 user is going to be a bit disappointed with VR in Horizons, at least if they've had a taste of a 980Ti in VR...
 

[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
if it were me i would overclock the balls off the 970 and then get a pascal 1070/1080 (or what ever its called) in June.

gtx980ti is very nice tho ;)
 

Bret Riverboat

Bret Riverboat
Xebec said:
I don't know if you mean 980Ti for twice as much or regular 980. Here in the US at least, the 970 is ~ $329, the 980 is 50% more, and the 980Ti is about 2x more.

If you mean regular 980 -- it's not worth 1.5-2x as much as a 970; you can safely overclock a 970 to perform about the same as a stock 980 (non-Ti). Some stock OC'd 970s are already this fast.

If you mean 980Ti -- this is a worthy step up from a 970. The 980Ti should be better than 2 x 970s in SLI because although the 970 SLI is about 15% faster in raw framerates than a single 980Ti; the copying of data across the PCI Express bus adds latency that cancels this out. I think a single 970 or 980 user is going to be a bit disappointed with VR in Horizons, at least if they've had a taste of a 980Ti in VR...
Click to expand...

And this is why I bought a Zotac 980ti. The 970 did it, but with difficulty. Pricing wasn't too bad- bought the card for £520 and I'll sell the 970 for £200 online, so £320 for the upgrade seems pretty fair. Just got to install the        now...!

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Soda Popinski said:
I'm in that boat.

Look on YouTube for how to overclock. MSI Afterburner seems to be everyone's favorite.
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I was afraid of cooling and power issues. I have a Fractal Design Core 1000 with 1 fan to cool the whole box.
 

Sanderson

Sanderson
Wait. New GPU's that are a lot less power hungry and/or much more powerful will be here in a few months. Unless you just have a lot of money.
 

KaizoMK

KaizoMK
Sanderson said:
Wait. New GPU's that are a lot less power hungry and/or much more powerful will be here in a few months. Unless you just have a lot of money.
Click to expand...

Do you have any hard release dates, or is this based on the fact that the rift is coming out and demand will force the issue?
 

[VR] Mad Mike

[VR] Mad Mike
i read - sorry you will have to google i cant remember link - that pascal titan is out in April, and pascal 1078/1080 out in june.
not sure how official that is, but it seems to be considered to be, at least the planned, release date.
 

Sanderson

Sanderson
KaizoMK said:
Do you have any hard release dates, or is this based on the fact that the rift is coming out and demand will force the issue?
Click to expand...

All I have is AMD and nVidia evidence from their own mouths but, as always the actual release dates are secret until they are announced.

For what it's worth, both AMD and nVidia are "supposed" to release new GPUs this year, AMD in a couple months or so.
 

Arithon

Arithon
I'm not sure why you are having performance issues. I have a MSI GTX 970 and ran my DK2 no problem on Win10 x64 using the 0.5 SDK.

I ran it originally with a GTX 660, which was a bit laggy and often dropped to 40fps, but the 970 ran as smooth as a nut. Mind you I was running Win 8 x64, then Win 10 from last year - so it could be a Win7 issue.
 

Gortron

Gortron
Bret Riverboat said:
Hi all.

I bought my pc in June as per the rift specs and I now own a DK2 (yeah, couldn't wait...), but to be honest I'm a little disappointed with its performance and I mainly play using the monitor. Getting judder when I have a mirrored screen and the view is just not quite the same on low to mid graphics settings.

Im going to buy a 120gb SSD and a second 8gb ddr3 ram for my gigabyte H81M S2H motherboard as I feel the pc generally needs this boost, but I've also been thinking of upping the GTX 970 to a 980 ti.

I know the motherboard won't cut it in the future, but for now it seems my wish list will fit and work (pci 2). So, should I buy the gpu now or wait 6 months or a year for price drops when the new Pascal comes? If I do that will I need to change the motherboard as well? If I buy now will I get a noticeable difference?

i was going to run the DK 2 until vr settles down and becomes noticeably better.

Thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

I built my PC on guessed CV1 Rift specs. I guessed right but ED is asking for more and I suspect that may become the base requirement for HTC Vive. The requirements make no sense on CPU or RAM. If you really want ED with VR just buy the head set and see what happens.
 
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