GPU, SLI, VR advice needed please

Ulti-Resis

Ulti-Resis

Ulti-Resis

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Hi all, hoping to get advice from those who know the tech aspects of Gpu, SLI and VR...

I have ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition mobo, i7 4930k, 32GB Kingston Hyper X Beast RAM and 2 x Inno3d Herculez iChill GTX 780 6GB cards in SLI. Custom loop water cooled CPU and an Acer 4K2K G-sync monitor. No overclocking at the minute.

I ran the steam VR test and got a score of 4.6 medium then ran it again and got 5.1 medium:

0 frames below 90fps and 0 frames Cpu bound on both tests.

It said it will work for some software but might lack the visual quality and some titles may not work at all though the graph did show it peaking into high/very high territory regularly and interspersed with medium/high medium between the peaks.

I'm looking to get the HTC Vive and wondering whether to jump in on this first consumer release or wait for ver 2.0. Anyone have even the faintest idea of when ver 2.0 might hit?

I thought my Gpu setup would easily handle VR when I bought them about 12 months ago but now it seems perhaps not. I also read that SLI doesn't work with VR but that it will be soon but ultimately comes down to engine and dev support. So what's the likelihood of SLI and VR being sorted out and working well and will this mean my two cards will then get to the VR ready/high passmark or should I flog the two cards and get a new single card instead? Also are we expecting even better cards than the current 1070 and 1080 cards available right now to release very soon, in simple terms should I wait? I know that I could just end up in an endless loop of waiting for the next best thing but if some big improvement is just around the corner then I am happy to wait for a while. I saw something last night about some new Pascal cards coming in soon and talk of single cards with 12Gb+ VRam on them and also single cards with essentially two Gpu’s on the one pcb similar to SLI yadda yadda.

I looked on fleabay to try to get an idea of what my cards would be worth but could only see the 3Gb version of mine and that was at £200 with 3 days left to run on the auction. Anyone got any idea what value mine should fetch if were I flog them? I'm just thinking that while my current cards still have some value, it might be better to sell them now and get as much back for them as I can while the going is still good.

Thanks for any and all advice.
 
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I am hoping SLI support will be coming but in the end I may just plump for the Pascal Ti when it makes an appearance.

If you want you can run the steam VR test using 2 GPUs by adding -multigpu to the launch options.
 
At the moment there's pretty much zero SLI support in any VR game... In actual fact having SLI enabled causes me issues in several of them (eg project cars, DCS, asetto corsa etc).
 
Thanks for your replies.

I read the Unreal Engine 4 and Unity have already got SLI support and maybe by now Crysis has it too but it now comes down to the devs to implement it into the software. Also Nvidia have their GameWorks program up and running but some are saying that it's not going to go anywhere.

Another discussion I saw talked of latency issues with SLI but others said that the latency issue was all talk and a non-issue, that in fact it would be just 1ms and only one frame would be lost so if you are getting 90fps then you might see 89fps and it would be a non-issue particularly if you are getting above the golden 90fps minimum. I don't know how much truth is in all of this talk though.

Do you think that the support for SLI will come and become the norm or is it dead in the water as far as VR is concerned? If it does get support and the devs implement it into the software would this fix all the issues you currently have with it enabled? Are you only having issues because it is not coded into those titles?

So when exactly do the Pascal cards hit the market and do we have any idea on price for the Ti?

My Wife is saying I should wait and get PSVR for my PS4 when it comes out to satiate my desire and then hold out for version 2.0 of the Vive and the Gpu(s) to support it at the time because, I explained to her that software is limited right now and they are likely to come up with higher resolution screens and improvements in the design, comfort and possibly a reduction in the price because the uptake by consumers and support from devs will likely be much higher by then. I expect ver 2.0 will be smaller and lighter, more comfortable and have 4K screens but also will need more powerful Gpu to drive it and maybe by then we will have AAA titles and really start seeing the big guns come out. As well as gaming there will obviously be other uses for it too such as VR movies, simulation experiences, no doubt the PrON industry will buy into it heavily etc. So the early adoption price sting may be gone by then. I don't want to get into the endless loop of waiting for the next best thing forever though. Saying that, my Wife is also saying "you know you'll only want to keep buying the next new version each time they release something so if you get one now then next year you'll be wanting to spend another pile of cash upgrading everything again and lose a load of money on the current kit". She knows me only too well :D
 
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I just tried the 'multigpu' in the launch options box but it made no difference whatsoever, still only scored 4.6, have I done something wrong? Should the command be typed '-multigpu' as you typed it or 'multigpu' and is there a way to tell if it is running the test in SLI or not? I checked in Nvidia Control Panel to make sure SLI was enabled and it is.
 
Well that made a huge difference, with SLI I got a score of 8.1 Very High and it says my rig is performing well above what is needed for VR.

The only thing now is whether SLI is supported by the devs but also leaves me in no-mans land as to whether I need to flog these 2 cards and go for a single or not :confused:
 
OK I'm getting more clued up on the whole direction of the Gpu scene now, I'm a bit behind the times on this it seems.

