I'm seeing a lot of posts from people who are looking to upgrade their PC's for VR and that's great. However, a lot of folks just don't get that all PC components need to be of decent quality to run VR efficiently. A recent report states only 9% of existing PC's are VR capable today. So there is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done by the majority to get up to speed.
CPU, GPU, RAM, Motherboard and hard drive performance all contribute to the end result. Getting a whiz bang GPU running on a five year old mobo with mismatched clock speed RAM sticks is like dropping the engine from a Ferrari into a tractor. It might work, but not well.
The heart and soul of the system is the CPU / GPU, but they talk to each other (and RAM) through the motherboard. The mobo does this using the PCIe interface for the most part. For best VR performance your mobo should support V3.0 of this standard, minimum. The various versions have significantly different data transfer rates.
Summary of PCI Express Interface Parameters:
Base Clock Speed: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GHz, PCIe 2.0 = 5.0GHz, PCIe 1.1 = 2.5GHz
Data Rate: PCIe 3.0 = 1000MB/s, PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/s, PCIe 1.1 = 250MB/s
Total Bandwidth: (x16 link): PCIe 3.0 = 32GB/s, PCIe 2.0 = 16GB/s, PCIe 1.1 = 8GB/s
Data Transfer Rate: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GT/s, PCIe 2.0= 5.0GT/s, PCIe 1.1 = 2.5GT/s
Source
V1.1 of the PCIe standard is 31% throughput compared to V3.0. That's a huge impact on your data flow if you are running an older mobo.
RAM has a lesser impact, but is still important. Lots of RAM allows you to preload large graphics files (planets, moons, stations, etc.) that can be transferred to the GPU quickly. RAM operates on nanosecond (billionth of a second) time scales where a hard drive runs in milliseconds (thousandth of a second). Loading files from RAM is significantly faster (by several factors) then waiting for a hard drive. If you have RAM sticks of different speeds installed, the RAM will work at the slowest speed. So if you have more than one stick of RAM, make sure they are a) from the same manufacturer and b) the same speed specification.
That same millisecond/nanosecond time difference let's an SSD hard drive be dramatically faster than a regular hard drive. Furthermore, a PCIe SSD will outperform a SATA SSD as well, as it can interact with the faster PCIe slot. Not everyone uses RAID on their drives, but some do. If you are using anything other than RAID 0 or 1 then your HD access time (even if SSD) will suffer as a result. There are different quality levels of RAID controllers. Some motherboards let you use RAID natively, but a dedicated PCIe RAID controller can let you see 2-3 times better throughput.
A note on Overclocking (OC). I'm seeing this attitude quite frequently, "I'll just overclock to get the performance I need." Overclocking your CPU / GPU / RAM is like mashing your car accelerator pedal to the floor and keeping it there whether stopped at the lights or on the highway. Your system will get hot and without adequate cooling the life expectancy of your PC decreases dramatically. A good quality aftermarket CPU / GPU cooler is needed and some even take this further with water cooling. A decent case with proper air flow (even if water cooling) is also a must have. Mobo and RAM components (especially when OC'ing) need cooling too!
If you need to OC a part to get reasonable performance, then I recommend you buy a better component and get that performance natively at stock speeds. I appreciate that not everyone has the budget to upgrade, but OC'ing cheap components is a false economy and penny wise, pound foolish as they say. Sticking with the automobile euphemisms, if you are continuously driving your car at the RPM red line, you need a better car (or driving lessons
).
Proper gear that supports VR is not cheap. However, it is possible to achieve decent performance on a reasonable budget as long as you take the above into consideration. Name brand components typically perform better than no-name Chinese knock-offs. The sum of all parts does matter in the world of VR. Good luck.
CPU, GPU, RAM, Motherboard and hard drive performance all contribute to the end result. Getting a whiz bang GPU running on a five year old mobo with mismatched clock speed RAM sticks is like dropping the engine from a Ferrari into a tractor. It might work, but not well.
The heart and soul of the system is the CPU / GPU, but they talk to each other (and RAM) through the motherboard. The mobo does this using the PCIe interface for the most part. For best VR performance your mobo should support V3.0 of this standard, minimum. The various versions have significantly different data transfer rates.
Summary of PCI Express Interface Parameters:
Base Clock Speed: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GHz, PCIe 2.0 = 5.0GHz, PCIe 1.1 = 2.5GHz
Data Rate: PCIe 3.0 = 1000MB/s, PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/s, PCIe 1.1 = 250MB/s
Total Bandwidth: (x16 link): PCIe 3.0 = 32GB/s, PCIe 2.0 = 16GB/s, PCIe 1.1 = 8GB/s
Data Transfer Rate: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GT/s, PCIe 2.0= 5.0GT/s, PCIe 1.1 = 2.5GT/s
Source
V1.1 of the PCIe standard is 31% throughput compared to V3.0. That's a huge impact on your data flow if you are running an older mobo.
RAM has a lesser impact, but is still important. Lots of RAM allows you to preload large graphics files (planets, moons, stations, etc.) that can be transferred to the GPU quickly. RAM operates on nanosecond (billionth of a second) time scales where a hard drive runs in milliseconds (thousandth of a second). Loading files from RAM is significantly faster (by several factors) then waiting for a hard drive. If you have RAM sticks of different speeds installed, the RAM will work at the slowest speed. So if you have more than one stick of RAM, make sure they are a) from the same manufacturer and b) the same speed specification.
That same millisecond/nanosecond time difference let's an SSD hard drive be dramatically faster than a regular hard drive. Furthermore, a PCIe SSD will outperform a SATA SSD as well, as it can interact with the faster PCIe slot. Not everyone uses RAID on their drives, but some do. If you are using anything other than RAID 0 or 1 then your HD access time (even if SSD) will suffer as a result. There are different quality levels of RAID controllers. Some motherboards let you use RAID natively, but a dedicated PCIe RAID controller can let you see 2-3 times better throughput.
A note on Overclocking (OC). I'm seeing this attitude quite frequently, "I'll just overclock to get the performance I need." Overclocking your CPU / GPU / RAM is like mashing your car accelerator pedal to the floor and keeping it there whether stopped at the lights or on the highway. Your system will get hot and without adequate cooling the life expectancy of your PC decreases dramatically. A good quality aftermarket CPU / GPU cooler is needed and some even take this further with water cooling. A decent case with proper air flow (even if water cooling) is also a must have. Mobo and RAM components (especially when OC'ing) need cooling too!
If you need to OC a part to get reasonable performance, then I recommend you buy a better component and get that performance natively at stock speeds. I appreciate that not everyone has the budget to upgrade, but OC'ing cheap components is a false economy and penny wise, pound foolish as they say. Sticking with the automobile euphemisms, if you are continuously driving your car at the RPM red line, you need a better car (or driving lessons
). Proper gear that supports VR is not cheap. However, it is possible to achieve decent performance on a reasonable budget as long as you take the above into consideration. Name brand components typically perform better than no-name Chinese knock-offs. The sum of all parts does matter in the world of VR. Good luck.
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