Rift PC

Post by **crespo80** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:32 am

I think Valez has a point.

Let's consider a developer rift setup (so 90° horizontal FOV and a 640x800 resolution): if we set up a FPS game on these specs, and we approach a wall, we'll see this wall cover more and more of our FOV as we walk towards it, until a point in which our virtual ego stops, even if we continue to press the forward button.
So, this is the smallest element of wall texture we can ever see in that specific game and with the rift specific settings.
So, if this element of texture has a resolution of 640x800 or 6400x8000, we can't tell the difference with the Rift, because it can't resolve all the pixels, so the texture detail IS related to the display resolution!

Post by **marbas** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:35 am

stinkvis wrote:
Valez wrote: The visible part of the texture would need to have 960*1080 pixel (for a 1080p Rift), so this would be the "hard cap".
And this means, the optimal texture resolution is directly related to the screen resolution.
No it wouldn't. Say you have a nice rectangular door with a 960*1080 texture on it. As long as the door takes up exactly 100% of your visual field or less, the texture resolution doesn't need to be any higher than that. But if you move so close to the door that it takes up more than 100%, you're effectively zooming in at a section of that door, which means what you see will be a stretched region of the original texture with a resolution lower than 960*1080. So as long as you can zoom in beyond the edges of the object, you can't use the screen size as a hard cap. I hope that makes sense, don't know how to explain it any better than that.

Not to mention that texture sizes like 200x200 or 960*1080 are nowhere to be found in 3D games. Its all power of 2 sizes, like 256*256 / 512*512 / 1024*1024 and so on.

Valez wrote: Given the fact that neither Doom4 or a 1080p Rift are arround the corner, planning a optimal rig for them
seems a bit hasty to me.

Surely those who buy a new rig today (me included), are hardly doing it for Doom4 and Rift-1080p alone.
And also with the devkit, the chances of being able to run modern graphically intensive games (through stereoscopic drivers) on the Rift HMD are pretty high. So I'd say a little extra horsepower for running just about anything at good framerates is a good thing if you can afford it.

If you are a developer you may even want to push the system past whats possible on average pc's. Innovation in other words.

Post by **wuliheron** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:41 am

Valez wrote: Given the fact that neither Doom4 or a 1080p Rift are arround the corner, planning a optimal rig for them
seems a bit hasty to me.

Doom 4 has already been cooking on the back burner for four years and I'd be surprised if wasn't released next year. Personally I like to use crossfire/sli so I can easily upgrade the graphics and stretch out the costs, but you can't just add the vram from one gpu with another for display purposes because the textures are all stored on one. That means you either anticipate the need of more vram or you end up doing without in the long run.

Post by **stinkvis** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 10:43 am

Valez wrote:And you don't need to.

This is exactly what I meant with:

And there will certainly be objects that are not fully visible if you are standing directly before them, so for them to have a "perfect"
texture, the texture would have to be bigger than the screen resolution.
Standíng before them == zoomed in to max.

The hard cap is for the biggest possibly visible part of a texture.

Ah sorry, it seems I have missed that part. Yes, you can work out a perfect texture size that way, but I think that would still only apply when you're dealing with zooming in to perfectly rectangular objects. It would probably become a much more difficult problem if you take more complex objects and arbitrary rotations into account. I could be wrong though, I'm really no expert on the subject.

Post by **pilzbefall** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 12:19 pm

I have a very exotic and complex solution: I buy better hardware AFTER getting the rift and IF I need better hardware THEN.

Post by **Metathias** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:38 pm

Mart wrote:
Metathias wrote:But from a rough estimate i would say a ramdisk might be somewhere in the area of 5x to 10x more bandwidth than SSD's. For maintaining at all costs 60fps for VR in any game caching is gonna be your worst enemy.
There's no real-world benefit of using a RAMDisk over an SSD for any game. They make for impressive benchmarks, but that's it. Your money would be better spent elsewhere.

