i7-5960X > upgrade options?

[MrPix]

I'm currently on an X99 TUF board with an i7-5960X @ 4.5Ghz across all 8 (16HT) cores with 2666DDR4 memory and an RTX 2080Ti card, a fairly balanced, custom loop cooled system - so I thought.

I've been very happy with this for the last 4 and a half years, only upgrading the Graphics card from a 1080 FE to the 2080Ti in that time but have just upgraded from a Rift S to a Reverb G2 and am finding the system struggling to keep up and support the GPU whilst VR gaming (or at least that's my perception)

I'm looking at i9-10900K with a Z490 mobo as an option but I have been a little far off the upgrade scene for a number of years and am looking for advice from those more up to date than me.

I have a number of questions:
1. Do you think I am on the right lines with just CPU/Mobo upgrade
2. Will I need to upgrade the memory too?
3. Will I need to upgrade the GFX card to get any benefit?

Thanks.

 

[MrPix]

Thanks for the responses....

Interesting, any idea why CPU frametime seems to be the bottleneck in most VR games... rather than GPU frametime?

I 'assumed' that if GPU frametime was < 12ms in VR then this was good as it meant that it could render what was needed at the resolution I am at in time for the next frame (I render 3 frames ahead and the refresh is set to 90hz) and if CPU frametime was a lot higher (which it is (> 24ms) ) this is bad... and that the information about 'what needs drawing' was being delivered too slowly to the GPU... have I got this backwards?

could it be that the memory is too slow too (forgot to mention it is OC'ed to approx 3000Mhz @CL15) and a contributing factor?

 

[MrPix]

Personally.... Your thinking to deep and looking into things to much. Turn all monitoring software off and enjoy your gaming.... Once you do that, you'll be happy and save some cash.

Personally, I'm looking for a smooth experience with the best quality and performance I can afford. I've been using VR since DK1 > DK2 > CV1 > Index > Rift S > Reverb G2 and this is the first time my system has struggled in producing a smooth experience. Hence I started to look in to why this is so as I wasn't enjoying the experience. I'm not a minecraft fan, nor am I trying to save cash other than making sure I'm buying something that will improve my experience and immersion.

CPU is showing as a bottleneck, which is why I'm in this section asking for advice, not on gaming or how I should use my time or find true happiness, but on CPU performance, but anyhoo, thanks for your personal opinion on what I should do. I have no advice on what you would enjoy to offer back unfortunately.

What VR games are you playing ? Are you using super sampling ?
Also :-https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/402768/valve-index-missing-dropped-frames-since-nvidia-d/

I am playing iRacing, DCS, Elite and FS2020 mainly but have a plethora of other racing/flight/space sims too.

I have played around with super sampling and have had it on, off, sampled up and sampled down and have come to the conclusion that the CPU is holding me back as a result of trying many things and using monitoring apps to help me arrive where I am rather than guessing. I'm not trying to analyse the problem any more as all the evidence I have collated since getting the Reverb is pointing to a limitation on CPU performance (which could also be slow memory access, but not proven).

I am here to see if anybody has had a similar experience with VR (as far as my simple mind understands, the stereo calculation for objects are driven in the CPU on some games/sims, e.g. where each object's relative position is to the viewpoint that is constantly changing (I have 4 DOF motion so my head is never still) and which faces need rendering before passing this info to the GPU to actually render), then changed up the CPU to a more modern architected CPU with almost twice the cache size and slightly higher single thread/multithread processing power. BTW I have tried without motion software running so it's just the controller peripherals, the VR software and the game mechanics on top of the OS but have very similar results on the CPU being bottlenecked.

 

[MrPix]

Upgrading memory will make almost no difference imo esp if you are already at 3000MHz. G2 has a lot of pixels so I would reduce the render resolution to reduce GPU load and if you are still having problems then it may be just be single thread performance. If the system was fine running an Index or Rift S then the CPU should in theory be fine for a G2 but getting 90 fps minimum for VR can certainly be a problem for an old CPU. A title that struggled in places on my old 5820K @ 4.5GHz in VR was raceroom due to single threading perf and in some benchmarks my new 5800X has almost double ST perf! I have not tried iracing myself but I have a few titles I could test if you like.

Thanks, useful post. Yeah it is deffo CPU that I ma bottlenecked by..... reducing SS makes only a minor difference. it also depends on the track and if I'm running a new released car which have way more calculations to perform on the CPU.... TBF, the rift would struggle in the same way, I'm just noticing the CPU bottleneck more as I'm pumping up the GPU and the CPU can't keep up