What's needed for an entry level VR setup?

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Talkiet

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#207381 21-Dec-2016 18:56

So I like toys, and I used to be into Sim-racing big time (built my own cockpit, serious online racing leagues etc), and I JUST saw a video of Google Earth VR.

Looks like I am buying myself a VR kit for Xmas.

I'm doing some reading and apart from the ever present risk of an imminent HW upgrade happening, I think I am settled on the HTC Vive. This leaves me some questions which have been partly answered by the Interwebs, but always good to get a local opinion...

My machine is a hex core 3.2-3.6G Xeon with 32G ram, SSD and at the moment a Quadro K2000 video card. I know the video card won't cut it.

I normally drive a UHD display and a 2560*1440 display in a pair.

I play hardly any games at the moment and can't see myself getting into FPS type things... I did that in the Doom days :-)

If I was to add a GTX1060 to my PC, do you think it would be suitable for immersive Project Cars, Assetto Corsa, Rfactor 2 etc?

I figure that if I wait for another iteration of the Vive with a higher resolution it's just going to move the entry level GFX card needed up to a GTX1080 or something stupid - so I'm prepared to take the plunge now.

Finally, Any cleverer ways to buy a Vive than hoping PBtech have a decent boxing day sale?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

afe66

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#1693483 21-Dec-2016 20:16

i7 4790 + Ausus styrix 980 with 32g Ram works fine for me with my vive.

(bought on preorder directly ? 6 months ago)

If I was buying today I would go for 1080 for longer lifespan

gbwelly

1243 posts

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#1693488 21-Dec-2016 20:32

Don't. The novelty wears off after about a month.

Dairyxox

1594 posts

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#1693518 21-Dec-2016 21:49

Project cars in VR will bring a GTX 1080 to its knees, and still looks like poo. (Maybe look just _passable_ with a lot of tweaking, but you get the point).

Dont skimp on the graphics card.

chevrolux

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#1693542 21-Dec-2016 22:01

So will we see a Spark Speedtest app "built for VR" next? That should give the Gigabit plan people something to do for a while haha!

Brumfondl

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#1693570 21-Dec-2016 22:35

Hope you have all the space the Vive needs as well :)

If you want entry level I would go with the Playstation VR. Sounds like it will cost you a lot less for starters.

Personally I think you are wasting your money no matter what you get, but without people like you spending money VR won't get better so spend away :D

darylblake

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#1693612 22-Dec-2016 07:21

My mate bought a vive, loved it for about 3 days then decided not to use it because it was making him get headaches. (just saying). So sold it a week after that.

He had a GTX1070 and he liked to set his framerate a bit higher. But yeh a GTX970 is the min requirement, if you want you can get one off trademe for about $250. If you want to go something a bit better look at a ATI Radeon RX480 or a GTX1060 for about $400-$500 bux. If you got the $ to spend then you can buy a GTX1070 or GTX1080.

Rest of your pc is fine. The CPU requirement thing is stupid, its more of a guideline.

Dairyxox

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#1693753 22-Dec-2016 11:56

darylblake:

My mate bought a vive, loved it for about 3 days then decided not to use it because it was making him get headaches. (just saying). So sold it a week after that.

He had a GTX1070 and he liked to set his framerate a bit higher. But yeh a GTX970 is the min requirement, if you want you can get one off trademe for about $250. If you want to go something a bit better look at a ATI Radeon RX480 or a GTX1060 for about $400-$500 bux. If you got the $ to spend then you can buy a GTX1070 or GTX1080.

Rest of your pc is fine. The CPU requirement thing is stupid, its more of a guideline.

I haven't tried personally, but I wouldn't recommend any AMD GPU for VR right now, unless you like troubleshooting crashes and it only working half the time...

See here: HardOCP - AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance: Space Pirate Trainer

All of our NVIDIA GPUs returned perfect driver interaction and game support. We had no glitches along the way. AMD was not as solid however. Once with both the R9 Fury X and RX 480 cards we had issues with the HMD not activating properly after driver install and a reboot. I also had issues with the R9 Fury X giving much worse performance than we have shown you in our graphs here today. After we got past the HMD not activating, the first SPT playthrough was really....really bad...dropping a lot of frames. It was a stuttering mess. After another couple of reboots, this behavior went away. So when it comes to AMD and SPT, have a bit of patience and hope it works itself out. Even when AMD does well in our VR gameplay testing, there seems to be outlying issues to deal with.

This is not a one off occurrence. Just about every game they test from this list have similar issues.