I could be wrong. There are admittedly some fundamental issues to the concept. Such reading and writing the same device over the same bus could create bottlenecks in the ram. However games do still cache and often will temporarily hang a game until the appropriate data (usually textures) can be cached into system and/or video ram. I still think it has potential. Ill be testing this stuff over the next few weeks to see if I can produce tangible benefits. I'll create another thread to discuss this later if I do find any benefit and how much.

Post by **wuliheron** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 4:44 pm

pilzbefall wrote:I have a very exotic and complex solution: I buy better hardware AFTER getting the rift and IF I need better hardware THEN.

It's good if you can wait, but if someone wants to build a rig now from the ground up for other reasons as well it would be nice to be able to anticipate what would work well with a Rift.

Post by **Randomoneh** » Sat Nov 10, 2012 7:52 pm

stinkvis wrote:Say you have a nice rectangular door with a 960*1080 texture on it. As long as the door takes up exactly 100% of your visual field or less, the texture resolution doesn't need to be any higher than that.

No no no. It needs to be higher than that since what you just said applies only to orthographic, not rectilinear (most games) projection.

Post by **backstaia** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 4:59 am

Hi,

well i will build a new rig from ground up for my rift. will be my first gamer pc since a decade. have been an avid console gamer the last years. i have learned to love the simplicity + dedicated controls of consoles for gaming and i am already dreading what will come back with my pc. no flamewar intended

so far:
-> aiming for silent build, it will be in the living room connected to my 1080p 47inch TV
Fractal Design Define R4
Be quiet! Pure Power CM BQT L8-CM-530W
Intel Core i5-3570K
Noctua NH-DH14 CPU Cooler vs Water Cooling
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Mainboard

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power OC Edition vs Asus GeForce GTX 670 -> still undecided
8 / 16 GB RAM
128 GB SSD + 1TB normal

+ most important T.Flight Hotas Stick X -> for the coming flight/space sims (star citizen OMG)

any thoughts / suggestions welcome.
december cant be here fast enough

Post by **Cathodoluminescence** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:40 am

I don't know about the MSI, but the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP is supposed to be very quiet... you could also look for the Palit Geforce GTX 660 Ti JetStream.

Post by **backstaia** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:32 am

Cathodoluminescence wrote:I don't know about the MSI, but the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP is supposed to be very quiet... you could also look for the Palit Geforce GTX 660 Ti JetStream.

Thanks! Reviews fit exactly my profile, great find. Will buy this one. I don´t think the 100eur extra isnt worth for the GTX 670 for 3D 1080p gaming...

Post by **wuliheron** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 2:00 pm

backstaia wrote:
Cathodoluminescence wrote:I don't know about the MSI, but the ASUS GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II TOP is supposed to be very quiet... you could also look for the Palit Geforce GTX 660 Ti JetStream.
Thanks! Reviews fit exactly my profile, great find. Will buy this one. I don´t think the 100eur extra isnt worth for the GTX 670 for 3D 1080p gaming...

A 3D rig costs more to begin with because it demands performance and insisting it be quiet as well just adds to the cost. The 660 Ti is marginal for a 3D rig. I'd recommend thinking about a liquid cooling system and quiet fans. Active noise cancellation fans are beginning to come on the market that make a huge difference and you may want to check them out and see if that's quiet enough before buying an expensive liquid cooling system. Other than that the alternative is liquid immersion which still isn't worth it except in extreme environments.

Post by **greenknight** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 3:47 pm

The microprocessor is probably the 2nd most expensive component for a home built pc for games. The most expensive is the GPU, but this depends on many factors. If I were building now, I would go with the core i5. Here is why (via toms hardware):

"CPUs priced over $230 offer rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to game performance. As such, we have a hard time recommending anything more expensive than the Core i5-3570K, especially since this multiplier-unlocked processor can be overclocked to great effect if more performance is desired. Even at stock clocks, it meets or beats the $1000 Core i7-990X Extreme Edition when it comes to gaming."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... 106-4.html

In essence, buy a mid-range gpu now, then upgrade to a an expensive, high end gpu in a year or two when the next gen consoles come out. It looks like you might be able to play console ports of the ps4 based games with a 500 dollar gpu and a core i5, so long as you have plenty of RAM.

