The 15-game ‘Premium’ VR Review – Pascal vs. Vega benchmarked for the Oculus Rift

[Razor Time]

Nice to see some upto date VR benchmarks.

https://babeltechreviews.com/15-game-premium-vr-review-pascal-vs-vega-benchmarked-oculus-rift/

 

[melmac]

Dammit, they used the Adrenalin drivers There is a drop in performance in VR games using the 12.1 and 12.2 drivers. The 11.4 drivers perform much better. For instance in Robo Recall I can run the game with 1.3 pixel density in high settings and get no frame drops using 11.4. But when I use the Adrenalin drives I have to turn the pixel density down to 1.

 

[danoliver1]

Dammit, they used the Adrenalin drivers There is a drop in performance in VR games using the 12.1 and 12.2 drivers. The 11.4 drivers perform much better. For instance in Robo Recall I can run the game with 1.3 pixel density in high settings and get no frame drops using 11.4. But when I use the Adrenalin drives I have to turn the pixel density down to 1.

You can't polish a turd mate.
Glad i got a 1080ti now.

 

[orbitalwalsh]

its good to see gtx 1080 having a better over the gtx 1070 ti in VR games then non- VR

wished they'd done gtx 1080 11 Gbps version though !

 

[melmac]

You can't polish a turd mate.
Glad i got a 1080ti now.

Well I couldn't afford 1080TI and I just managed to get the Vega 64 card second hand at the very limit of my budget.

But, I was saying Dammit, because I was waiting since August for them to do a follow up article about VR performance. Then they finally get around to doing the article and they don't use the best performing drivers. The Adrenalin drivers bring lots of features but have been very buggy, even breaking Dx9 games and they have lower performance than the 11.4 ones.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Well I couldn't afford 1080TI and I just managed to get the Vega 64 card second hand at the very limit of my budget.

But, I was saying Dammit, because I was waiting since August for them to do a follow up article about VR performance. Then they finally get around to doing the article and they don't use the best performing drivers. The Adrenalin drivers bring lots of features but have been very buggy, even breaking Dx9 games and they have lower performance than the 11.4 ones.

Did they pick the best Nvidia drivers for VR or did they just go with the newest for each?

 

[melmac]

Did they pick the best Nvidia drivers for VR or did they just go with the newest for each?

I am sure they are using the latest from each, but, Firstly, I haven't heard of any performance problems or gaming breaking bugs with the latest Nvidia drivers. And secondly, Pascal is out over a year and half now. Whereas if you take a look around any forum on the internet you will see a lot of complaints about the performance drops, bugs and gaming breaking issues with the Adrenalin drivers. Look at the thread on this forum about DX9 for example. While the 17.11.4 drivers are rock solid with no issues.

But, I wasn't really having a dig at the site, It was just more exasperation on my part that they finally get around to doing a more up to date VR test but then use poor drivers.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I am sure they are using the latest from each, but, Firstly, I haven't heard of any performance problems or gaming breaking bugs with the latest Nvidia drivers. And secondly, Pascal is out over a year and half now. Whereas if you take a look around any forum on the internet you will see a lot of complaints about the performance drops, bugs and gaming breaking issues with the Adrenalin drivers. Look at the thread on this forum about DX9 for example. While the 17.11.4 drivers are rock solid with no issues.

But, I wasn't really having a dig at the site, It was just more exasperation on my part that they finally get around to doing a more up to date VR test but then use poor drivers.

I just meant that they probably didn't do it vindictively to make AMD look bad. Also, it's probably fair that a lot of people may just upgrade to the latest drivers whenever they're prompted and not look at which ones give the best performance for what they want. While I'm sure a lot of people on this site know different a lot of PC users probably just expect newer drivers to be better.
And lets not start the whole Nvidia drivers are better than AMD drivers thing again!

 

[melmac]

I just meant that they probably didn't do it vindictively to make AMD look bad. Also, it's probably fair that a lot of people may just upgrade to the latest drivers whenever they're prompted and not look at which ones give the best performance for what they want. While I'm sure a lot of people on this site know different a lot of PC users probably just expect newer drivers to be better.
And lets not start the whole Nvidia drivers are better than AMD drivers thing again!

I never said they did it vindictively. And I never said Nvidia drivers were better than AMD drivers. It's just after more than 18 months they are fully matured and it's just bug fixes for specific games at this stage. Whereas AMD's Vega drivers are still a work in progress as can be seen by the latest DX9 problem. Adrenalin drivers brought a lot of great features but broke a lot of other things, The hotfix drivers were better with improvements to performance and hopefully the next set of drivers will have both the features of the Adrenalin drivers and the performance of the 11.4 ones.

