GTX 970 and VR

[Nebulaeus]

I'm new to VR and have the lowly GTX 970 with an Oculus Rift S. I've played a few sessions with graphics set to enhanced and AA set to 8 FXAA. So far it's been a smooth experience. However, I'd like to get the best graphics quality I can while maintaining the 90 fps recommendation for VR. But I have no idea how to get the best bang for the buck graphically nor do I know how to check the fps in game. Is there a guide out there or can somebody give a newb a hand?

[Nebulaeus]

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

what do you recommend for a "best bang for the buck" upgrade? i'm not willing to invest heavily in a gpu since my system is aging.

[SquishNoob]

This might not be the best game to guess on upgrades to make it play well...

[Zukabazuka]

Originally posted by hiker0001:

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

what do you recommend for a "best bang for the buck" upgrade? i'm not willing to invest heavily in a gpu since my system is aging.

The GPU would be able to fit in almost any PC upgrade you buy, if it was a CPU yeah that would be valid but a GPU is a safe way to upgrade a PC. The only problem I see is power requirement that would be one of the things to look at.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by hiker0001:

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

what do you recommend for a "best bang for the buck" upgrade? i'm not willing to invest heavily in a gpu since my system is aging.

2060.

Trhats if you are affraid of bnecking, otherwise 2070...


But you didnt post anything else but your gpu so dont expect me to mind read your other specs please.

[flibbertigibbety]

videocardbenchmarks website can be helpful for comparing both CPU and GPU performance with a very general ovehead view using G3D mark scores. It shows both performance as well as performance per $ spent. Their prices are pretty accurate in general. Below show the gtx1660 vse RTX 2070 vs 2080ti to show low, mid, and high range cards and their "bang for the buck".

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/GeForce-GTX-1660-vs-GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-vs-GeForce-RTX-2070/4062vs3991vs4001

[Matt Beeching]

Try Steam's Frame Time tool, there's an option to display the graph on the headset display: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamVR/Frame_Timing

The Rift S is 80Hz so your target should be 12.5ms, anything above that will be using reprojection (ASW) unless you've disabled the feature.

Perhaps visit the Nexus to conduct your performance tests. Explore the station with everything on Enhanced, then try setting everything to Normal and doing the same (It might be a good idea to restart the game after changing all the graphics settings).

[TheS1X]

Buy rtx 2070
It is cheapest for good vr experiance.

[🐾]

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

That is not what most people who understands VR says. They say that a 970 is perfectly fine for VR gaming, and that it is only a myth that is is too weak for real VR gaming. I have noticed that most VR players however tend to push the requirement for gpu waaay past what is necessary, for ego reasons probably. The problem with NMS VR is the horrendous optimization and not necessary card related. 970 is more than fine for NMS.

[Mr. Stagger Lee]

Originally posted by 🐾:

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

That is not what most people who understands VR says. They say that a 970 is perfectly fine for VR gaming, and that it is only a myth that is is too weak for real VR gaming. I have noticed that most VR players however tend to push the requirement for gpu waaay past what is necessary, for ego reasons probably. The problem with NMS VR is the horrendous optimization and not necessary card related. 970 is more than fine for NMS.

So you’re saying most VR players do not understand VR. But somehow you do, and yet are claiming 970 is “more than fine” for NMS VR. Do you even know what reprojection means? Because that’s all you’ll be seeing with that card are reprojected frames with this game. Enjoy.

[Titler]

Originally posted by 🐾:

Originally posted by Worst Name Ever:

You'll have to turn everything down, and even maybe lower render resolution below baseline. 970 is very old at this point, and entry level for VR. Depends on your tolerance for reprojection, which there'l be lots of.

That is not what most people who understands VR says. They say that a 970 is perfectly fine for VR gaming, and that it is only a myth that is is too weak for real VR gaming. I have noticed that most VR players however tend to push the requirement for gpu waaay past what is necessary, for ego reasons probably. The problem with NMS VR is the horrendous optimization and not necessary card related. 970 is more than fine for NMS.

Nice to see someone (with an edgelord, Nick Cave name too) immediately prove you right... But yes, the 970 comes up fine under Steam's VR testing tools. I can run Elite Dangerous on maximum settings through it and a DK2 (an old, OLD headset) too.

But it's NMS that is horrendously optimised. It's also buggy, especially with regards to controller input.

[Titler]

Originally posted by hiker0001:

I'm new to VR and have the lowly GTX 970 with an Oculus Rift S. I've played a few sessions with graphics set to enhanced and AA set to 8 FXAA. So far it's been a smooth experience. However, I'd like to get the best graphics quality I can while maintaining the 90 fps recommendation for VR. But I have no idea how to get the best bang for the buck graphically nor do I know how to check the fps in game. Is there a guide out there or can somebody give a newb a hand?

In general, the best way to move your system forward would be to switch from a HDD to a Solid State Drive if you haven't already.

However you won't see much improvement with NMS, as it's just terribly optimised; Doom 2016 uses the Vulkan library too, and using a 970 with 8gb of DDR3 and a quad 3.5 i5, it runs smooth as butter on my system.

NMS however runs like poop still, despite being a far simpler, graphically plain game in comparison.

I'm using a DK2, an older headset than yours, and the same GPU and as mentioned, I can run Elite: Dangerous on maximum settings, but NMS struggles badly; you need to drop all the graphics down to mimimum (except Base, which oddly needs to be on maximum as it is tied to an actual item cap and draw distance, so it'll look worse and have less workable parts in game on minimum) and check the maxmimum resolution and refresh of your headset; Oculus have saved price and performance on the Rift S by dropping the refresh rate down to 80hz, so you CANT get to 90hz on that.

Someone below has instantly proven the toxic, stats-obsessed nature of much of the VR community; unfortunately VR is still developing and is nowhere near 2d desktop performance, so don't worry about it. Get an experience you are happy with, and don't get drawn into the e-peen contest.

[MercAngel]

i run 3 970 2 in SIL 1 for PhysX
AMD FX8350
1TB SSD
32GB SSD for Swap File (PageFile)
16GB ram
Liquid cooling

i run desktop on Ultra and VR on High HTC VIVE i use the Sync Cable if i take it out have to do enhanced

i run all my games as MAX settings but this one in VR

also if the 970 is such a bad card why is it still $300-400+ new when a good chunk of the 10 series cards are under $300

may not be 4K who cares most can not tell 1080 from 4K any way it has 2 million+ more pixels then they eye can see as the eye only has about 6 million “cones” which see color.

[I LIKE DR PEPPER]

The 970 was an amazing card at the time and didn't deserve the crap that they threw at it.

[IanL]

Well I ran with a 970 for a year with my Vive, it managed on the whole but then I upgraded to a 1080 and saw a massive improvement. Sure the 970 was a good card in its time but it is just entry level for VR, especially if your looking to run with higher super sampling.

[IanL]

Originally posted by Titler:

...
NMS however runs like poop still, despite being a far simpler, graphically plain game in comparison.
...

I'm not saying there is no room for improvement on their Vulcan implementation but there is no comparison between Doom VR and No Mans Sky VR. NMS is heavily dependent on procedural generation which is expensive, especially when your having to generate geometry on the fly all the time. Doom is a much simpler game, and although graphically richer most modern graphics cards will manage that with ease with plenty to spare!

It might be time for HG to look at doing some of the procedural stuff on the Graphics cards themselves and make the most of their parallel processing.