Also, one more observation. Stay away from AMD for the time being. Their price/performance ratio is dismal! Even if you pay a bit more for the motherboard, the CPU is absolutely critical for the rift, so it isn't worth saving 50 -70 bucks on on the price of the AMD motherboard. Furthermore, the phenom ii x6 1100t costs about the same as the core i5 3570k, yet peforms much much slower in games! The charts really show the inferiority of AMD right now.

BTW, I own an AMD cpu. The performance delta in hardware wasn't so bad in 2009, but now its huuuuuuuge!

Post by **mysticeti** » Tue Nov 13, 2012 6:00 am

backstaia wrote:Hi,

well i will build a new rig from ground up for my rift. will be my first gamer pc since a decade. have been an avid console gamer the last years. i have learned to love the simplicity + dedicated controls of consoles for gaming and i am already dreading what will come back with my pc. no flamewar intended
so far:
-> aiming for silent build, it will be in the living room connected to my 1080p 47inch TV
Fractal Design Define R4
Be quiet! Pure Power CM BQT L8-CM-530W
Intel Core i5-3570K
Noctua NH-DH14 CPU Cooler vs Water Cooling
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H Mainboard

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power OC Edition vs Asus GeForce GTX 670 -> still undecided
8 / 16 GB RAM
128 GB SSD + 1TB normal

+ most important T.Flight Hotas Stick X -> for the coming flight/space sims (star citizen OMG)

any thoughts / suggestions welcome.
december cant be here fast enough

You might get some useful feedback by posting your build on reddit's Build a PC subreddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

Post by **pilzbefall** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:33 pm

my new rig: 3570k, asrock extreme4, 1600er ripjaws, GTX570 (older), all heavily overclocked, DIY watercooling with big toyota hilux radiator and cheap but good waterblocks since 7 years. The waterblocks for cpu and gpu are since these 7 years the same ones. Saved a lot of money in the long run and makes the components heavily overclockable.

Post by **wuliheron** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:01 pm

pilzbefall wrote:my new rig: 3570k, asrock extreme4, 1600er ripjaws, GTX570 (older), all heavily overclocked, DIY watercooling with big toyota hilux radiator and cheap but good waterblocks since 7 years. The waterblocks for cpu and gpu are since these 7 years the same ones. Saved a lot of money in the long run and makes the components heavily overclockable.

That's what I'm talkin' about! Serious DIY PC fans know how to buy, what to buy, and when to buy to save money in the long run, but get all the performance they can for a reasonable price. My own suggestion is if people want a great rig is to check out the Steam hardware forums. It's extremely well moderated and gets a lot of attention from people who even do this kind of thing for a living. With prices and performance on parts changing monthly it's a huge help to have as many people as possible chip on what they know about the latest and greatest parts and where they can be bought cheap.

Post by **mysticeti** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:12 pm

I forgot to mention this guide which breaks things down into relatively fine grained increments of bang for the buck:

http://s1002.photobucket.com/albums/af1 ... =Guide.png

For those on a budget I think it's good starting point on where to focus your hard earned money.

Post by **crespo80** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 3:53 am

mysticeti wrote:I forgot to mention this guide which breaks things down into relatively fine grained increments of bang for the buck:
http://s1002.photobucket.com/albums/af1 ... =Guide.png
For those on a budget I think it's good starting point on where to focus your hard earned money.

too old guide, a 60 gb SSD is still at 120 $

and old Phenom II AMD CPUs ar recommended all the way up!