Sorry, I don't agree with that comment about most people just upgrade to the latest drivers when asked. That might apply to people who have mainstream cards, but, I would say the majority of people spending £500 on a GPU know about drivers.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I never said they did it vindictively. And I never said Nvidia drivers were better than AMD drivers. It's just after more than 18 months they are fully matured and it's just bug fixes for specific games at this stage. Whereas AMD's Vega drivers are still a work in progress as can be seen by the latest DX9 problem. Adrenalin drivers brought a lot of great features but broke a lot of other things, The hotfix drivers were better with improvements to performance and hopefully the next set of drivers will have both the features of the Adrenalin drivers and the performance of the 11.4 ones.

Sorry, I don't agree with that comment about most people just upgrade to the latest drivers when asked. That might apply to people who have mainstream cards, but, I would say the majority of people spending £500 on a GPU know about drivers.

You did say Nvidia drivers don't have any performance problems or game breaking bugs while AMD drivers have performance drops, bugs and game breaking issues. Sounds like you're saying Nvidia drivers are better than AMD's at the minute. Also the reason Nvidia's Pascal drivers are 18 months old and AMD's Vega drivers are 4 months old is because AMD took 14 months to release a card of 1080-ish performance. That's nobody's fault but AMDs. Seems unreasonable to ask the website(s) to wait 14 months so AMD have time to mature their drivers. I also think it unreasonable to expect the website to pick through every AMD and Nvidia driver from the last 18 months to find the ones with the best VR performance for their tests (only fair you pick the best drivers from both sides if you're picking them for one).

I guess it's hard to know what most mainstream owners do driver wise. I'd imagine there are a lot of 1070/1080 owners out there (I work with a few) and I wouldn't like to guess what percentage keep track of which driver is best for which games. I can think of 3 people I work with that have Nvidia cards (1080s or 980Tis) and VR and I'm not sure any of them could tell you which driver in the last 18 months gives the best VR performance for the games listed in this test.

 

[JediFragger]

Dammit, they used the Adrenalin drivers There is a drop in performance in VR games using the 12.1 and 12.2 drivers. The 11.4 drivers perform much better. For instance in Robo Recall I can run the game with 1.3 pixel density in high settings and get no frame drops using 11.4. But when I use the Adrenalin drives I have to turn the pixel density down to 1.

Somebody better let AMD know that newer drivers are supposed to perform *better* with each iteration and not worserer

 

[melmac]

You did say Nvidia drivers don't have any performance problems or game breaking bugs while AMD drivers have performance drops, bugs and game breaking issues. Sounds like you're saying Nvidia drivers are better than AMD's at the minute. Also the reason Nvidia's Pascal drivers are 18 months old and AMD's Vega drivers are 4 months old is because AMD took 14 months to release a card of 1080-ish performance. That's nobody's fault but AMDs. Seems unreasonable to ask the website(s) to wait 14 months so AMD have time to mature their drivers. I also think it unreasonable to expect the website to pick through every AMD and Nvidia driver from the last 18 months to find the ones with the best VR performance for their tests (only fair you pick the best drivers from both sides if you're picking them for one).

I guess it's hard to know what most mainstream owners do driver wise. I'd imagine there are a lot of 1070/1080 owners out there (I work with a few) and I wouldn't like to guess what percentage keep track of which driver is best for which games. I can think of 3 people I work with that have Nvidia cards (1080s or 980Tis) and VR and I'm not sure any of them could tell you which driver in the last 18 months gives the best VR performance for the games listed in this test.

Oh my god, what a nonsense post. I could tell you were looking for an argument with your first reply to me.

I never implied or suggested any of those things. I was purely talking about AMD drivers and the bad timing of their test, that's all.

And read my post properly instead of looking for things which aren't there. You brought up Nvidia. I said I didn't hear of any problems with Nvidia's Latest drivers, there are no reports of drops in performance, no reports of game breaking bugs. Whereas problems with AMD's latest drivers are well known. Just look at the drivers thread or the owners thread or the DX9 problem thread. I am just saying that AMD's current drivers have issues which affected the outcome of the tests, Nvidia's current drivers don't.

That Pascal is out 18 months and Vega is only out 4 months is the reality. AMD are still working on Vega drivers. I never asked the website to wait 18 months. And aren't you forgetting something, I am saying the 11.4 drivers are the best performing ones. So they don't have to wait at all, those drivers are already out.

And you keep going on about Nvidia, I never mentioned them at all in my first post. I sold my 1070, currently I don't really care about performance on Nvidia side of things.

​

 

[melmac]

Somebody better let AMD know that newer drivers are supposed to perform *better* with each iteration and not worserer

Well it happens!! And, in fairness AMD's drivers have been pretty good for the last couple of years, but, man, the Adrenalin drivers were a bit of slip up. Did you read all the fighting in the other thread? Got exciting there for a while

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Oh my god, what a nonsense post. I could tell you were looking for an argument with your first reply to me.

I never implied or suggested any of those things. I was purely talking about AMD drivers and the bad timing of their test, that's all.

