Processor

[Borse]

Hello everyone. I've been playing Elite for some time, but have only now had a reason to post here on the forums.
I have recently ordered a HTC Vive and am looking forward to trying Elite in VR. To this end I am aware that I may have to upgrade my now aging 970 and have been looking at the 1080ti as a possible replacement, and I'm therefore wondering whether my i5 4670k will bottleneck the GPU in Elite Dangerous, and if so, how badly?

I've done quite a bit of searching on the topic, but haven't been able to find good answers to this specific question. My CPU is stock speeds and not overclocked in any way. I'm hoping some of you here can provide some good insights into the subject and what any possible difference might be between my current and a newer, more powerful CPU, might be.

Thanks in advance for your time [smile]

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Running the same cpu, I hear it can be a bottleneck, but you can always "burn off" the extra gpu power on a higher resolution using the supersampling and the hmd resolution multiplier in the options.

 

[Borse]

Running the same cpu, I hear it can be a bottleneck, but you can always "burn off" the extra gpu power on a higher resolution using the supersampling and the hmd resolution multiplier in the options.

So what does that mean? Does that imply that I'd have to set certain settings to low (to prevent CPU death), while still being able to up the supersampling? And what would that mean in laymans terms, as in image quality etc.?

 

[TorTorden_VR]

I was having similar concerns, and I do suspect you might be right.
The i5 should not bottleneck your 970, it was barely holding me back on a 980ti from my unscientific testing, it will most likely hold you back on a 1080ti, or not.
After upgrading to a 1080ti, I find I can dial up settings that are GPU centric quite heavily, to nearly ultra levels, most settings in the graphics options are GPU intensive, so when your CPU and chipset starts becoming an issue you are kind of sitting there with performance problems that lowering the settings for just doesn't do anything for.

I was trying to do some research on my i5 4760k, and I did conclude it was holding me back a by a hair.
So when I saw a refurbished i7 4790k fo 200£ i jumped on it.
It did help quite a bit, not enough that I would honestly say I would recommend you upgrade to it.

Over the last few months have replaced a lot of hardware for VR starting with the i5.

I was kind of curious to see what incrementally changing hardware would do.
But yes, I got an improvement going from an i5 4670k to an i7 4790k, not huge but noticeable.
Surpisingly I got as much impact from upgrading my RAM sticks from 1600mhz to 2400mhz.
And if you are going to buy new ram and new cpu, you should probably get them for a newer mobo.

And I believe perhaps the performance difference between a z97 chipset and the z270 generation of chipsets is far more than the difference between say the i7 4790k and i7 7700k.

The thing where VR really differs from regular gaming is how it needs the entire machine to perform rapidly and responsively in synch with eachother.
2d gaming on the other are almost entirely performing on the GPU these days, but for VR everything is needed to perform and in synch.

Here's my old thread on the issue, where I attempted to get some tests on it.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...source-sites?p=5236507&viewfull=1#post5236507

And a follow up post from Gortron
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...source-sites?p=5302858&viewfull=1#post5302858

Also last week I attempted to overclock my i7, seems my mobo really doesn't like that.
Best I could get was about 300mhz from stock or windows would seize on load, and that 300mhz added nearly 15C to my load temp.

Not worth it.
When I reset the bios I also forgot to re-enable the XMP profile.
In short for a day I was running at 1333mhz on the RAM and performance dropped through the floor.
I was getting stutters and jumps all over the place when in game.
Getting back to 2400mhz fixed it entirely.
So even if almost everyone is preaching these days that RAM speed does not matter, again I'm convinced this is not true for VR.

My new mantra is "Everything matters".

Then again my personal goal for Vr is to turn everything to ultra, set SS to 1.5 or something and never dip below 90fps.
I don't expect that really anytime soon...

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

1st off you have a K series cpu. that chip is meant for overclocking.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1722630/intel-god-quick-dirty-guide-4ghz-haswell.html

you should easily (and cheaply) be able to get a 20-25% overclock out of that chip, which should mean any bottle neck with a 1080ti will be minimised.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I feel your pain. I am going to upgrade me ageing i5 2500k upto an i7 3770k pretty soon. It's just getting one at the right price.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

1st off you have a K series cpu. that chip is meant for overclocking.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1722630/intel-god-quick-dirty-guide-4ghz-haswell.html

you should easily (and cheaply) be able to get a 20-25% overclock out of that chip, which should mean any bottle neck with a 1080ti will be minimised.

Indeed.
Unless you have lost in the silicon lottery as I have :\

Here is my old steamvr perf test, and it was quite playable if I didn't go nuts on SS and shadows.

