GTX 1080 + Vive = disappointment

[calebsmac]

Getting pretty frustrated with Elite: Dangerous & my Vive.

I bought the Vive specifically because of Elite Dangerous, and was extremely disappointed with how the game looked on my R9 390. So I decided to put it away for a while and wait for a GTX 1080.

I just got my MSI G1 Gaming X GTX 1080. It's an incredible card. But it can't play Elite: Dangerous.

I benchmarked the card on 3dmark, and ran numerous stress tests, it's solid. Played Far Cry 4 on ultra settings in 4k; card was maxed out (As with 3dmark stress test, GPU usage consistently at 100%) but no stability issues whatsoever.

But I can't play Eliteangerous with it. I get display driver crashes 5-15 minutes in. I've tried purging display drivers with DDU, messing with the nvidia power saver settings to favor performance, and reinstalling Elite: Dangerous. Even though CPU temps have stayed cool (50 deg. C) and GPU temps have been OK (70 deg. C) I've installed a new fan in my case to make sure memory, etc. are getting adequate ventilation. Not sure what I'll try next; might RMA the card, but literally nothing else is having a problem, just Elite.

Oh, and almost worst of all is that even though i'm still dropping tons of frames (enough to make it unplayable) with settings maxed, my GPU still tells me it's only being used at half capacity, and with temps/fan speeds low to boot.

Sorry, I just needed to vent. I've spent like $1500 hoping to play ED in VR, and am so frustrated at still not being there.

All that said, I definitely don't regret the Vive. The other games & motion control exceeded my expectations.

 

[xxiii]

Do those stress tests include memory? I suspect ED uses much more GPU memory than the typical game, and perhaps the card has some bad memory.

Also, could be a 64 bit issue with the drivers, maybe (and might explain why you're only having problems with ED, unless you've got some other 64 bit games? (Ashes of the Singularity is one).

 

[Captain Willard]

I've been looking at vr since the late 80's. VR still isn't here yet. When they can make it in wrap around style sunglasses and focus so I don't have to wear my glasses and a diving mask on my face I will get in line. But hey, you go.

 

[calebsmac]

Do those stress tests include memory? I suspect ED uses much more GPU memory than the typical game, and perhaps the card has some bad memory.

Also, could be a 64 bit issue with the drivers, maybe (and might explain why you're only having problems with ED, unless you've got some other 64 bit games? (Ashes of the Singularity is one).

Thanks for the reply. I captured some benchmarks, and it looks like ED never used more than 4 GB of memory, which is about what 3dMark's stress test used. 3dMark should have been launching 64 as well, but I'm not positive so maybe I'll force 64 just to be safe.

Any tips on what I could do to max out graphics memory on another game?

 

[Adam Lusardi]

Is it overclocked?

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

I've been looking at vr since the late 80's. VR still isn't here yet. When they can make it in wrap around style sunglasses and focus so I don't have to wear my glasses and a diving mask on my face I will get in line. But hey, you go.

Ive wanted this since i first read Neuromancer back in the 80th... now i got it. Its a beginning, but hey i am glad, that i am around.
If you really want VR, start now. Yes, it is the first step on a long road, but who cares? We finally got cyberspace and we can have it in our living room.

By the way, i have a GTX 970 and an Oculus Rift. Elite runs like a charm with constant 90 fps using 2.0 x oversampling (using the Rifts debug tool and not the Elite settings), everything turned on in medium to high settings and ultra shadows.
No crashes, no judder. I plan to pick up a 1080 within the next 2 months for maximized visual settings. I have no doubt, that the 1080 will deliver, from what i read.

 

[VR_Yata_PL]

I don't belive you. SS 2.0 and constant 90 fps with gtx970 , on planet , starports, engineer ? please dont fool us !
I dont have this numbers even on my new oc gtx1080.

 

[Jon flint]

First, id try deleting the gpu work table file (it's an XML I think), its located in the root directory for elite. That should force the game to rebuild shaders and can surprisingly solve many issues.

If the above doesnt work, well, driver crashes definately sounds like an issue with overlooking. I know that particular 1080 is pre OC'd from the factory. Maybe try switching between the various modes on the card, msi have presets for OC/gaming and silent I believe.

Failing that try downloading msi afterburner and drop your memory speed by 25MHz or so and give that a try.

As for trying to push up memory usage, land on a few different planet types, visit a few stations... after about an hour of play at 4k (no vr for me), Elite on my system was using 6.6gb of video memory, jumping between planet types (ice/rocky etc) seems especially memory hungry.

*edit* forgot to ask, does elite crash of you're playing on a monitor? Could help to narrow down the problem to something VR specific if it's only crashing with vive.

 

[Dbrn47]

If it's overclocked, lower it in increments of 50mhz. The game does not like stock overclocked cards for some reason. Even some non-overclocked cards have had issues.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

I don't belive you. SS 2.0 and constant 90 fps with gtx970 , on planet , starports, engineer ? please dont fool us !
I dont have this numbers even on my new oc gtx1080.

I am not fooling you. Use the debug tool and set pixels per display to 2.0, use the VR high settings, turn everything on, that is off (Like bloom and ambient occlusion and set it to medium). I have anti-aliasing off and ingame SS set to 1.0. The performance is outstanding.

 

[FireStream]

Ive wanted this since i first read Neuromancer back in the 80th... now i got it. Its a beginning, but hey i am glad, that i am around.
If you really want VR, start now. Yes, it is the first step on a long road, but who cares? We finally got cyberspace and we can have it in our living room.