For a budget GAMING PC, you could pick a 70 $ Intel Sandy Bridge Pentium G860 and a 110 $ AMD Radeon HD7770 (or a 180 $ HD7850)
Going up, a 130 $ Intel Ivy Bridge Core i3 3220 (or AMD's best gaming CPU FX-4170) and a 220 $ AMD Radeon HD7870 (or a 310 $ HD7950)
A top gaming PC will have a 240 $ Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5 3570k and a 400 $ Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 (or the comparable Radeon HD7970)

Post by **wuliheron** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 9:16 pm

crespo80 wrote:
mysticeti wrote:I forgot to mention this guide which breaks things down into relatively fine grained increments of bang for the buck:
http://s1002.photobucket.com/albums/af1 ... =Guide.png
For those on a budget I think it's good starting point on where to focus your hard earned money.
too old guide, a 60 gb SSD is still at 120 $ and old Phenom II AMD CPUs ar recommended all the way up!

For a budget GAMING PC, you could pick a 70 $ Intel Sandy Bridge Pentium G860 and a 110 $ AMD Radeon HD7770 (or a 180 $ HD7850)
Going up, a 130 $ Intel Ivy Bridge Core i3 3220 (or AMD's best gaming CPU FX-4170) and a 220 $ AMD Radeon HD7870 (or a 310 $ HD7950)
A top gaming PC will have a 240 $ Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5 3570k and a 400 $ Nvidia Geforce GTX 680 (or the comparable Radeon HD7970)

Exactly, that's why I recommend the Steam hardware forums. Guides just don't cut it in an industry where components routinely become outdated within months. People who build high end rigs assemble them to order, don't stockpile a lot of parts, and ship them out the door as fast as possible knowing every day they keep them on the shelf they depreciate.

Post by **Dakor** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:03 pm

Well this time in the right Thread:

I actually was wondering if it's better to buy a Nvidia card since I read somewhere in the depths of this forum that Nvidia is intrested in Oculus/Palmer?

Usually I preferred Nvidia but nowadays you can get better performance (in games with 4xAA and 16xAF) with less money if you buy Amd (not in general, but in the ~300€ [$384] area).
But I don't want to spend a lot of money in an AMD card if I will not be able to use the consumer version of the rift because its powered by Nvidia or something.

Is there anyone out there who can say anything about to this topic? Will I have any heavy disadvantages or something regarding the Rift if I buy a cheaper more powerful* AMD card?
* i read some tests and did some pricing checks. I actually got the choice between the 3072MB PowerColor Radeon HD 7950 Boost State Aktiv PCIe 3.0 x16 ~290€ [$371] and 2048MB Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti AMP! Edition Borderlands 2 Aktiv PCIe 3.0 x16 ~300€
(PLEASE! No Fanboy war or something.. just facts)

Just to make this clear since people got this wrong in the other thread where I accidentally posted this:
Off course I will not buy a new PC for Oculus only.

Due to the new console and engine generation, next year, I need a new machine in a payable range. But this is just about the graphic card: I'm just interested if I there are any signs that show something in a direction with no or bad AMD support..

Post by **Valez** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:27 pm

Well, be assured it was not the intention of "the people that got it all wrong" to treat you newbie like.

On topic:

I think nobody besides Palmer and Dycus can answer your question.
But I would be surprised big time if Oculus would make a big commitment to only one of nVidia or AMD.

Again off topic:

Please don't take this the wrong way, but Computer Science has almost nothing to do with this.

Post by **EdZ** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:36 pm

To the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no difference between nVidia and AMD when used with the RIFT. Neither have announced any sort of partnership, and neither's existing 3D solutions currently work with the RIFT. If one or the other are creating some sort of driver-level RIFT support, they're certainly keeping it to themselves.

Post by **Dakor** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:55 pm

I thought If I write "someone" you might would take this too personal or something i did not mean to offend you.
And while we are off topic: I actually do practical Cmp.Sci (not technical Cmp.Sci.) so you might be right with that. -But when it comes to coding (so when I got a dev kit) this is totally my terrain

I did not find anything serious on this but I thought that there might be a statement on how serious the possible partnership is. If Palmer goes to Nvidia they may simply buy Oculus inc. But this all just speculated so I just wanted to know a statement on this from someone who followed Oculus through the founding part in this forum and knows about the Nvidia stuff.

