AMD 9070XT VR good idea?

Tykey said:
Great video, thx, I have a 9070 XT and 5080 here, that video showed them closer than I expected tbh. Might compare mine to decide which to sell, was leaning towards keeping the 5080 but not so sure now.
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The only problem that I have with the video is that it doesn't tell the whole story. Both the 9070XT and the 5080 are bottlenecked by the CPU, even in pancake gaming. In VR this is going to be worse because, as we all know, VR is more CPU dependent than normal gaming. And due to Nvidia's driver overhead, the 5080 is more heavily bottlenecked than the 9070XT. Also, he doesn't run high settings because he is trying to keep the 9070XT from struggling. For example, he uses Ultra instead of Godlike for the virtual desktop resolution. This helps to keep the gap in performance a lot smaller than it probably is.

You would need to test both cards in your 9800X3D system and decide then. I wouldn't base my decision off this video. Oh and if you are using Half Life Alyx to test between them, make sure you have the dynamic resolution turned off!!
 
melmac said:
The only problem that I have with the video is that it doesn't tell the whole story. Both the 9070XT and the 5080 are bottlenecked by the CPU, even in pancake gaming. In VR this is going to be worse because, as we all know, VR is more CPU dependent than normal gaming. And due to Nvidia's driver overhead, the 5080 is more heavily bottlenecked than the 9070XT. Also, he doesn't run high settings because he is trying to keep the 9070XT from struggling. For example, he uses Ultra instead of Godlike for the virtual desktop resolution. This helps to keep the gap in performance a lot smaller than it probably is.

You would need to test both cards in your 9800X3D system and decide then. I wouldn't base my decision off this video. Oh and if you are using Half Life Alyx to test between them, make sure you have the dynamic resolution turned off!!
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Yeh I think he is definitely getting his results skewed by his cpu, tbf iirc he does state that somewhere in his YT video comments I think. I have the opportunity to test both gpu's in my new system so I really should test them. By the way even though I bought it for gaming my productivity (working on my app mainly) or more accurately time to test new versions of my app is now about 1/4 of what it was. Your upgrade help was the catalyst, cheers!
 
I don't use VR much anymore but I fired the old Vive up and it does play a bunch of older titles well. Went from a 3080 and 9070 XT but again it's been so long I can't really say much about the differences. There's a weird memory leak if I have motion smoothing on in SteamVR. Eventually the game or app dies when vrcompositor gobbles up all the RAM.
 
Tykey said:
Yeh I think he is definitely getting his results skewed by his cpu, tbf iirc he does state that somewhere in his YT video comments I think. I have the opportunity to test both gpu's in my new system so I really should test them. By the way even though I bought it for gaming my productivity (working on my app mainly) or more accurately time to test new versions of my app is now about 1/4 of what it was. Your upgrade help was the catalyst, cheers!
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So, did you do any tests? It would be of great interest to the VR community. You would be a hero with your name in lights etc etc. :p
Tykey said:
Your upgrade help was the catalyst, cheers!
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Not sure if you are blaming me or thanking me :cry::p
 
melmac said:
So, did you do any tests? It would be of great interest to the VR community. You would be a hero with your name in lights etc etc. :p


Not sure if you are blaming me or thanking me :cry::p
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Bit of both I think :D nah I'm made up with my new setup tbh.

Sorry but I posted the 9070 XT off to the new owner this morning. I had no chance to test them, didn't expect to sell it that quickly (yep that's an excuse, I'm a lazy barsteward who couldn't be bothered swapping gpu's :p).

AMD driver issues? Dunno about AMD but the latest drivers for my 5080 messed up a game I'm playing a lot of, didn't find out it was the driver until I'd wasted a couple of hours fault finding, cheers Nvidia :rolleyes:
 
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Thought I'd resurrect this thread as I'm building a new 9800X3D system. I'd pretty much decided to get a 5070ti, but is the 9070xt a good alternative for VR gaming?
 
kration said:
Thought I'd resurrect this thread as I'm building a new 9800X3D system. I'd pretty much decided to get a 5070ti, but is the 9070xt a good alternative for VR gaming?
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I'd prefer the 5070ti, has DLSS which quite a few games can use in VR now, AMD has FSR but generally thought to not be quite as good or widely adopted. Nvidia have traditionally been preferred by many for VR. But saying all that I think 9070XT would still do well, both great cards. But yeh it'd be a 5070ti for me if I was choosing.
 
I've been using AMD for VR for the last few years and never had a problem, it's been a great expirence for me. I use it to play my flight sim il2 sturmovik VR, currently been using my 7900XTX for the last 2 years and before that I used 6800XT, 2080 Super and a 1070.

All have been good experiences, I would just get the best card you can afford.
 
melmac said:
And now I am thinking of doing something crazy. I am actually seriously considering buying a 5070Ti. I can sell the 9070XT for nearly the same price I bought it for and a 5070Ti shouldn't cost me too much along with that. Sure I am losing both ways, but I am very curious to see how the 5070Ti compares.

