Oculus Rift + ED + (insert gfx card)

Monk · Mar 29, 2016

I'm watching this Oculus release pretty carefully these days. Though I don't intend to purchase in the near future, I am gathering a wealth of information to help guide my purchase later.

One of the main points I'm looking to get more information on is very specific.

How does Elite Dangerous: Horizons perform in VR against various graphics cards.

PC Gamer has a nice but inconlusive look, though is fairly general: http://www.pcgamer.com/we-test-15-graphics-cards-to-find-the-best-one-for-vr/

The GTX 970 (what I have until I jump for next gen of cards AMD or NVIDIA) comes in as a decent performer. Especially with games that have dynamic scaling the, less than best, card seems to come across admirably.

However, this is just with the SteamVR benchmark which is not as robust as a VR benchmark should be, yet.

So, to you brave souls getting an Oculus Rift in the next few months, please remember to post how EDH performs in CV1 VR on your different cards. Now, I'm guessing that a lot of you who are willing to throw down that kind of money for a peripheral probably already have 980s and what not. Though, I'm sure there are a few folks out there with 970s that are going for it anyway.

I look forward to hearing from all of you, Good Luck!

apolk27 · Mar 29, 2016

CPU info would be helpful also!
(thank you this is exactly what I came here for)

Bret Riverboat · Mar 30, 2016

I7 4790 and 980ti. I have a 970 but it didn't give me what I wanted in the DK2. Standard ultra settings are amazing and way better than 0.5 or 0.8 on basic. I have yet to try 1.5 ss yet, but I spent all night on a planet with no lag whatsoever

smackaholic · Mar 31, 2016

2600k (@ 4.7 Ghz) + SLI Titan X. Will possibly upgrade CPU/mobo later this year. Only limited play times with ED + CV1 currently but so far it's smooth. Have noticed occasional judder when turning my head, but that may be a tracking issue. Noticed one anomaly where the game dropped to 1-2 FPS while undocking. That lasted for about 20-30 seconds but cleared up and haven't seen it since. Not sure the root cause. Unfortunately was not running any profiling tools at the time to measure CPU/GPU load.

VR Dextrovix · Mar 31, 2016

The thing is, even if we all posted our FPS results from a planet's surface we're all going to have such vastly different rigs that it would take a proper benchmark of the same test with the same kit, with a different graphics card to properly gauge the differences. Something that despite me having both HDMs shortly, I will still only have my 970 GTX to check against.

If the OP is waiting and the 970 is the minimum, it's better to decide monetarily how much to spend, both on whichever headset (which will drop in price eventually) and then on which card (which will drop soon once Pascal chipsets start filtering out from next month).

apolk27 · Mar 31, 2016

You're absolutely right, but I think he's looking for a more generalized opinion of performance on various rigs, rather than a real benchmark. With enough posts, ppl will be able to gauge how their individual components or equivalent thereof (when checked on benchmarking sites) will perform in ED VR. For example, someone with a monster GPU setup like smackaholic might've been concerned about their Gen2 CPU performance but can now rest easy. Or someone with a 970 reads Bret's post and decides that since he felt it just didn't cut it, they also want to upgrade.

I'm not worried about my 980 but am eagerly awaiting a post with the equivalent of my I5-6500. Definitely don't want to have my Rift show up (please god april) and then realize my CPU won't cut it.

Monk · Mar 31, 2016

dextrovix said:
The thing is, even if we all posted our FPS results from a planet's surface we're all going to have such vastly different rigs that it would take a proper benchmark of the same test with the same kit, with a different graphics card to properly gauge the differences. Something that despite me having both HDMs shortly, I will still only have my 970 GTX to check against.

If the OP is waiting and the 970 is the minimum, it's better to decide monetarily how much to spend, both on whichever headset (which will drop in price eventually) and then on which card (which will drop soon once Pascal chipsets start filtering out from next month).

You're right about varying rigs, however, the requirements for the OR are such that we will see a limited spread of components.

For Elite, I think most of our performance loss/gains come from the GPU. The CPU can be a bottleneck with planetary surfaces, but from my observations, most of the mainstream Haswell chips do well with headroom to spare. Though, none of these observations are going to be purely objective nor should they be used to judge the quality of the OR. Information for informations sake, really.

Either way...a decent spread of CPUs and GPUs, once observed as a whole, can provide enough insight to make a gut decision.

VR Dextrovix · Apr 1, 2016

Monk said:
You're right about varying rigs, however, the requirements for the OR are such that we will see a limited spread of components.

For Elite, I think most of our performance loss/gains come from the GPU. The CPU can be a bottleneck with planetary surfaces, but from my observations, most of the mainstream Haswell chips do well with headroom to spare. Though, none of these observations are going to be purely objective nor should they be used to judge the quality of the OR. Information for informations sake, really.

Either way...a decent spread of CPUs and GPUs, once observed as a whole, can provide enough insight to make a gut decision.

Monk, are you interested in how Vive performs, only I've just had a confirm from American Express that HTC have charged my card, so I guess I'll have Vive next week? I believe it also has the same refresh rate and resolution as Oculus, although of course the underlying SDKs are different.

I'm due the OR in April, but nothing has happened yet regarding taking payment, so I think I will have Vive sooner.