@EdZ: yeah, afaik there is no difference, right now.. but i'm speculating about the future

Post by **EdZ** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:22 pm

Dakor wrote:I just wanted to know a statement on this from someone who followed Oculus through the founding part in this forum and knows about the Nvidia stuff.

There IS no 'nvidia stuff'. Complete baseless and unfounded speculation. No mention from Palmer via either the forums, kickstarter, the Oculus twitter, etc.

Post by **Dakor** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:44 pm

EdZ wrote:
Dakor wrote:I just wanted to know a statement on this from someone who followed Oculus through the founding part in this forum and knows about the Nvidia stuff.
There IS no 'nvidia stuff'. Complete baseless and unfounded speculation. Not mention from Palmer via either the forums, kickstarter, the Oculus twitter, etc.

thank you, i thought that all the speculations about Nvidia, I read in several threads on this forum, had to have a reason to exist (and I just don't find the reason). But looks like I just fell in a pool filled with rumors, I'm sorry for pushing those..

(NOW I feel newbiesh

)

Post by **hughJ** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:47 pm

Dakor wrote:...I actually was wondering if it's better to buy a Nvidia card...

For future consumer versions (high res) of the Rift, it would probably be prudent to have your nvidia/ati decision dictated by how well their xfire/SLI implementations handle the Rift more so than which single card is fastest or the best value at the time. Aside from performance scaling, subtle issues like AFR-related micro-stuttering might provide a clear choice as to one or the other (and micro-stuttering could conceivably be much more annoying due to the high FOV.) I have to wonder if ATI/nvidia will develop a Rift-specific profile that allows for a GPU to be dedicated to each POV section as the performance load will be virtually identical for each.

If one company were to become the clear choice due to the above reasons, it'd suck to be effectively locked into the poorer performing implementation when looking to buy a second video card.

Post by **wuliheron** » Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:55 pm

EdZ wrote:
Dakor wrote:I just wanted to know a statement on this from someone who followed Oculus through the founding part in this forum and knows about the Nvidia stuff.
There IS no 'nvidia stuff'. Complete baseless and unfounded speculation. No mention from Palmer via either the forums, kickstarter, the Oculus twitter, etc.

Nvidia's S3D system is proprietary so it's a pretty valid and interesting question. I've heard their video cards even require an extra pin for their own proprietary S3D to work. I assume you could get other 3D systems to work on it, but will they be licencing their own brand of Rifts?

Post by **Balor** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:58 am

Rift's inner workings insure that it is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT which card you have, unless the game in question is optimized to run on one or the other.

Post by **wuliheron** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:42 am

Balor wrote:Rift's inner workings insure that it is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT which card you have, unless the game in question is optimized to run on one or the other.

That's what I'm wondering. Nvidia sponsors developers to produce 3D games just for their system including games like Metro 2033 which is as graphically demanding as they get.

Post by **JayJay** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:59 am

How much power would one need to comfortably run rift games, I know the res is low but since it's stereoscopic it could still need quite a powerful graphics card?

I have an Alienware laptop, do you think that will cut it? (mx18)

Post by **Valez** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:05 am

For Doom BFG I have no idea.
I believe Cyber's driver cuts your FPS in half, which would mean that you need enough power to
run the games you want to play with Vireiro @ 120 FPS in 1280*800.

Maybe Cyber has some more information on this?

Post by **Dakor** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 9:26 am

Valez wrote:For Doom BFG I have no idea.

Doom 3 BFG runs on my Laptop I (Dell Vostro 3550) with a AMD Radeon 6600M without any effects at 50FPS. (on 1366x768 and side by side 3D, without 3D it runs at ~65FPS). But for a more immersive experience you'll need AA (without especially Doom 3 BFGs looks terrible) and for even more immersion: Motion Blur (There is not much else you can adjust in BFG) With 4x AA and 8x MB it runs at ~30FPS with 16x MB it begins to stutter on fast movements.
I have no idea about Alien Ware Laptops (I think yours is more powerful than my Vostro), but more details mean more immersive experience.

