New to VR - Nvidia or AMD

[danlightbulb]

I will quote the title of the Article.

Sure, but the stats in the article say AMD is faster. Why?

Do I really need to say anything else?

Yes, because the above doesn't make sense. How can an article be giving AMD faster encoding stats across the board yet conclude Nvidia is ahead? I want to get to the bottom of what is actually happening here.

As for your H.265 problem. I don't know. Have you changed anything in the Oculus Debug tool? Are you trying to use 120Hz? What bitrate are you using?

Mostly standard in debug tool. 80Hz mode (mode makes no difference, I tested all). Bit rate makes no difference either. Any bitrate value works for H264, but no bitrate setting makes H265 playable.

 

[melmac]

Sure, but the stats in the article say AMD is faster. Why?



Yes, because the above doesn't make sense. How can an article be giving AMD faster encoding stats across the board yet conclude Nvidia is ahead? I want to get to the bottom of what is actually happening here.

It's pretty simple, AMD might be going faster but at worse quality. There is nothing to get to the bottom of, this has been done to death. For the moment AMD is worse at encoding than Nvidia, but, they are getting better.

Mostly standard in debug tool. 80Hz mode (mode makes no difference, I tested all). Bit rate makes no difference either. Any bitrate value works for H264, but no bitrate setting makes H265 playable.

IF you have any value for the encode bitrate set in the Debug tool, change it back to 0. And when you say no setting makes it playable, does that mean you can get in as far as the Oculus home screen but you just can't play any games? Does it matter if it's Oculus Games or Steam Games?

It could be an AMD driver problem. The Virtual desktop discord is full of people having trouble with AMD and H.265. Problem is usually solved by changing the driver version. However, you might be out of luck, as older AMD drivers for the 7900 cards don't have the fix for VR performance. For ages HEVC wouldn't work at all, then it would only work if you kept the bitrate under 100Mbps. Then there was some more time with been unplayable no matter what you used.

 

[danlightbulb]

It's pretty simple, AMD might be going faster but at worse quality. There is nothing to get to the bottom of, this has been done to death. For the moment AMD is worse at encoding than Nvidia, but, they are getting better.

How do you judge quality? I cant see any compression issues. More framerate would be good, but there are no compression issues. It is very nebulous, so it really is unfair to be saying Nvidia are better, when no one can define what better is.

F you have any value for the encode bitrate set in the Debug tool, change it back to 0. And when you say no setting makes it playable, does that mean you can get in as far as the Oculus home screen but you just can't play any games? Does it matter if it's Oculus Games or Steam Games?

It could be an AMD driver problem. The Virtual desktop discord is full of people having trouble with AMD and H.265. Problem is usually solved by changing the driver version. However, you might be out of luck, as older AMD drivers for the 7900 cards don't have the fix for VR performance. For ages HEVC wouldn't work at all, then it would only work if you kept the bitrate under 100Mbps. Then there was some more time with been unplayable no matter what you used.

Ive tried all the combos. H265 can't even play the Oculus home (construct) environment let alone get into any games.

It doesn't make sense that it can't do this, because its supposed to be able to encode H265, and the Quest is supposed to be able to decode H265. So why doesn't it work? I can encode a H265 video no issues.

 

[danlightbulb]

@melmac here is a video of a 7900XT encoding all three codecs just fine (I think for a twitch stream or something). So it can't be that the GPU doesn't encode properly.

H264 vs H265 vs AV1 visual quality comparison RX 7900 XT encoder

This video showcases the difference between typical Twitch stream quality (left), Youtube stream quality (middle), and the up and coming AV1 quality (right)....

www.youtube.com

 

[melmac]

How do you judge quality? I cant see any compression issues. More framerate would be good, but there are no compression issues. It is very nebulous, so it really is unfair to be saying Nvidia are better, when no one can define what better is.

Oh please, stop with the AMD defence. You got a AMD GPU and you are happy with it, great. Enjoy it. And you don't see any compression artifacts. That's great, it also means you are blind . But hey, if you can't see them, don't worry about them. As I said before, enjoy your headset and don't worry about it.

The facts still remain. Nvidia's encoders are better, but the gap is closing. You posted a link to an article that says AMD lags behind. The Virtual desktop developer who would be know this stuff and this what he tests day in and day out, says Nvidia is better.

@melmac here is a video of a 7900XT encoding all three codecs just fine. So it can't be that the GPU doesn't encode properly.