And I am also totally hooked on the Mad Dog Overhaul of Skyrim VR. And that runs better on Nvidia cards.

Will see over the next few days.
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Wow, did you actually get beyond temptation and do this..?

I must admit to enjoying the use of DLSS and Frame Gen, does the AMD card offer the equivalent of those, could they both be included under FSR..?
 
Vimes said:
a 9070xt, if so which model did you go for..?

Thanks
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i went with :
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
as its a "tad quieter" if i remember correctly the RMA process was a bit easier.

i considered

Asus Radeon RX 9070 XT Prime OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card​

but people said it was a bit noisy as its a "tad faster"
 
LostCorpse said:
i went with :
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
as its a "tad quieter" if i remember correctly the RMA process was a bit easier.

i considered

Asus Radeon RX 9070 XT Prime OC 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card​

but people said it was a bit noisy as its a "tad faster"
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You should be well impressed with that...!
IIRC the RMA aspect seems pretty decent with Sapphire, I suppose that also reflects the retailer you also went for. There does seem to be a lot of choice, with one, maybe another, going for the 12 pin single connector............................oh dear.
 
Vimes said:
Wow, did you actually get beyond temptation and do this..?

I must admit to enjoying the use of DLSS and Frame Gen, does the AMD card offer the equivalent of those, could they both be included under FSR..?
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I didn't, I kept the 9070XT. The prices of the 9070XT dropped and I would have lost out too much money both ways to switch.

AMD have their versions of DLSS and Frame Gen. AMD's FSR 4(DLSS), is really good. And they just released their equivalent of frame gen last month with Redstone drivers, it's still a work in progress though. The Nvidia options are better, they are a little faster and have a little better image quality overall, but would you notice the differences?

The biggest difference between the 5070Ti and the 9070XT is Ray Tracing/Path Tracing. Nvidia's cards still lead in that department. The more Ray Traced/Path Traced a game is the bigger the difference in performance between the cards.

For VR, there is no real difference. Some headset manufacturers are slow to release drivers that work with AMD cards. But that's improving. And, I mentioned to you already, the other thing to consider is the games you play. If you play a lot of games with VR mods, like Skyrim VR, Fallout VR etc. etc. Then consider getting a card from Nvidia. It's just easier and have better performance.

Now are all these games playable? They are, I have a lot of hours in these games on the 9070XT and haven't regretted my purchase at all.

My advice, however, would be this. If the 5070 TI and the 9070XT are the at a very similar price, I would buy the 5070Ti. If there is a big price difference, you will have to decide how much those features above are worth to you.

Luckily, it's a win win situation really. There are no bad options. I think you will be happy with either card. :)
 
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@melmac Thanks I appreciate your detailed post.

I have a 4080 and I'm happy enough with my 4k monitor and PCVR performance. In the game, as an example, Anno 117, it is very GPU intensive. It does not natively support Frame Generation, but I can enable that as "Smooth Motion" in the Nvidia app. It makes a phenomenal difference in performance, I see no differences in quality, but then again I do not pixel peep.
The Frame Gen does not need to have the option enabled in the game, as noted it can be applied per game via the app as Smooth Motion.

My son is considering a new GPU, looking at both the 5070Ti and the 9070xt. He also will be a PCVR player, with a Quest 3. Historically I have tended to go for the Green team, the last AMD GPU I had was a 6800 Red Devil LTD and whilst it was superb in AAA titles, it did have issues with a number of Indie titles. Hopefully those types of issues should be less and less occurring now.

What model of 9070XT did you end up with..?
 
to add i went with amd graphics for potentially better linux support.

nvidia is just out of my price range for what i want to pay vs performance. even before the nvidia self destruct route they are taking
 
LostCorpse said:
to add i went with amd graphics for potentially better linux support.

nvidia is just out of my price range for what i want to pay vs performance. even before the nvidia self destruct route they are taking
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I take your point, but I really do feel that gamers, as a whole, are just not as relevant for Nvidia at this point. Certainly when compared to where the bulk of their profits are now coming from.
That could be said of Micron, they felt no shame in simply closing down Crucial...!
 
Vimes said:
I take your point, but I really do feel that gamers, as a whole, are just not as relevant for Nvidia at this point. Certainly when compared to where the bulk of their profits are now coming from.
That could be said of Micron, they felt no shame in simply closing down Crucial...!
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Nvidia have something called a 'fiduciary duty' in the US which in simple terms means they are legally obliged to make as much money as they can for their shareholders.

So unless Nvidia is broken up into retail and commercial businesses or they buy back shares we as consumers are screwed until market conditions change.

We can argue over the morales and practices (and I wouldn't disagree btw, I quite frequently poke the green goblin on X) but its a symptom we have little control over.
 
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