How best to upgrade my machine for DK2?

[Duderama]

Another victim of Oculur Rift DK2 reporting...

Got my DK2 this week, got it to work and two immediate reactions: (i) wow!, totally worth it!, great! & (ii) my machine just can't handle it. So the question to the crowd, what is the best strategy to upgrade the computer and be fully in the position to enjoy the VR experience with ED?

So my current set-up is as following: Intel Core i5 760, ASUS P7P55D, ATI Radeon HD 5850, 16GB Kingston DDR3-1333.

Would upgrading the GPU be sufficient or should I go for full board / CPU / GPU upgrade?

More RAM?

Would SSD makes things much better?

What single components / combos are recommendable?

Specific setups for DK 2 / ED out there?

Not really budget constraint but would like to have a reasonable value for money solution w/o a need to upgrade again in one year time.

Thanks for the support!

 

[Beavis Tingleball]

how much money do you have?..or want to spend? If building a new system is not out of the question, then i'd go that route. You could definitely use a new GPU but yer mother board is not really up to the task. not sayin your PC sucks or anything like that BUT it is kinda outdated for ED and the rift. I could suggest quite a few upgrades if i know what you want to do. I play on an x79 mobo with 2 gtx670 pe's and a humble i7 3820 and I can ultrafy ED on my rift.

 

[bubbleawsome]

The CPU and RAM will not directly effect the FPS as much as a GPU will. If you have a fair amount of money to upgrade I would replace the CPU, mobo, and GPU, but not RAM or storage.
if you have enough to do a full rebuild I would make sure you have a good enough PSU (High quality well known manufacturer 500/550w) along with a 970, and then get an i5 4690k along with a good z97 board.
If you have slightly less I would go with the PSU and a 960 or r9 280x.
If you have even less I would go with the PSU and a 760 or r9 270.
If you don't want to change the PSU get a 750ti without external power plugs.

tl;dr
Since you said you have no real budget I would go with this, and then add another 970 if the FPS still isn't what you want. That RAM will work fine and an SSD isn't something you need for elite. It is nice for booting windows though. I also included a case in case (case in case. hahahah) yours cant fit an ATX mobo.
Build- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/rD3Fyc
It's better than my build that runs the game at 60fps near constant maxed out along with 1.5x supersampling. Should run the Rift and other games perfectly fine for while at max, and much longer at lower settings.

 

[Duderama]

Thanks for the answers!

As I said, budget is not really a constraint, but I would not just spend 1000 in one go just because I can. Ideally the upgrade should happen over time and if it is done in one go, the setup should be scale-able, i.e. over next 18 months I can upgrade one component at a time instead of going full recycle again. To be fair I had a similar idea when buying my current PC, but I never got around it as most games (e.g. War Thunder) were working just fine. I am also 100% fine with my current setup for running ED on the normal screen, it is this damn DK2 where I need more power.

I was thinking about the following sequence:

1) Purchase GTX 970 & a great CPU fan. Overclock CPU. Hopefully this should be sufficient to run ED & DK2 with High / Medium settings
2) Upgrade PSU, Mobo & CPU (my case does support ATX, but probably would need more power)
3) Upgrade CPU and have either a second GTX 970 or next gen GPU
4) Optional: more / better RAM, SDD. [if needed]

I could probably spread these steps over next 6-12 months. If after step 1) I am not happy with performance (probably due to CPU bottle necking the GPU) I could combine it with step 2). Step 3 would be the next upgrade without a need for full recycle.

Please start shooting holes in my plan.

Thanks.

P.S. Btw. DK2 is a great money saver. Next big thing for most sim guys would have been a multi monitor setup. Same requirements for hardware with added cost of screens, but a fraction of immersion DK2 provides!

 

[bubbleawsome]

There are two problems with step one that kinda interrupt the other steps. Depending what PSU you have now you might need to upgrade that with your 970. Also, I don't think your CPU overclocks. IIRC the only nehalem CPUs that overclocked were the extreme editions, unless your board supports BCLK overclocking.
Step 3 is good. Any new gen i5 will max the game no problem. I doubt you will need to upgrade it unless you want to.
Step 3 and 4 are perfectly logical, but you will not need it. Your RAM is faster and higher capacity than mine, and the SSD doesn't really effect ED at all.