Nowhere have I said that the 7900XT doesn't encode properly? I have pointed out several times that AMD's RDNA 3 GPUs have the best encoders yet for AMD. They aren't as good as Nvidia's yet. Here is another Link

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 AV1 encoder is almost on par with Intel Arc and Nvidia's RTX 40 series

Streaming expert and YouTuber EposVox published a performance preview of AMD's new AV1 encoder, found in its RX 7000 series GPUs, and found the encoding quality to...

www.techspot.com

Ive tried all the combos. H265 can't even play the Oculus home (construct) environment let alone get into any games.

It doesn't make sense that it can't do this, because its supposed to be able to encode H265, and the Quest is supposed to be able to decode H265. So why doesn't it work? I can encode a H265 video no issues.

Sounds like an AMD driver problem. As that's the exact issue that people were having when enabling H.265. Different drivers worked for different people. There were a few common drivers that fixed the issue. 22.10.4 I think was one. But you had to limit H.265 to less than 100mbps.

 

[danlightbulb]

Oh please, stop with the AMD defence. You got a AMD GPU and you are happy with it, great. Enjoy it. And you don't see any compression artifacts. That's great, it also means you are blind. But hey, if you can't see them, don't worry about them. As I said before, enjoy your headset and don't worry about it.

The facts still remain. Nvidia's encoders are better, but the gap is closing. You posted a link to an article that says AMD lags behind. The Virtual desktop developer who would be know this stuff and this what he tests day in and day out, says Nvidia is better.

Im not shilling AMD here or trying to defend my purchase. I took a gamble because the information was so limited. Youre making claims that there is no data on - its all just people making comments. Link to some actual evidence - I have been searching for months for information on VR encoding between these GPUs and there is no information anywhere! I have meticulously examined changing the bitrate setting on both my previous 3070 and now this 7900XT. I can see properly Im not blind - and there is no sharpness difference or compression artifacts difference.

What Im not happy with is not having the information to properly optimise and get the best out of the settings. Then when I ask questions trying to improve, all you get back is 'well AMD are worse'.

In the Quest 2/3 we only have to encode a quality good enough for the native resolution of the headset and lenses - there is no benefit to going beyond that in quality because you won't see it. So where is this testing and information? Nowhere.

 

[danlightbulb]

Nowhere have I said that the 7900XT doesn't encode properly?

Don't you see the problem?

If the GPU encoder works, and the Quest encoder works, then why doesn't H265 work?

It can't be the Quest or Oculus software - it works with Nvidia (?) and the format is the same.

It can't be the AMD drivers - because they can encode just fine for a twitch stream.


So what is the issue?

 

[0h_no_not_again]

Seems to be quite a lot of discourse on AMD vs. NV encoder for VR. I've been doing some research and will summarise my findings. Take them or leave them, I ain't going to argue.
TL;DR: If you want a sure thing, go NV. If you want an easy life, go NV. The AMD 7000 series might be very good for VR, but there is no evidence for this and AV1 compatibility is looking shaky.

All points are from the perspective of AMD relative to NV. I can't be arsed with Intel as they don't have a VR capable GPU in real-world performance terms.

1. AMD 6000 series and earlier have both poor quality and throughput in all benchmarks, objective or subjective. [1]
2. AMD 7000 series h264 & h265 encoders have better quality than AMD 6000 series, as well as higher throughput, but the quality still falls well short of nvidia [1].
3. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has slightly worse quality in objective and subjective benchmarks [1, 2].
4. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has higher throughput in objctive benchmarks. [1]
5. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has unknown compatability with virtual desktop or meta link. Infact, early discord posts say 7800XT does not work with virtual desktop & AV1.
6. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has unknown latency, where throughput does not equate to latency
7. There is a general sentiment that the AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder is competetive with NV (trades blows), but it is unknown how long it will will take to be reliable integrated into VR & other applications.

What I'm really interested in is how the 4070 performs with half the encoding resources of the 4070ti. Especially vs. the 7800XT, which has a powerful AV1 encoder.

[1] - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intel-nvidia-video-encoding-performance-quality-tested
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAc7BKnVD6Y

 

[Grim5]

Absolutely Nvidia for VR, easy decision, anything else is the wrong decision and you will suffer for it.

 

[0h_no_not_again]

Absolutely Nvidia for VR, easy decision, anything else is the wrong decision and you will suffer for it.

It hurts my head that this is the case. There's literally no middle-ground in the VR capable GPU's, where the minimum I'd probably go with is a 4070ti. But the 4070ti is woefully overpriced, being a slightly buffed 3060ti. Like, the thing is literally cheaper to make than the 3060ti, but twice the cost

 

[danlightbulb]

Absolutely Nvidia for VR, easy decision, anything else is the wrong decision and you will suffer for it.