Spoiler

And here's my current results with a 1080ti and it bottoming the gpu just fine.

Spoiler

 

[TorTorden_VR]

I feel your pain. I am going to upgrade me ageing i5 2500k upto an i7 3770k pretty soon. It's just getting one at the right price.

Again, I wouldn't. Much rather spend your money on a current gen mobo, cpu and ram.

I honestly suspect the performance difference of the chipsets and ram speeds available would allow a i5 7600 do better just upgrading to an older gen i7.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Again, I wouldn't. Much rather spend your money on a current gen mobo, cpu and ram.

I honestly suspect the performance difference of the chipsets and ram speeds available would allow a i5 7600 do better just upgrading to an older gen i7.

Current gen cpu, mobo and ram will cost me around £400-500. Money I don't have at the moment. I can afford £100 on an i7 3770k though.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Current gen cpu, mobo and ram will cost me around £400-500. Money I don't have at the moment. I can afford £100 on an i7 3770k though.

I can see the point, and I have to pay the piper myself.
I just think that even after spending those £100 your still going to want to spend the £500, only you are £100 shorter.
I kind of regret not just taking the money I have spent upgrading this rig and just gone straight for an 7 series.

But it's time to almost behave as an adult for a bit. And spend my money on more sensible things.
Probably be until next summer or so before I can replace the rest.

 

[Borse]

I was kind of curious to see what incrementally changing hardware would do.
But yes, I got an improvement going from an i5 4670k to an i7 4790k, not huge but noticeable.
Surpisingly I got as much impact from upgrading my RAM sticks from 1600mhz to 2400mhz.
And if you are going to buy new ram and new cpu, you should probably get them for a newer mobo.

Thanks for the replies guys.

So what exactly are you saying TorTorden? Does that mean that I would be OK keeping my current CPU for the time being while upgrading my GPU, or does that effectively mean that I'd have to stay away from RES-sites and any other CPU intensive location?

And when you say "noticable", what does that mean in non-scientific terms. Is that the difference between playable and unplayable, or is it the "only-enthusiasts-notices-the-difference" kind of difference?


EDIT: Also, knowing what you know today - which upgrades would you recommend? As in what hardware would you say is recommended and in what order would you replace them if you didn't get everything at once?

 

[shadragon]

1st off you have a K series cpu. that chip is meant for overclocking.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1722630/intel-god-quick-dirty-guide-4ghz-haswell.html

you should easily (and cheaply) be able to get a 20-25% overclock out of that chip, which should mean any bottle neck with a 1080ti will be minimised.

Perfectly true, BUT if OC'ing, don't skimp on the cooling. Get a high quality cooler like the Noctua NH-D15 or a decent quality AIO to handle any CPU generated heat if going over the standard specs. OC produces heat and you'll need to be able to get rid of it or you'll create more issues than you fix.

When you get the Vive, try running the CPU at standard frequencies with your video card. I used a MSI GTX 980Ti 6GB and had a great experience with my Vive with no OC at all.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Perfectly true, BUT if OC'ing, don't skimp on the cooling. Get a high quality cooler like the Noctua NH-D15 or a decent quality AIO to handle any CPU generated heat if going over the standard specs. OC produces heat and you'll need to be able to get rid of it or you'll create more issues than you fix.

When you get the Vive, try running the CPU at standard frequencies with your video card. I used a MSI GTX 980Ti 6GB and had a great experience with my Vive with no OC at all.

absolutely. if its on the standard cooler , a replacement is key and you do not have to pay much in all honesty. i think the one suggested in the link i stuck in is only around £20 iirc

but, for me, the notion of EVER even considering replaceing a cpu without 1st wringing every single clock cycle of performance out of it, just will never compute.... its a bit of a lottery, not all cpus are created equal, but a 25% bump in performance is pretty much standard on his chip and upgrading the performance of your chip to one often £100s more expensive.

its like free money and can definitely allow one to skip a generation or 2 imo

 

[Gortron]

Thanks for the replies guys.

So what exactly are you saying TorTorden? Does that mean that I would be OK keeping my current CPU for the time being while upgrading my GPU, or does that effectively mean that I'd have to stay away from RES-sites and any other CPU intensive location?

And when you say "noticable", what does that mean in non-scientific terms. Is that the difference between playable and unplayable, or is it the "only-enthusiasts-notices-the-difference" kind of difference?


EDIT: Also, knowing what you know today - which upgrades would you recommend? As in what hardware would you say is recommended and in what order would you replace them if you didn't get everything at once?