There may be other reasons to upgrade though.

For comparison, my build that runs the game 1080p maxed without supersampling without drops. If I up the settings to SMAA and 1.5x supersampling I drop to the high 40s in stations.

i5 4670k@4.2Ghz
8GB 1333Mhz RAM
R9 280x 1100/1500
550w PSU

 

[Beavis Tingleball]

start with mobo, cpu and psu. no less than 850w or you're wasting your money. get a top end mobo with pci-e 3.0 . choose unlocked cpu for said mobo. put it together and tweak for oc'ing. this way you'll eliminate alot of guess work and bottle-necking. I find the closed loop water cooling for cpu's to be faaaaaaaaaaar superior to any air cooling when oc'ing so i'd def look into that.

 

[Slopey]

The 5850 isn't going to do it.

You need to upgrade your PSU, and depending what slots you have on the mobo, the mobo/cpu also, although an i5 should be ok.

Where you'll get the most bang though is the GPU - if you want it smooth, you need to go HIGH end. You're talking 970/980 for that really. CPU OC'ing may not help as much as you may think - ultimately it's going to come down to GPU performance.

 

[Slopey]

P.S. Btw. DK2 is a great money saver. Next big thing for most sim guys would have been a multi monitor setup. Same requirements for hardware with added cost of screens, but a fraction of immersion DK2 provides!

Any mid-range card will do triple-headed now, it's a no-brainer. And you can get monitors for £120 ea which will be perfectly fine. So really, only about £360 to add tripleheaded (or 240 if you already have one of the same monitors).

The issue with the DK2 is that it's quite impractical unless you can dedicate undisturbed time to it. I run both it, and a triple-headed setup so when I have the time (and peace) I can use the DK2, other times, I can fly triple-headed with Track IR which while not as immersive, is far far far superior to a single screen.

 

[Sanderson]

+1 to the GPU having the biggest impact on DK2 performance. One advantage of a nVidia card is it's efficiency or that they need less power to run. I have GTX770's in SLI and a 735w power supply, something that's really not possible with comparable AMD cards. Also nVidia tends to update drivers quicker and more often. I'm not knocking AMD cards, they are great but, personally I prefer nVidia.

I'd advise, just IMO, that you don't go with anything higher than a 970, unless you're very financially secure, simply because VR is so fluid right now. Save some money for whats in the "pipe" when it comes out, like the CV1, when it arrives or possibly the Valve VR HMD or Razer's HMD VR product.

Just my $.02. I just happen to have 2 770's (I have 4 kids) so I got lucky as they are very powerful in SLI and ED supports it. Also, contrary to popular belief a 600w power supply will run just about any single nVidia video card just fine, unless you have a lot of power hungry unnecessary components.

 

[adoredtv]

+1 to the GPU having the biggest impact on DK2 performance. One advantage of a nVidia card is it's efficiency or that they need less power to run. I have GTX770's in SLI and a 735w power supply, something that's really not possible with comparable AMD cards.

You can easily run Crossfired 280x's on a 735W PSU and they'll generally beat SLI 770's.

Also nVidia tends to update drivers quicker and more often. I'm not knocking AMD cards, they are great but, personally I prefer nVidia.

Nvidia does tend to update drivers faster but they also tend to break things more often because of that.

I'd advise, just IMO, that you don't go with anything higher than a 970, unless you're very financially secure, simply because VR is so fluid right now. Save some money for whats in the "pipe" when it comes out, like the CV1.

I agree with this and I made a post to that effect in this subforum yesterday - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118288&p=1838623&viewfull=1#post1838623

I can see in this forum that 99% of people seem unable to realise that AMD exists and is a very adept tech company. According to Oculus themselves, AMD has a pretty clear lead in VR, yet most of you are still all buying Nvidia hardware and convincing others to do the same. If you truly care about VR you need to look harder at the tech and less at the marketing.