I think if you get a 4090, then yes that is the ideal scenario. Its got the compatibility, the encoding, and the performance. If you can't afford that, then the 4070/4070Ti/4080 have compromises too especially raster performance and VRAM. So in that case its not clear cut, plus the cost impacts of going for Nvidia.

 

[danlightbulb]

Seems to be quite a lot of discourse on AMD vs. NV encoder for VR. I've been doing some research and will summarise my findings. Take them or leave them, I ain't going to argue.
TL;DR: If you want a sure thing, go NV. If you want an easy life, go NV. The AMD 7000 series might be very good for VR, but there is no evidence for this and AV1 compatibility is looking shaky.

All points are from the perspective of AMD relative to NV. I can't be arsed with Intel as they don't have a VR capable GPU in real-world performance terms.

1. AMD 6000 series and earlier have both poor quality and throughput in all benchmarks, objective or subjective. [1]
2. AMD 7000 series h264 & h265 encoders have better quality than AMD 6000 series, as well as higher throughput, but the quality still falls well short of nvidia [1].
3. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has slightly worse quality in objective and subjective benchmarks [1, 2].
4. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has higher throughput in objctive benchmarks. [1]
5. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has unknown compatability with virtual desktop or meta link. Infact, early discord posts say 7800XT does not work with virtual desktop & AV1.
6. AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder has unknown latency, where throughput does not equate to latency
7. There is a general sentiment that the AMD 7000 series AV1 encoder is competetive with NV (trades blows), but it is unknown how long it will will take to be reliable integrated into VR & other applications.

What I'm really interested in is how the 4070 performs with half the encoding resources of the 4070ti. Especially vs. the 7800XT, which has a powerful AV1 encoder.

[1] - https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intel-nvidia-video-encoding-performance-quality-tested
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAc7BKnVD6Y

Thanks.

I agree with you but of your list I think compatibility is the most important factor. It doesn't really matter if there isn't quite the quality when you're actually playing a game, but what we need is better software and for things to work.

Someone on VD's discord last night said the wired link H265 incompatibility was a Meta software problem, not an AMD driver problem.

So if true it means that all of these developers aren't pulling their weight to make things work properly.

 

[melmac]

Im not shilling AMD here or trying to defend my purchase. I took a gamble because the information was so limited. Youre making claims that there is no data on - its all just people making comments. Link to some actual evidence - I have been searching for months for information on VR encoding between these GPUs and there is no information anywhere! I have meticulously examined changing the bitrate setting on both my previous 3070 and now this 7900XT. I can see properly Im not blind - and there is no sharpness difference or compression artifacts difference.

Ok, first I apologise. I wrote my last post in a hurry. The AMD defence thing and you been blind were tongue in cheek comments, I just forgot to put in the smiley face. Have edited my post to show this. Really sorry.

Seriously though, you don't seem to understand what I am saying. You keep saying there is no evidence, but you posted a link showing that AMD's encoders are lagging behind Nvidia's. I posted another link from Techspot showing the same thing. Why are these not evidence enough? You seem to have a problem just because the articles aren't about the Quest headsets they don't apply. But they do, it's the same encoders been used.

What Im not happy with is not having the information to properly optimise and get the best out of the settings. Then when I ask questions trying to improve, all you get back is 'well AMD are worse'.

The only things you can do is mess with Resolution and Bitrate to get a picture you are happy with. There is nothing more you can do. Only AMD can make changes that improve their encoding.

And as I keep telling you, if you are happy with your picture quality then why continue to look for problems? Just play your games and be happy?

In the Quest 2/3 we only have to encode a quality good enough for the native resolution of the headset and lenses - there is no benefit to going beyond that in quality because you won't see it. So where is this testing and information? Nowhere.

And with this last statement you show that you don't really understand what you are talking about.

Don't you see the problem?

If the GPU encoder works, and the Quest encoder works, then why doesn't H265 work?

It can't be the Quest or Oculus software - it works with Nvidia (?) and the format is the same.

It can't be the AMD drivers - because they can encode just fine for a twitch stream.


So what is the issue?

That's still the same issue as what was happening with AMD's drivers for ages. Could encode video outside of the Quest 2 but couldn't use HEVC with PCVR. It only worked with certain drivers and even then you had to limit the encode bitrate to less than 100Mbps.

Either it's a bug somewhere in your system or it's the AMD drivers. And it's going to be a pain to fix. Since getting the 7900 has it ever worked? Have you ever tried using DDU and completely removing all the AMD and NVidia GPU drivers and reinstalling the latest WHQL AMD drivers? Just wondering, since getting the 7900 have you tried factory resetting your headset?