ED will be perfectly playable with your current CPU (I've got a 4670k too with a little overclock) and a GTX 1080ti but you just might not get full benefit of the GPU because you will run into occasional CPU bottlenecks. You'll not drop below the high 70's FPS much though. My normal GTX 1080 maintains 90 FPS most of the time (all the time in space except of combat zones) and it is a much better overall experience than I had with the 970. I most certainly don't regret jumping from a 970 to a 1080. (I'm on Oculus Rift though).

If I were you and you are considering upgrading anyway just get the 1080ti for now and see how you get on. I'm still toying with the idea of going to an i7 7700k with new RAM and Mainboard. I nearly did a i7 4790K upgrade but I feel the same as Tortorden and it is the whole system that does it. I accidently mis-seated some RAM when I added an 8Gb stick and it didn't use the RAM but cut the speed from 1600mhz to 800mhz and impact on VR was dramatic, think I was only getting 90 FPS in space but in stations it was about 20FPS less than normal..... Took me a while to work that one out!

As for overclocking, I didn't get very lucky with mine but can run it at 4.3Ghz. I replaced the stock cooler with one of these first https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cooler-master-hyper-212-evo-cpu-cooler-hs-035-cm.html

Seemed a waste not to squeeze some extra power of it when I was considering upgrading anyway

 

[Orvidius]

Heh, I just posted this in another thread too, but right up until the computer died, my i7-4770k (overclocked slightly to 3.8GHz) and a GTX 970 worked just fine for ED with an Oculus Rift, using the "VR Medium" settings. A similar computer will have very similar performance. I don't expect the CPU to be the bottleneck at all, just the GPU, but even the 970 does OK.

 

[Borse]

Yeah, you guys are absolutely correct. Much to my surprise, my Vive arrived yesterday, long before the estimated arrival. Needless to say I installed it immediately and hopped into the navigation training mission, and just as you said the CPU was really no issue at all, and I could tell right away that a GPU upgrade would indeed be a substantial improvement. The first training mission puts you in a RES-area with another ship. In this case my CPU was working at perhaps 50% capacity while my GPU was at a constant 100% use. This was on the VR high setting. Tonight I'll try to reduce some settings to see if I can get it completely stable, but I do believe a GPU upgrade may be happening sooner rather than later. I'm not sure how the relationship between CPU and GPU works though. How much would a more powerful GPU push my CPU, and what's the relationship between them? Why does additional GPU power put extra strain on the CPU?


I did also encounter another issue. Immediately the game stuttered a lot, both in the ice field and in the main menu, but especially when I was looking at the ship in the main menu. This stuttering was happening regardless of settings as long as I was looking in the direction of the ship in the main menu.
After randomly clicking some stuff in Steam VR I de-selected a setting called interleaved reprojection or some such. The effect was immediate and the stuttering stopped immediately. I have no clue what that setting does, but it caused severe stuttering in Elite.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

The training missions are an odd case and does not use the CPU anywhere as much as the real game.

I could get stable 90 with some settings in a training mission. And once I got in game it fell apart.

 

[Borse]

That's good to know, thanks. Will have to do my testing in the real game then.

 

[Gortron]

Yeah, you guys are absolutely correct. Much to my surprise, my Vive arrived yesterday, long before the estimated arrival. Needless to say I installed it immediately and hopped into the navigation training mission, and just as you said the CPU was really no issue at all, and I could tell right away that a GPU upgrade would indeed be a substantial improvement. The first training mission puts you in a RES-area with another ship. In this case my CPU was working at perhaps 50% capacity while my GPU was at a constant 100% use. This was on the VR high setting. Tonight I'll try to reduce some settings to see if I can get it completely stable, but I do believe a GPU upgrade may be happening sooner rather than later. I'm not sure how the relationship between CPU and GPU works though. How much would a more powerful GPU push my CPU, and what's the relationship between them? Why does additional GPU power put extra strain on the CPU?


I did also encounter another issue. Immediately the game stuttered a lot, both in the ice field and in the main menu, but especially when I was looking at the ship in the main menu. This stuttering was happening regardless of settings as long as I was looking in the direction of the ship in the main menu.
After randomly clicking some stuff in Steam VR I de-selected a setting called interleaved reprojection or some such. The effect was immediate and the stuttering stopped immediately. I have no clue what that setting does, but it caused severe stuttering in Elite.

My understanding of it is that if your CPU and GPU can’t keep up with each other you are restricted by the slower of the two. So with your CPU and a 970 your CPU is making draw calls to your GPU which is then rendering frames and telling the CPU when it has finished. But it can’t render at the 90FPS target so your CPU has plenty of idle time to do other things between it asking the GPU to render something and your GPU saying it has finished. So you might have 50% CPU usage and 100% GPU usage.

