VR minimum specification for Elite Dangerous (DK2)

[Duros]

I'm currently running Elite on ultra on a DK2 with a GTX 770, and I have very few issues. Aside from judder in certain areas (mainly stations) It runs surprisingly smooth. I'm sure I could fix the judder with a few graphics tweaks, but it's not a concern for me considering that flight and combat have no issues. It's not perfect all the time, but it is definitely playable. So for those asking if a 970 will work; I'm sure it will. Though I have no doubt that a 980 is the best most optimal choice.

Processor: AMD FX8350
RAM: 16gb
GPU: GTX 770 2gb

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I'm currently running Elite on ultra on a DK2 with a GTX 770, and I have very few issues. Aside from judder in certain areas (mainly stations) It runs surprisingly smooth. I'm sure I could fix the judder with a few graphics tweaks, but it's not a concern for me considering that flight and combat have no issues. It's not perfect all the time, but it is definitely playable. So for those asking if a 970 will work; I'm sure it will. Though I have no doubt that a 980 is the best most optimal choice.

Processor: AMD FX8350
RAM: 16gb
GPU: GTX 770 2gb

Correction: I have 32 gigs of RAM. I don't know why I typed 16.

 

[Gortron]

I'm really confused by the CPU requirement. That i7 ranks really high on benchmark sites like CPUboss etc. The AMD chip is a pile of junk compared to an i5 4670k which ranks below an i7 3770 but way higher than an the AMD minimum. It really makes no sense.

I also don't get the ram requirements. 16 meg.... Why? Even star citizen doesn't use 8 meg of ram and that takes about 9 years to load. It feels like arbitrary high specs have been used.

 

[Gortron]

I'm currently running Elite on ultra on a DK2 with a GTX 770, and I have very few issues. Aside from judder in certain areas (mainly stations) It runs surprisingly smooth. I'm sure I could fix the judder with a few graphics tweaks, but it's not a concern for me considering that flight and combat have no issues. It's not perfect all the time, but it is definitely playable. So for those asking if a 970 will work; I'm sure it will. Though I have no doubt that a 980 is the best most optimal choice.

Processor: AMD FX8350
RAM: 16gb
GPU: GTX 770 2gb

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Correction: I have 32 gigs of RAM. I don't know why I typed 16.

Why do you need that much ram? Unless you work at Pixar you will probably never use 16 gigs let alone 32. Well not in the life cycle of the ram you are using.

 

[Duros]

Why do you need that much ram? Unless you work at Pixar you will probably never use 16 gigs let alone 32. Well not in the life cycle of the ram you are using.

I don't need it at all. 16 gigs would have been more than enough, but the 32 was on sale on amazon and it was a great deal. So I might as well just go for overkill. It's nice knowing that I won't have to worry about RAM again for a very long time.

 

[Raptoyd]

I don't need it at all. 16 gigs would have been more than enough, but the 32 was on sale on amazon and it was a great deal. So I might as well just go for overkill. It's nice knowing that I won't have to worry about RAM again for a very long time.

Same here they were selling 32 gb of Hyper X ram at the same price 16 was a week earlier so who am I to say no

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

I've been thinking while contemplating purchasing a 980:
There is no GPU debate without bringing up "bang for buck".
That card gets poor bang for buck feedback as it is sitting next to the 970 that costs 220€ less. The 980 doesn't sell that well, because the 970 is actually a very good card. Recommending the 550€ card for the sake of 90Hz VR or 1440p is understandable, but when the 970 can be bought stock-overclocked for 330€ and showed performance close to the 980 by about 1-5fps it makes me think I'm better off avoiding that VR circus altogether, and not even take my chance with the 970. I mean, 980 doesn't sound very reasonable, a few fps can be tweaked so easily (unless the game is completely unoptimizable). 220€ is half a rent, 980 is being superceded this summer, and 90Hz VR has not left the factory.

I know you have free access to all kinds of hardware in a game company but forgetting about bang-for-buck aspect, that's a symptom of tunnel vision, or that the 970 is deemed incapable by a very thin margin. But once the VR's are released, we will know more for sure.

