Hi everyone, long time listener, first time poster.
With Oculus launch looming (Q1 2016), I have been beginning to look into a PC rebuild. This is by no means my first time around with PC building, and normally I do not have any issues. However with Oculus saying a GTX 970 is minimum spec, this leaves me in quite the predicament. I would like to be able to futureproof my rig for oculus, but there are not very many cards that are better than the 970, you pretty much have the 980 and arguably the Titan (which is still far too expensive). The new announcements from AMD are fairly inline with the 970/980 in terms of power, so that seems to only leave an SLI/Crossfire solution as a way to futureproof for it. I have heard from a number of people whom I know who have made SLI rigs and say its generally not worth the hassle. I was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts on the matter beyond what seems like the answer of buy a 970 now and get a new GPU in a year or two when you start struggling to run Oculus games.
980ti is the obvious answer here I would have thought? Equiv of 970 SLI and more VRAM.
I just worry that even that with a 980ti, you are not getting that much more performance than out of the 970. I guess it is a case of the newest guy on the block is only ~10% better than the min spec.
Y'know, I think I'm good. I think my computer already does everything it's supposed to. I'll just wait for VR to blow over.
NOTE: Not a doodle bug.
I've been edging toward a PC rebuild as well. It handles the current games I throw at it, as long as I throttle some of the settings back, but I know it's certainly not going to cut it for VR.
At the moment, I'm waiting to see what nVidia and AMD are going to do over the next 6-12 months. I don't really need a new machine right this minute, so it seems prudent to wait for the current crop of video cards to come down in price, and/or see if anything new gets announced around the time the headsets are actually purchasable.
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Really, if you're planning on building a rig for the Rift, it's probably worth waiting until it comes out and the hardware sites get their hands on it. Right now, any talk about specs or performance is pure speculation, and you don't gain anything by building a rig in advance, based on that.
When it comes out, I'm pretty sure the first order of business for a lot of the hardware places will be testing to figure out what a good setup is. By then, it's also possible that a new round of video cards will be out that will work better than what's out now, and what's out now may be cheaper.
So basically, I'd wait.
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I wish it was on Switch.
I'm expecting to have to upgrade from my 770 up to a 980 or 980ti, but not until Oculus or SteamVR is actually released and reviews indicate what kind of power is needed in practice.
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I was planning on per-ordering a rift consumer unit when they go up for order. Ive used one and I can not be more excited. My PC is about 8 years old with a newer GPU (560ti) and I am well overdue for a rig rebuild anyway.
I'll probably preorder a Rift as well. I figure if I start snooping around gpu's now, then in 6 months when I actually need one, maybe I'll understand enough to make a smart decision.
As much as I want to get into VR on day one, I think you can make a good argument to give it a few weeks to see how the hardware shakes out. With PC games/performance being all over the place in general, and VR introducing some very new tech into the equation, there's a lot of room for things to go wrong.
If Oculus is smart, and they really have a good stable product, we'll see consumer hardware in the hands of the press weeks or months ahead of time, so they can tell us exactly what hardware works and what doesn't.
I had to upgrade to a GTX970 to handle a DK2 in Elite, and even then, there is noticeable stuttering in stations and asteroid fields. Performance in ARK is horribad, but ARK is still alpha and performance is lacking in general. The immersiveness makes up for lowering the quality a bit, and I LOVE dogfighting in Elite with the Rift, but if you want to crank all the quality settings up, I don't think there's going to be a way to do it without SLI or a Titan or both. I believe Nvidia is already modifying SLI for the Rift so that rather than rendering alternate frames, each card handles each eye's image.
Regardless, as other have said, don't buy anything now. Wait until it's out. Performance will only improve and prices will drop.
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I got a GTX970 and I'll probably just add another one for SLI. Since NVIDIA SLI now handles "one card does each eye" in their drivers, I think, it should be plenty. One 970 can drive a 1080p screen at 75fps
Count me into the camp of wait and or add a card for SLI. Windows 10 recognizing the Rift natively coupled with DirectX 12 and the one card per eye that Pyroman indicates all adds up to a strategy of wait for things to shake out.
Also keep in mind that it seems like a lot of early/indie efforts will be going for low poly games that are still immersive, so maybe even consider getting the Rift and skipping the triple A games for a bit, and upgrade the video card a few months afterwards.
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