Advice for GPU Upgrade for VR Rig

[kjtaylor13]

Hi All,

I'm currently running 2 x Asus 980 Strix OC's in SLI. I'm looking for some advice on what to going forward about GPU's

My Main Rig is specced as so:

• HD-296-SE Seagate SSHD 5900RPM 3.5" 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST4000DX001) SSHD Hybrid Drive
• MY-203-KS Kingston HyperX Savage Red 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK4/32)
• CA-157-CS Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower Case - Black (CC-9011035-WW)
• CP-539-IN Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail
• MB-608-AS Asus Maximus VII Hero Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
• HS-014-CS Corsair Hydro H80i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060008-WW)
• GX-354-AS Asus GeForce GTX 980 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
• GX-354-AS Asus GeForce GTX 980 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
• HD-027-KS Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/240G)
• CD-004-OK OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM
• CA-156-CS Corsair RM Series RM 1000 '80+ Gold' 1000W Power Supply (CP-9020062-UK)

And I mainly run VR for my Oculus Rift, have Touch and a number of other controllers, and have a 2k 144hz ASUS ROQ monitor. But would like to stream 4k games via my Shield TV Also. I would like to run my games at the best graphics settings possible.

Would a Single Pascal based GPU be better than my current SLI setup? If I were to go from 2 980's to the current 1080 Asus Strix OC running as a single card would I notice any improvement in performance?

Should I wait for the 1080ti? How much of an improvement would this be over the current 1080 Strix?

Thanks all for your advice.

Cheers

Kevin

 

[subbytna]

Aren't SLI 980s roughly the same as a 1080...perhaps even less good?

 

[maonayze]

Looking at your spec fella, I'd leave it a bit and wait for Vega/1080Ti or even Volta.

What resolutions and detail levels are you running on your games? (Some game examples would be nice too).

If you had a 4K monitor then it may be different but for now I'd save your money.

 

[RobinGopher]

It really will depend on the game, 980s in SLI can certainly beat a 1080 by a little If a game doesn't like SLI the 1080 will obviously humilate the 980.
The Pascal architecture did add some extra hardware support that specifically accelerates VR. If your game supports it it seems like it has quite an effect which could increase the value of going Pascal.
Personally I would wait as it is quite an expensive purchase and everything MIGHT change when Vega arrives, if that sucks however, not much will. In that case its just a questionof how hot that money is staying in your pocket and how many games you play dislike SLI.

 

[kjtaylor13]

Hi,

Thanks Guys for the advice. I have since done a bit more reading, and there is only limited use of the NVidia VR works at the moment. So Pascal only offers a small improvement for VR for me.

I will wait to see what the new GPU's announced this year offer.

Thanks Again

Kevin

 

[Sc00p007]

Does the oculus touch games work with SLI?
I was under the impression that there wasn't SLI support for it (as it adds some kind of latency that is bad for vr), meaning the comparison for a vr rig should be more like 980 vs 1080, rather than 980sli vs 1080.

 

[smogsy]

I had 980 ski upgraded to 1080 was a good upgrade faster and better constituency + with be sli does not work yet. And Pascal has vr improvements.

Or rx480 but slower than 980 sli

 

[nashathedog]

Like some other's have said I also think you should make do with the 980 sli set up and wait for the next series of card releases, As well as the Vega and 1080ti there may also be a Pascal Refresh this year so unless SLi or the 4gb memory limit is an issue you can't live with you should wait a bit longer so you can get an upgrade rather than a sidegrade.