 

[LordZoltan]

I've been thinking while contemplating purchasing a 980:
There is no GPU debate without bringing up "bang for buck".
That card gets poor bang for buck feedback as it is sitting next to the 970 that costs 220€ less. The 980 doesn't sell that well, because the 970 is actually a very good card. Recommending the 550€ card for the sake of 90Hz VR or 1440p is understandable, but when the 970 can be bought stock-overclocked for 330€ and showed performance close to the 980 by about 1-5fps it makes me think I'm better off avoiding that VR circus altogether, and not even take my chance with the 970. I mean, 980 doesn't sound very reasonable, a few fps can be tweaked so easily (unless the game is completely unoptimizable). 220€ is half a rent, 980 is being superceded this summer, and 90Hz VR has not left the factory.

I know you have free access to all kinds of hardware in a game company but forgetting about bang-for-buck aspect, that's a symptom of tunnel vision, or that the 970 is deemed incapable by a very thin margin. But once the VR's are released, we will know more for sure.

In VR, VRAM is crucial due to the effective increase in resolution caused by rendering two separate frames at once - so 980 with full 4gb vs 970 with unfortunate 3.5gb is possibly to make a difference in performance.

I went for a 980ti, with 6gb, and it's perfect at 1.5ss and with AA enabled - until you get down to the planet surface. With AA off, then it's fine in the SRV - a bit of lag with the rendering, but it'll be fixed if/when they update to the new, more efficient stack from the 1.0 SDK I think.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

In VR, VRAM is crucial due to the effective increase in resolution caused by rendering two separate frames at once - so 980 with full 4gb vs 970 with unfortunate 3.5gb is possibly to make a difference in performance.

I went for a 980ti, with 6gb, and it's perfect at 1.5ss and with AA enabled - until you get down to the planet surface. With AA off, then it's fine in the SRV - a bit of lag with the rendering, but it'll be fixed if/when they update to the new, more efficient stack from the 1.0 SDK I think.

Can you elaborate the "unfortunate 3.5gb"? You seem to know what you're talking about in the topic of comparing GTX 980 and GTX 970, but then you reveal you skipped the entire dilemma by having a 980ti.

 

[Adam Lusardi]

Can you elaborate the "unfortunate 3.5gb"? You seem to know what you're talking about in the topic of comparing GTX 980 and GTX 970, but then you reveal you skipped the entire dilemma by having a 980ti.

Google....
http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

Google....
http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/

Thanks for that, I am genuinely curious!

PCPer writes: “Let's be blunt here: access to the 0.5GB of memory, on its own and in a vacuum, would occur at 1/7th of the speed of the 3.5GB pool of memory. If you look at the Nai benchmarks (pictured above) floating around, this is what you are seeing.”
Accessing that last 500MB of VRAM is absolutely slower than accessing the first 3.5GB. What we don’t know, exactly, is how much that actually matters for gaming. PCPer points out that the last chunk of VRAM is still four times faster than system RAM (your DDR3) accessed via PCIe. The GTX 970 does have 4GB of VRAM, and it can use all of it, but accessing those last 500MB will decrease performance.
We’re doing our own testing to see if we can determine how much impact using the last chunk of VRAM has on gaming.

Is there a conclusion to that? If we say VR is more VRAM craving then this must have been tested using VR or a huge load of pixels, but the latter takes us back to Nvidia's claims that there's only a 1-4% drop in games at 1440p. I'm getting confused, naturally if I had an extra 220€ laying around I'd solve that confusion by throwing it at a 980.

 

[Arithon]

I've been thinking while contemplating purchasing a 980:
There is no GPU debate without bringing up "bang for buck".
That card gets poor bang for buck feedback as it is sitting next to the 970 that costs 220€ less. The 980 doesn't sell that well, because the 970 is actually a very good card. Recommending the 550€ card for the sake of 90Hz VR or 1440p is understandable, but when the 970 can be bought stock-overclocked for 330€ and showed performance close to the 980 by about 1-5fps it makes me think I'm better off avoiding that VR circus altogether, and not even take my chance with the 970. I mean, 980 doesn't sound very reasonable, a few fps can be tweaked so easily (unless the game is completely unoptimizable). 220€ is half a rent, 980 is being superceded this summer, and 90Hz VR has not left the factory.