 

[Sanderson]

You can easily run Crossfired 280x's on a 735W PSU and they'll generally beat SLI 770's.



Nvidia does tend to update drivers faster but they also tend to break things more often because of that.



I agree with this and I made a post to that effect in this subforum yesterday - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118288&p=1838623&viewfull=1#post1838623

I can see in this forum that 99% of people seem unable to realise that AMD exists and is a very adept tech company. According to Oculus themselves, AMD has a pretty clear lead in VR, yet most of you are still all buying Nvidia hardware and convincing others to do the same. If you truly care about VR you need to look harder at the tech and less at the marketing.

Alrighty then. nVidia has, IMO, advantages besides just performance but, I'm not trying to start a AMD vs. nVidia argument. Just stating my opinion. YMMV

 

[adoredtv]

Alrighty then. nVidia has, IMO, advantages besides just performance but, I'm not trying to start a AMD vs. nVidia argument. Just stating my opinion. YMMV

I'm not trying to start an argument but rather some discussion. Go ahead and point out those advantages that Nvidia has in VR, I'll be happy to point out the advantages AMD has - specific to VR.

 

[Sanderson]

I'm not trying to start an argument but rather some discussion. Go ahead and point out those advantages that Nvidia has in VR, I'll be happy to point out the advantages AMD has - specific to VR.

No thanks, already said my opinion and already said I won't be dragged into a AMD vs. nVidia argument.

 

[adoredtv]

No thanks, already said my opinion and already said I won't be dragged into a AMD vs. nVidia argument.

Then please check your facts first before making the comments you did - otherwise you're likely to get called out on them while not really adding anything to the discussion that matters.

 

[Sanderson]

Then please check your facts first before making the comments you did, otherwise you're likely to get called out on them.

Ok, thanks for that. Have a great rest of your day

 

[Raptoyd]

Ok, thanks for that. Have a great rest of your day

Handled that like a champ Kudos +1

 

[adoredtv]

Handled that like a champ Kudos +1

Start with a total fabrication on power draw, don't forget to mention drivers and "other stuff Nvidia is better at" while "not knocking AMD cards", ignore the advice of OR devs who say AMD gear is better for VR and make sure to avoid the fair offer of discussion on the point.

Pure class I'd say, almost like he's done it so much he got really good at it.

 

[Raptoyd]

Start with a total fabrication on power draw, don't forget to mention drivers and "other stuff Nvidia is better at" while "not knocking AMD cards", ignore the advice of OR devs who say AMD gear is better for VR and make sure to avoid the fair offer of discussion on the point.

Pure class I'd say, almost like he's done it so much he got really good at it.

Not at all just commenting his diffusing your need to argue about it. I won't be drawn in either start a discussion thread on the subject and listen to the crickets. Have a wonderful evening sir

 

[adoredtv]

Not at all just commenting his diffusing your need to argue about it. I won't be drawn in either start a discussion thread on the subject and listen to the crickets. Have a wonderful evening sir

This is a subject that is worth "arguing" about, or at least discussing, but instead we get the same tired stuff about power draw, drivers and whatever else can be used as an excuse not to go with AMD hardware which the Oculus devs themselves have made clear is in better shape regarding VR.

So if you're not willing to discuss actual VR benefits in a VR thread in a VR subforum, what exactly are you doing here?

 

[CMDR Holycow]

Man did this thread just take a dump.

To the OP... here is what I made my VR plan.

1- I upgraded my video card just enough today, to make the game look pretty dang good. I chose a 970, and I can run a slightly de-tweaked version of "high" settings in game, and I get a great experience.
2- But the DK2 shoulnd't be your only goal.. CV1 should. My second goal is to upgrade to whatever the best card on the market is when CV1 comes out, and run a pair in SLI. I will then sell my 970. (I don't think a pair of 970s is going to cut it with the CV1, but with the dk2, a single one will get you by).