I understand that the GTX1070 and 1080 are in fact the new Pascal cards but the 1080 has new Micron GDDR5X VRam chips which perform a third faster than older memory modules, whereas the 1070 is still on the older gen VRam chips but still with the new Pascal Architecture. I was of the understanding that the pascal cards were to come in the near future.

So it would be the 1080 for me and probably the 1080Ti and I might even plumb it into my watercooling loop. I assume nobody knows when these are expected or their pricing?
 
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Ulti-Resis said:
Thanks for your replies.

I read the Unreal Engine 4 and Unity have already got SLI support and maybe by now Crysis has it too but it now comes down to the devs to implement it into the software. Also Nvidia have their GameWorks program up and running but some are saying that it's not going to go anywhere.

Another discussion I saw talked of latency issues with SLI but others said that the latency issue was all talk and a non-issue, that in fact it would be just 1ms and only one frame would be lost so if you are getting 90fps then you might see 89fps and it would be a non-issue particularly if you are getting above the golden 90fps minimum. I don't know how much truth is in all of this talk though.

Do you think that the support for SLI will come and become the norm or is it dead in the water as far as VR is concerned? If it does get support and the devs implement it into the software would this fix all the issues you currently have with it enabled? Are you only having issues because it is not coded into those titles?

So when exactly do the Pascal cards hit the market and do we have any idea on price for the Ti?

My Wife is saying I should wait and get PSVR for my PS4 when it comes out to satiate my desire and then hold out for version 2.0 of the Vive and the Gpu(s) to support it at the time because, I explained to her that software is limited right now and they are likely to come up with higher resolution screens and improvements in the design, comfort and possibly a reduction in the price because the uptake by consumers and support from devs will likely be much higher by then. I expect ver 2.0 will be smaller and lighter, more comfortable and have 4K screens but also will need more powerful Gpu to drive it and maybe by then we will have AAA titles and really start seeing the big guns come out. As well as gaming there will obviously be other uses for it too such as VR movies, simulation experiences, no doubt the PrON industry will buy into it heavily etc. So the early adoption price sting may be gone by then. I don't want to get into the endless loop of waiting for the next best thing forever though. Saying that, my Wife is also saying "you know you'll only want to keep buying the next new version each time they release something so if you get one now then next year you'll be wanting to spend another pile of cash upgrading everything again and lose a load of money on the current kit". She knows me only too well :D
Click to expand...

Dropping 1 frame in VR is different to dropping 1 frame on a regular monitor. Headtracking means if you are moving your view (which you do a lot in VR) you get very choppy movement which just 'feels' wrong!

This has happened to me a couple of times when exiting steamVR and going back to Oculus Home. Loading in to the demos and it would be a constant 90fps (i have afterburner app on lcd display on keyboard so monitor using that) but turning was causing it to drop to 87-89fps, but it felt absolutely horrific.

Believe me, VR needs a very consistent framerate.
 
The 1080Ti will probably be next summer or perhaps Spring. The Ti variant tends to release 3 months or so after the Titan and that is expected Q4 2016/ Q1 2017 (to best of my knowledge)

I use a 980Ti and it is excellent for with Rift. The 1070 is roughly equivallent, but meant to have better VR impementation due to some new rendering techniques exclusive to Pascal. The 1080 is around 20-30% more powerful than my 980Ti, but in VR perhaps even more-so.

A 1070 would offer more raw performance (marginally I think) than your SLI setup and give an increase in the framebuffer (VRAM), whilst also giving benefit of being a single card, so you get all the performance all the time, as opposed to delending on nvidia and game developers implementing SLI profiles in certain games. As well as the obvious heat and power consumption advantages.
 
I fully expect things will be much clearer by Christmas in the Gpu arena but I can't see any version 2.0 VR HMD along with AAA titles coming for at least another year or more.

There is still another twist to come in the Gpu tale, HBM2 potentially replacing GDDR5X in the TitanX and GTX1080Ti and coupled with the GP102.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-ti-pascal-gp102/

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-gp102-gpu-titan-graphics-card/

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...specifics-up-to-16gb-of-vram-1tb-of-bandwidth



If the specs for VR Funhouse are any indication of where things are heading, we're all going to need 3 GTX1280Ti soon to run 4K or 8K VR :eek: Saying that, Nvidia have dropped support for three and four way SLI:

http://techreport.com/news/30257/nvidia-halts-future-support-for-three-and-four-way-sli-setups

After reading about the upcoming PS4k Neo and speculation about the original PS4 not being powerful enough for PSVR, I'll be holding off PSVR as well until I know for sure if my PS4 will run it. If it turns out original PS4 can't run it then I think Sony have really dropped the ball on that and will really annoy Original PS4 owners. I certainly don't relish the idea of having to spend another £300 or somewhere near on a PS4K Neo when I already have a PS4. I did read somewhere that AMD pretty much forced Sony into having to come up with the Neo or pay a hefty sum to keep the manufacturing running for the Original PS4 to continue production so it could simply come down to that. What Sony should do is come up with a good trade-in deal for original PS4 owners to upgrade to the Neo but I can't see that happening.

All a waiting game for me now...
 
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