With a much more powerful GPU your CPU is making many more draw calls because you GPU is able to keep up with the demand and in some situations your CPU is too busy doing other stuff to give your GPU enough draw calls to maintain the target 90FPS (so your CPU goes to 100% but your GPU may only be at 60% and your FPS at 70 for example). I have watched this happening while docking in busy stations, the CPU pegs to 100%, the GPU ramps down to 70 or 80% and FPS is say 75FPS. I don’t think the relationship is entirely as straight forwards as this because certain quality setting with increase CPU as well as GPU use, and many other factors but it is generally how it relates.

Elite can use as many CPU threads as you can throw at it so an i7 can make more draw calls than a comparable i5 because although both have 4 cores (and possibly even the same clock speed) the i7 has 8 threads so can manage the workload better. I think the main difference between 2D and VR is that not only is the target FPS 90 but two different frames need to rendered and that seems to have CPU overhead implications, plus all the tracking. I can get over 300FPS with my 3 monitor setup!

Reprojection sounds like the Vive equivalent of the Rifts ASW. What this does (roughly speaking) is insert a guessed frame in where one can’t be generated, so the output target becomes 45FPS instead of 90FPS but still looks smooth. The CPU and GPU use go down unless you start cranking up graphics settings which will bring the GPU usage back up but stop you hitting 90FPS in even more situations. The cost is graphical anomalies that many people (myself included) don’t like. The first thing I do after the game loads is turn ASW off but I expect many people don’t even notice it kicking in about out.

ED VR fanboys like me strive for constant 90FPS all the time with very high graphics settings for an ultra-immersive experience! One day…one day.

If I can find a way of doing it consistently I might try a test with an under clocked (3 GHz), standard (3.8 GHz) and over clocked (4.3 GHz) CPU so you can see the effect on GPU usage and FPS.

 

[Borse]

My understanding of it is that if your CPU and GPU can’t keep up with each other you are restricted by the slower of the two. So with your CPU and a 970 your CPU is making draw calls to your GPU which is then rendering frames and telling the CPU when it has finished. But it can’t render at the 90FPS target so your CPU has plenty of idle time to do other things between it asking the GPU to render something and your GPU saying it has finished. So you might have 50% CPU usage and 100% GPU usage.

With a much more powerful GPU your CPU is making many more draw calls because you GPU is able to keep up with the demand and in some situations your CPU is too busy doing other stuff to give your GPU enough draw calls to maintain the target 90FPS (so your CPU goes to 100% but your GPU may only be at 60% and your FPS at 70 for example). I have watched this happening while docking in busy stations, the CPU pegs to 100%, the GPU ramps down to 70 or 80% and FPS is say 75FPS. I don’t think the relationship is entirely as straight forwards as this because certain quality setting with increase CPU as well as GPU use, and many other factors but it is generally how it relates.

Elite can use as many CPU threads as you can throw at it so an i7 can make more draw calls than a comparable i5 because although both have 4 cores (and possibly even the same clock speed) the i7 has 8 threads so can manage the workload better. I think the main difference between 2D and VR is that not only is the target FPS 90 but two different frames need to rendered and that seems to have CPU overhead implications, plus all the tracking. I can get over 300FPS with my 3 monitor setup!

Reprojection sounds like the Vive equivalent of the Rifts ASW. What this does (roughly speaking) is insert a guessed frame in where one can’t be generated, so the output target becomes 45FPS instead of 90FPS but still looks smooth. The CPU and GPU use go down unless you start cranking up graphics settings which will bring the GPU usage back up but stop you hitting 90FPS in even more situations. The cost is graphical anomalies that many people (myself included) don’t like. The first thing I do after the game loads is turn ASW off but I expect many people don’t even notice it kicking in about out.

ED VR fanboys like me strive for constant 90FPS all the time with very high graphics settings for an ultra-immersive experience! One day…one day.

If I can find a way of doing it consistently I might try a test with an under clocked (3 GHz), standard (3.8 GHz) and over clocked (4.3 GHz) CPU so you can see the effect on GPU usage and FPS.

Wow. That's probably the most informative and helpful response ever. I'd keep throwing rep at you, but the forum doesn't let me.

I'd be interested to see how much the clock speeds matter in this case. I'm not much of an overclocker as I never had the time to bother with it, but if it has a big impact it may save me some cash.
The only trouble with VR tests, in my opinion, is that it's rather hard to describe the result. Since the image seen in VR is so vastly different from the image seen on a 2D-screen it's very difficult to see the real difference in image quality.