Post by **cybereality** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 4:34 pm

In general 3D drivers cut performance in as much as half, so you need roughly double the frame-rate of the refresh rate. So for a 60Hz display (like the Rift) you will want to be able to run the game in 2D at 120FPS. Usually this means you will have to either have a really beefy machine, or turn settings down to medium or low for the best performance.

Post by **Dakor** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:51 pm

And that's the reason why I don't understand why you can read several times, in this and other threads, that you don't need a good machine to experience the rift. I mean it should be clear that better graphics support a more immersive experience.
I don't want to say with this people should by new high end hardware specially for the rift. I want to point out that, in my mind, if you really want to buy new hardware (no matter if for the rift only or not) don't save your money on the wrong end.

if you don't want to buy a new PC anyway (like I do) I would recommend to simply wait until the rift arrives and then test it with your current machine. You can still upgrade it later on anyway..

Post by **bobv5** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:09 pm

Another thing to remember is that Rift might be late. If you build a new machine now, it might be older than you would like when Rift arrives. If the HMD arrives in Feb next year, you could build the same machine for less cash, or a better one for the same cash.

It seems to me the best way to have a decent spec machine is to do cheap, frequent upgrades, rather than less frequent expensive ones. For example a mid range graphics card whenever you want more power, instead of a top end one and hoping it lasts x amount of years.

Post by **wavefunction** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 8:21 pm

Dakor wrote:
Valez wrote:For Doom BFG I have no idea.
for even more immersion: Motion Blur (There is not much else you can adjust in BFG).

I don't think motion blur will be necessary with good VR. I'm just speculating but I think your perception of motion blur will occur naturally in a 3D environment.

Post by **Owen** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 8:45 pm

Motion blur won't occur naturally unless you have framerates (and refresh) in the high hundreds at least. But to simulate it correctly you would need eye tracking, because it needs to be relative to whatever the eye is following, like with depth of field.

Post by **Dakor** » Mon Nov 26, 2012 2:40 am

wavefunction wrote:
Dakor wrote:
Valez wrote:For Doom BFG I have no idea.
for even more immersion: Motion Blur (There is not much else you can adjust in BFG).
I don't think motion blur will be necessary with good VR. I'm just speculating but I think your perception of motion blur will occur naturally in a 3D environment.

Owen wrote:Motion blur won't occur naturally unless you have framerates (and refresh) in the high hundreds at least. But to simulate it correctly you would need eye tracking, because it needs to be relative to whatever the eye is following, like with depth of field.

yep.
I guess it will probably look (just related to Motion Blur) the same like you are seeing a movement of the view on a usual screen /w 60fps

Post by **Rickardo69** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:45 pm

well i was looking at treating myself to a new controller ready for the rift but tonight my desk top fried, had it switched on for about 8 hours crunching away some rainbow tables and the cpu fan must have had enough.
Its had its innings i surpose 4 years old, just wasnt ready to upgrade just yet, hardware has moved on quite a bit since i last built a pc and im having trouble deciding on what to settle for.
Problem is ive only got a budget of about £500 what with christmas around the corner.
Even with a pre-build theres quite a chose to choose from.
Any suggestions from you hardware experts what is the best i could do with £400-£500 would be much appreciated baring in mind the motherboard and graphics card isnt worth salvaging.

Post by **EdZ** » Wed Nov 28, 2012 5:52 pm

Cheapest 1155 board you can find with a pci-e x16 slot, a 2500 (or 2500k if you get a z series motherboard and want to overclock), 16gb of the cheapest RAM you can find that's not from ebay (doesn't matter what speed, you're going to get more benefit from 16gb of 'slow' RAM than 8gb of 'fast' RAM for the same money), and spend whatever's left on the best GPU you can afford.
If you don't already have one though, a 120gb boot & program SSD is priority number one for increased general performance.