AMD 9070XT VR good idea?

BS Dave said:
Are the 9070's better do you know? For h264?
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Here is a quote from the technical deep dive on improvements AMD made for RDNA4.

Navi 48 comes a dual media engine, each of the two can perform concurrent encoding and decoding, and so the implementation resembles an NVIDIA GPU having two each of NVENC and NVDEC units. The new generation media engine offers a 25% increase in H.264 low-latency encode quality, and an 11% improvement in HEVC encode quality. AV1 encode and decode gets B-frames support, vastly improving bitrates. A B-frame is a frame that lacks image information, but instead motion-vector values, that lets the decoder reconstruct the image component using past and future I-Frames (frames with image data). The media engine posts a 50% generational performance uplift (measured in encoder/decoder frame rates), with reductions in memory overhead.
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This seems to be confirmed in reviews.

 
And after saying I was going to skip this generation, I found a 9070Xt and only slightly above MSRP, so bought it.

Will let you guys know what its like for VR as soon as I get it. No idea of delivery time or date yet. Hopefully it will be before next Friday. Paddy's day is going to slow things down of course.
 
melmac said:
you never answered my question. Or maybe you didn't see it. But, what did you mean by broken HEVC??
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Some models in the 7000 series had a hardware HEVC issue at certain resolutions—though I’m not sure exactly which ones. It’s been resolved with the 9000 series.
 
melmac said:
you never answered my question. Or maybe you didn't see it. But, what did you mean by broken HEVC??
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I didn't see it. It's something I thought someone said in this thread. It may have been another similar one. I have no experience of it, so am trying to find out and avoid an expensive mistake buying something that doesn't work properly. It seems I was mistaken, or the person I quoted was. Watching the video you posted didn't seem to illustrate anything terrible that needed highlighting. I look forward to your results with your 9070xt and Q3 is it?
 
BS Dave said:
I didn't see it. It's something I thought someone said in this thread. It may have been another similar one. I have no experience of it, so am trying to find out and avoid an expensive mistake buying something that doesn't work properly. It seems I was mistaken, or the person I quoted was. Watching the video you posted didn't seem to illustrate anything terrible that needed highlighting. I look forward to your results with your 9070xt and Q3 is it?
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For VR headsets that require streaming, like the Quest 2/3 and Pico 4, there is no issue with HEVC when using cards from either AMD or Nvidia. It's only when you use the H.264 codec that there is a difference. Maybe the results weren't clear from the Video that I linked to. But in practice the difference can be massive. Like when I switched from the 2070 super to the 6900XT, I honestly thought my 6900 was broken. I was getting more performance in VR games but everything looked far better on the 2070 Super. I can't speak for the RDNA 3 cards because I never tried one myself, but it seems hit and miss from reading the various forums.

I am looking forward to the 9070XT too. I really wanted to go Nvidia but if the codecs have been improved, then the 9070 should be just fine. And yes, it's a Quest 3.

Spending all this money for VR, hope its worth it!! :p
 
melmac said:
For VR headsets that require streaming, like the Quest 2/3 and Pico 4, there is no issue with HEVC when using cards from either AMD or Nvidia. It's only when you use the H.264 codec that there is a difference. Maybe the results weren't clear from the Video that I linked to. But in practice the difference can be massive. Like when I switched from the 2070 super to the 6900XT, I honestly thought my 6900 was broken. I was getting more performance in VR games but everything looked far better on the 2070 Super. I can't speak for the RDNA 3 cards because I never tried one myself, but it seems hit and miss from reading the various forums.

I am looking forward to the 9070XT too. I really wanted to go Nvidia but if the codecs have been improved, then the 9070 should be just fine. And yes, it's a Quest 3.

Spending all this money for VR, hope its worth it!! :p
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I look forward to your updates...It's payday next week so i'll be looking out for GFX card deals, and maybe for 2nd hand Q3s too
 
I keep checking various sites for stock, OC'ers first of course :p , and not come across anything I can actually buy, I don't want to be put in a waiting list of if when's and maybe's etc.
 