 

[danlightbulb]

Ok, first I apologise. I wrote my last post in a hurry. The AMD defence thing and you been blind were tongue in cheek comments, I just forgot to put in the smiley face. Have edited my post to show this. Really sorry.

Seriously though, you don't seem to understand what I am saying. You keep saying there is no evidence, but you posted a link showing that AMD's encoders are lagging behind Nvidia's. I posted another link from Techspot showing the same thing. Why are these not evidence enough? You seem to have a problem just because the articles aren't about the Quest headsets they don't apply. But they do, it's the same encoders been used.

No need to apologise at all - I should probably also apologise for my tone.

My concern with that article is it says that Nvidia is better whilst simultaneously showing their own charts which shows AMD having a 30% faster encoding framerate.

I have looked at the videos and screengrabs, quality difference is minimal and whilst you might notice it on a side by side spot the difference, would you ever notice a difference actually in a game if you didn't have an alternative reference image?

The only things you can do is mess with Resolution and Bitrate to get a picture you are happy with. There is nothing more you can do. Only AMD can make changes that improve their encoding.

And as I keep telling you, if you are happy with your picture quality then why continue to look for problems? Just play your games and be happy?

The issue is that H265 doesn't work, which Im frustrated about because I want to see if it is better quality than H264. But, I can't figure out why H265 doesn't work and there seems to be no information out there about why not. Ive posted on Meta support, no response there. Ive asked on Guy Godin's discord, limited answers there. Is it an AMD problem or not, who knows?

That's still the same issue as what was happening with AMD's drivers for ages. Could encode video outside of the Quest 2 but couldn't use HEVC with PCVR. It only worked with certain drivers and even then you had to limit the encode bitrate to less than 100Mbps.

Either it's a bug somewhere in your system or it's the AMD drivers. And it's going to be a pain to fix. Since getting the 7900 has it ever worked? Have you ever tried using DDU and completely removing all the AMD and NVidia GPU drivers and reinstalling the latest WHQL AMD drivers? Just wondering, since getting the 7900 have you tried factory resetting your headset?

My frustration is that there should be an answer to this question somewhere. Its not magic - the problem exists either in AMD's software or in Meta's software or somewhere else. Why has it not been identified and fixed? It is beyond my capability to do so but someone somewhere can.

Ive tried DDU-ing, I haven't tried factory reset of headset though, but I can't see why this would make any difference? Im loathed to do a complete reinstall of OS but if it might make a difference I could try it.

 

[melmac]

No need to apologise at all - I should probably also apologise for my tone.

My concern with that article is it says that Nvidia is better whilst simultaneously showing their own charts which shows AMD having a 30% faster encoding framerate.

I have looked at the videos and screengrabs, quality difference is minimal and whilst you might notice it on a side by side spot the difference, would you ever notice a difference actually in a game if you didn't have an alternative reference image?



The issue is that H265 doesn't work, which Im frustrated about because I want to see if it is better quality than H264. But, I can't figure out why H265 doesn't work and there seems to be no information out there about why not. Ive posted on Meta support, no response there. Ive asked on Guy Godin's discord, limited answers there. Is it an AMD problem or not, who knows?



My frustration is that there should be an answer to this question somewhere. Its not magic - the problem exists either in AMD's software or in Meta's software or somewhere else. Why has it not been identified and fixed? It is beyond my capability to do so but someone somewhere can.

Ive tried DDU-ing, I haven't tried factory reset of headset though, but I can't see why this would make any difference? Im loathed to do a complete reinstall of OS but if it might make a difference I could try it.

It's all good. Ask the hangout guys, I am very good at making bad jokes at inappropriate times. They have come to hate me for it

When something doesn't work, it's very frustrating. So I understand your annoyance. It's not magic, but there are so many layers to where the problem can be it can extremely difficult narrowing down the exact cause. Look at AMD's black screen issues, it took them forever to find a solution. Or Look at Nvidia's stuttering bug in VR in driver past the 446 ones. Turing owners could go back to 446, Ampere owners couldn't. They took ages to fix that too.

It's why PCVR is a PITA.

I am going to ask, have you tried the headset in another computer? And have you tried a different USB cable?

 

[0h_no_not_again]

Thanks.

I agree with you but of your list I think compatibility is the most important factor. It doesn't really matter if there isn't quite the quality when you're actually playing a game, but what we need is better software and for things to work.

Someone on VD's discord last night said the wired link H265 incompatibility was a Meta software problem, not an AMD driver problem.

So if true it means that all of these developers aren't pulling their weight to make things work properly.

100%. Should order my list more logically.
Without compatibility and integrations, there's no practical application.