By the way, i have a GTX 970 and an Oculus Rift. Elite runs like a charm with constant 90 fps using 2.0 x oversampling (using the Rifts debug tool and not the Elite settings), everything turned on in medium to high settings and ultra shadows.
No crashes, no judder. I plan to pick up a 1080 within the next 2 months for maximized visual settings. I have no doubt, that the 1080 will deliver, from what i read.

Same here. GTX 970, 8GB Ram, and old rusty i3. No judder at all after 1.2. Elite runs smooth as butter now, even on these specs.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

I am not fooling you. Use the debug tool and set pixels per display to 2.0, use the VR high settings, turn everything on, that is off (Like bloom and ambient occlusion and set it to medium). I have anti-aliasing off and ingame SS set to 1.0. The performance is outstanding.

I think you will find that ATW is working its nuts off and you are not getting anywhere near 90 fps.

I ran a 970 with my CV1 and couldnt manage any supersampling with the debug tool without dropping a lot of frames.

Even with my 1080 im running 1.5x SS and VR Low to maintain 90 fps most of the time.

 

[Blian]

I have the same issue on my 980. I tried evrything, but the only thing that worked was underclocking it by 51MHz. [yesnod]

 

[Lestenio]

I just got my MSI G1 Gaming X GTX 1080. It's an incredible card. But it can't play Elite: Dangerous.

Same card as you, same disillusionment. While I don't get crashes, the picture quality is too poor to enjoy.
When I first put the card in, I had one good game where I thought wow, its so clear and sharp. Every time since its only marginally better than my DK2. Turning on ss and my frame rate drops to 44, which is dire. It was so bad I thought I had a duff card.

I'm going to try deleting the XML file Jon suggested later tonight as something is clearly up

 

[CMDR Minion Blob]

I have owned the Vive for 3 weeks before my Oculus Rift CV1 arrived. My GTX 1080 FW (EVGA branded) had arrived the same time. I was running the Vive previously with an Asus 980Ti Matrix 6G B overclocked graphics card.

Regardless of hardware, the Vive is affected by a antialiasing rendering bug on Elite. It's been there a while; FDev is supposed to be working on it, but there is no ETA. The Rift does not have this issue. So I have returned my Vive to the manufacturer.

Besides the rendering bug, one important aspect of the current Vive driver/firmware had been very challenging to live with on my system. Nearly every time I had launched SteamVR there were some issues with waking one of both of the base stations, controllers, etc., no matter what I had tried to do to optimize it. It was a pain in the butt, frankly. Once everything was running including Elite it had worked reliably but the fuzzy picture quality was difficult to live with. The 1080 GTX made it a little bit better, smoother but it's nowhere near as good as the quality as the Rift.

BTW, the Rift runtime is remarkably solid. The software works all the time, every time. Launching Oculus Home produces consistent results, no annoying popups or driver issues at all. It's not a fair comparison since the Vive's room-scale functionality is missing from the Rift at this point but I have a really tiny room with absolutely no space for room-scale VR experiences. Elite was the main reason why I invested in VR the first place, so I don't really care about other apps at this time.

YMMV, and I was seriously considering keeping the Vive as well, regardless, but the overall software quality issues made it seem like it's more trouble than it's worth at this time especially with the uncertainty of when the rendering bug will be fixed in Elite.

Maybe whenever the next release comes out, the software will also be more mature and I'll be happy to reconsider owning one at that time. But for now and for Elite the Rift has no equal IMHO.

 

[shadragon]

Any 1080 card owners who feel crushing disappointment in the performance of their cards may feel free to ship them to me.

Please PM for my address and I will happily pay for overnight shipping.

Let's get you past this trauma and get rid of the source of the irritation ASAP.

I give. I'm a giver.

 

[Kapow]

I think that Vive + ED = huge disappointment at the moment. The card in this equation is secondary as a lot of us Vive users have 980ti's or 1080s some even 2 (SLI not supported either in VR) so at this point the card doesn't matter much as ED is simply not optimized for Vive and shouldn't use the support sticker. Is a massive miss-advertising at the moment. Once they fix it/if they fix it then they can use the Vive supported logo until then they are dishonest in my opinion with the way they market the game as VR frontier... Vive ready ect... Just a lot of marketing....

 

[CylonSurfer]

Ive wanted this since i first read Neuromancer back in the 80th... now i got it. Its a beginning, but hey i am glad, that i am around.
If you really want VR, start now. Yes, it is the first step on a long road, but who cares? We finally got cyberspace and we can have it in our living room.

By the way, i have a GTX 970 and an Oculus Rift. Elite runs like a charm with constant 90 fps using 2.0 x oversampling (using the Rifts debug tool and not the Elite settings), everything turned on in medium to high settings and ultra shadows.
No crashes, no judder. I plan to pick up a 1080 within the next 2 months for maximized visual settings. I have no doubt, that the 1080 will deliver, from what i read.

That is the funniest thing I have read all day. Elite doesn't even run @ 1.5 oversampling (in game or oculus's) with a constant 90FPS on a 980 let alone a 970.

 

[cherbert]

I wish we could get some kind of update from Frontier. I'm really disappointed in the Vive with Elite. I enjoyed playing in my DK2 for many hours at a time. Now I suffer glare from the cockpit bright lights, overall brightness issues (dark areas on a planet surface are just a murky mess. The DK2 didn't suffer this issue. And of course the rendering issue.

If we don't hear something soon I might consider selling my Vive and getting a CV1.

 

[Raptoyd]

That is the funniest thing I have read all day. Elite doesn't even run @ 1.5 oversampling (in game or oculus's) with a constant 90FPS on a 980 let alone a 970.

Yeah I cry also. I just sold my 980 for a 1080 and I could not touch those settings without judder let alone 90FPS.