And read my post properly instead of looking for things which aren't there. You brought up Nvidia. I said I didn't hear of any problems with Nvidia's Latest drivers, there are no reports of drops in performance, no reports of game breaking bugs. Whereas problems with AMD's latest drivers are well known. Just look at the drivers thread or the owners thread or the DX9 problem thread. I am just saying that AMD's current drivers have issues which affected the outcome of the tests, Nvidia's current drivers don't.

That Pascal is out 18 months and Vega is only out 4 months is the reality. AMD are still working on Vega drivers. I never asked the website to wait 18 months. And aren't you forgetting something, I am saying the 11.4 drivers are the best performing ones. So they don't have to wait at all, those drivers are already out.

And you keep going on about Nvidia, I never mentioned them at all in my first post. I sold my 1070, currently I don't really care about performance on Nvidia side of things.

​

what a pointless reply that added nothing.
I only brought up the Nvidia drivers because you were crying about them not cherry picking the best AMD drivers. I was just asking if they had cherry picked the Nvidia drivers or if they treated them evenly (read my first post).
You said AMD's current drivers have issues and Nvidia's don't. You started mentioning the good and bad drivers thing, I only asked which Nvidia drivers they used, you started comparing them.

You're not saying they should've waited but you did want them to cherry pick the 'best' drivers (do we know that the 11.4s are the best for the games benchmarked?) and I was just saying that if you want them to cherry pick AMD's drivers they should be expected to cherry pick the Nvidia ones too and it might be a bit much to expect given how many Nvidia have probably released in the last 18 months.

EDIT: You know what, I can't be bothered with this I've got better things to od. Fine, you win, you were right, whatever.

 

[melmac]

what a pointless reply that added nothing.
I only brought up the Nvidia drivers because you were crying about them not cherry picking the best AMD drivers. I was just asking if they had cherry picked the Nvidia drivers or if they treated them evenly (read my first post).
You said AMD's current drivers have issues and Nvidia's don't. You started mentioning the good and bad drivers thing, I only asked which Nvidia drivers they used, you started comparing them.

You're not saying they should've waited but you did want them to cherry pick the 'best' drivers (do we know that the 11.4s are the best for the games benchmarked?) and I was just saying that if you want them to cherry pick AMD's drivers they should be expected to cherry pick the Nvidia ones too and it might be a bit much to expect given how many Nvidia have probably released in the last 18 months.

EDIT: You know what, I can't be bothered with this I've got better things to od. Fine, you win, you were right, whatever.

Why start a stupid argument then? Why go off on one of your irrelevant tangents?

Let me repeat for you very slowly,

I wasn't criticising the website that done the review, I wasn't expecting the site to cherry pick drivers. I was just expressing a little bit of frustration at the bad timing of the review, because I wanted to compare a professional review with my own findings in VR. That's it, end of story.

As an aside. I think review sites should use the best driver available for each card. It wouldn't be too hard to do. Normally drivers either fix bugs or add performance increases sometimes both. But, and it doesn't happen very often, there have been drivers released by both vendors that have made things worse and has needed a roll back to earlier drivers. Surely a tech site, that's doing professional reviews shouldn't just use the latest driver because it's the latest driver.

 

[danoliver1]

I always install the latest drivers . In a vs it should be latest driver vs latest driver in an ideal world.

 

[Gregster]

Why start a stupid argument then? Why go off on one of your irrelevant tangents?

Let me repeat for you very slowly,

I wasn't criticising the website that done the review, I wasn't expecting the site to cherry pick drivers. I was just expressing a little bit of frustration at the bad timing of the review, because I wanted to compare a professional review with my own findings in VR. That's it, end of story.

As an aside. I think review sites should use the best driver available for each card. It wouldn't be too hard to do. Normally drivers either fix bugs or add performance increases sometimes both. But, and it doesn't happen very often, there have been drivers released by both vendors that have made things worse and has needed a roll back to earlier drivers. Surely a tech site, that's doing professional reviews shouldn't just use the latest driver because it's the latest driver.

You have gone off on one a bit needlessly in truth. Comparing latest drivers is the way forward or even comparing an older NVidia driver to a newer NVidia driver would be cool but you getting 'a little bit frustrated at the timing of the review' strikes me as silly and I personally appreciate the work that people put into testing.

 

[melmac]

I always install the latest drivers . In a vs it should be latest driver vs latest driver in an ideal world.

shouldn't it be latest stable driver vs latest stable driver? If the latest driver was breaking games and reducing performance would you use it?

 

[Martini1991]

shouldn't it be latest stable driver vs latest stable driver? If the latest driver was breaking games and reducing performance would you use it?

Depends on the classification of stable.

Vega doesn't have a "stable driver"

 

[melmac]

Depends on the classification of stable.

Vega doesn't have a "stable driver"

The 17.11 drivers were very good. But, you know that the Adrenalin drivers have been very poor. Lots of new features but they needed more testing time.

The only reason I am suggesting that the Site use 17.11.4 is because they are the only ones that work with the Red Devil Vega cards the review used.