I know you have free access to all kinds of hardware in a game company but forgetting about bang-for-buck aspect, that's a symptom of tunnel vision, or that the 970 is deemed incapable by a very thin margin. But once the VR's are released, we will know more for sure.

I bought a 970 this time last year and it is very good, while a 980 would cost close to £400 and give me little improvement.

I would advise that you wait. Both AMD and nVidia are releasing a new generation of cards in Q2 of this year that'll be 3 times (up to possible 10x) faster than existing cards. Obviously the top-end models will also cost in the region of £500-800, but the "mid range" next gen cards should be at least twice as fast as the current gen of GTX 980s. So, save your money and get a better card June-August.

 

[Gortron]

Thanks for that, I am genuinely curious!



Is there a conclusion to that? If we say VR is more VRAM craving then this must have been tested using VR or a huge load of pixels, but the latter takes us back to Nvidia's claims that there's only a 1-4% drop in games at 1440p. I'm getting confused, naturally if I had an extra 220€ laying around I'd solve that confusion by throwing it at a 980.

Unfortunately my Motherboard died a few weeks back and it apparently took other components with it.... Long story but I only really have a pc for this game and built it with VR in mind. The RAM required seems like too much, the CPU required seems like too much as does the GPU requirement.

It is extremely annoying that the recommended specs look like they were pulled out of a hat when people are going to buy things based on the spec they have suggested.

Look at the difference between minimum Intel chip and AMD chip requirements. FD probably haven't even tried running Elite on 970. They got a good result on a 16gb 980 i7 3770k. That's the requirement. Nevermind that chip is out of production or that the k means it can be overclocked.

 

[Gortron]

Thanks for that, I am genuinely curious!



Is there a conclusion to that? If we say VR is more VRAM craving then this must have been tested using VR or a huge load of pixels, but the latter takes us back to Nvidia's claims that there's only a 1-4% drop in games at 1440p. I'm getting confused, naturally if I had an extra 220€ laying around I'd solve that confusion by throwing it at a 980.

I forgot to say, when I fix the damn thing, I'm planing to see if I can get 90 fps at 1.4 upscale at Vive resolution.

 

[Xebec]

No doubt there is some padding in there but there should be.. Future updates are planned ; they need to account for people with bloatware installed by OEMs; and the RAM spec ensures the disk is cached which helps avoid latency issues. The AMD CPU requirement vs the 3770k is weird though.

 

[jejune]

Obviously the top-end models will also cost in the region of £500-800, but the "mid range" next gen cards should be at least twice as fast as the current gen of GTX 980s. So, save your money and get a better card June-August.

Where did you read that the "mid range" cards should be twice as fast as the 980?

 

[SpectrumZZ]

Where did you read that the "mid range" cards should be twice as fast as the 980?

AMD and possibly Nvidia are working on dual-GPU cards for VR with shared VRAM. This would give you the same perf as a regular single
card today, but in VR. I would expect December before they become readily available.

 

[imski]

I've tried the Steam VR Performance test and I'm getting a 7.6.

That would be fine if I wasn't running a 4Ghz 4790, 16GB of RAM and an AMD 295X2.

Why am I not getting an 11?

 

[Raptoyd]

The people posting 980TI results are getting some some pretty hefty scores, that card might work pretty well with the Vive for sure. My 980 posts good but the 980 TI's I have seen are basically a straight line

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I've tried the Steam VR Performance test and I'm getting a 7.6.

That would be fine if I wasn't running a 4Ghz 4790, 16GB of RAM and an AMD 295X2.

Why am I not getting an 11?

your gpu!. Crossfire is not supported in VR at the moment, so you are only using one of the cores of your GPU, which makes it lowish end for VR.

I am in the green camp so I may not be correct, however, iirc individually each single core of the 295X2 is slower than a single 290x.

VR is a tough mistress and imo may reset the whole high end gaming PC, much like sony did when they released the PS1 (and sega with the saturn) (both of these made what were high end gaming pcs up till then look almost obsolete)

 

[onemic]

Planning on getting an R9 390x but the specs for VR doesnt mention AMD at all....Any idea how the 390x runs in VR? Can it run it maxed like the GTX 980 or no?