I've been using a 9070XT since last Friday and it's fine using VD with my Quest 3 (h.264+ 500mbps).
Coming from a 3080, I'm not sure that the desktop performance jump carries over quite so much with VR though, and you'll obviously lose out with titles that really benefit from exclusive Nvidia features.

Overall, it does the job and I'm happy enough with it and the extra VRAM definitely helps.
 
And it's arrived and just after installing it!! Going to give it a quick test now.

@Uncle Petey I have been on a 6900XT for the last few years. So I haven't had those Nvidia features. But, I understand what you mean. I have never been able to get the image quality in VR as good as I did when I had the 2070 Super. Obviously talking about in headsets that use codecs. AMD are supposed to have improved that side of things, so will see how I get on!! :)
 
ok, did a very quick test with the same settings(codec, bitrate etc.) I was using for the 6900XT using both H.264 and H.265 on Fallout 4 VR.

well, I have to report it was both good and bad. The Good is that the image quality is better. Especially on H.264. It's really noticeable. So well done AMD on improving your Codec quality.
Unfortunately there is a downside. The Latency has almost doubled for the same bitrate when using H.264. Has increased when using H.265 too, but not as much. It's only been a quick test though and there might be something that I missed. Or maybe the improved quality is at the expense of added latency.

Further tricking required!!
 
I got hold of a 9070 XT can't wait until it gets here, going to spend all day VR gaming which I haven't done for ages. My 1st time using VR in 2014 was with an AMD gpu and it was fine, glad to be using 1 again soon, I'm priced out of Nvidia cards tbh anyway.
 
Ok, further testing has gone well. On Virtual Desktop I switched to Av1, 200Mbps. I turned up the resolution to Godlike and changed to 120 fps.

Just wow, Fallout 4 looks amazing. Very happy with the results.

Using AV1 I am getting lower latency than using H.264 at 300Mbps. I think I need to try out H.264 in Airlink just to see if has still the same high latency. At 300Mbps, H.264 should be way lower than AV1 at 200Mbps. Just to see if it's a Virtual desktop problem.
 
I'm following your experience quite closely. As although I have been using PC VR for a few years (I started with a Q1 and a Vega56, progressing, like you to a 6900XT and a Q3, and now a 9070XT), I've never been sure I'm doing it right as most guides/reported experiences are for Nvidia based cards as they had better encoding/decoding ability, so i've just gone with what I "felt" is working OK with trial and error.

I'm glad my own testing in VRdesktop mirrors what you've found - AV1/200mbps works very well (although I don't use Godlike as default).

Might I ask what Openxr runtime you use on the VRdesktop side as preference?
 
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Mercurial said:
I'm following your experience quite closely. As although I have been using PC VR for a few years (I started with a Q1 and a Vega56, progressing, like you to a 6900XT and a Q3, and now a 9070XT), I've never been sure I'm doing it right as most guides/reported experiences are for Nvidia based cards as they had better encoding/decoding ability, so i've just gone with what I "felt" is working OK with trial and error.

I'm glad my own testing in VRdesktop mirrors what you've found - AV1/200mbps works very well (although I don't use Godlike as default).

Might I ask what Openxr runtime you use on the VRdesktop side as preference?
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Will get round to more testing tomorrow and will let you know how I get on.
 
Mine comes today, tbh I don't really know much about codecs and bit rates etc, I just tend to choose something and if it works, looks ok and doesn't lag then I leave it at that but I know I am easily pleased :D
 
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Tykey said:
Mine comes today, tbh I don't really know much about codecs and bit rates etc, I just tend to choose something and if it works, looks ok and doesn't lag then I leave it at that but I know I am easily pleased :D
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Same here :) I'm however intrigued to see what conclusions someone with more of a clue and more patience (Melmac!) comes to :)
 
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