Rift PC

[marbas]

So, given that I haven't upgraded my pc gear for quite some time...the Oculus Rift is just around the corner...and all the new graphical intensive games on the market & future releases.
I decided the time was right for a solid pc upgrade.

I opted for the following configuration:

cpu: I7-3820 (socket 2011)
ram: 16Gb (1600Mhz)
gfx: GTX 680 4Gb
hd: 2TB SATA3

Anybody else to upgrade their systems pre-rift launch?

[alekki]

I'd love to get a second GPU (560ti 448 cores) but I would have to upgrade my PSU as well and that would be too expensive an upgrade so I'll just wait a bit. Otherwise my PC should be able to handle everything you can throw at it.

[marbas]

Yeah.. I almost lost my head and considered buying the GTX 690. Way to expensive!

However I left the option open to upgrade later to a second 680 card in SLI. Thus I also upgraded the PSU to a 750W one.

[mAchiNE]

Nice PC marbas, I just upgraded to a GTX 680 4GB also it runs my 3 screens at 5760x1080 resolution pretty well on most games at maxed out settings so I think it should be more than enough to keep high FPS on the Rift

[Cathodoluminescence]

I would always go for a new graphic card rather then buying a second one in the future. Better to sell the old one on ebay and get yourself a new upper class model then having two old ones. More noise, heat und overall power consumption are further reasons against sli.

@your CPU: are there any good reasons for 2011 socket?

[marbas]

@mAchiNE
May I guess that you went for the MSI GTX680 OC model?
Yep after doing some research I decided the 680 would be enough to run most new games in rift mode at 60Hz.
Your ingame stats sounds reassuring, thanks for the feedback

@Cathodoluminescence
No particular reason for the i7-3820 other than I wanted an all around good cpu for games and cg applications. Also it was a good priced bundle including cpu,ram,gpu and more. The ram configuration of 4x4Gb is to take advantage of the new quad channel memory access architecture on the 2011 platform.

[Cathodoluminescence]

Ah, Quad-Channel. I haven't known (or forgotten) about that...

What you should add to your rig is an SSD (if you have none yet). It really improves loading times and overall system performance. And 256 GB aren't that expensive anymore...

[marbas]

Yeah I opted away from the ssd in the bundle and chose a better gpu instead. For me its mostly about frame times and how far I can reasonably push the system in my own game dev. I can easily trade loading times for that. Nonetheless a SSD is definitely in the horizon for my rig.

[sergehag]

i7 2600k
8 GB Skill Ripjaw 1600
evga z68 ftw
gtx 580 sli

May wait until Maxwell(2014) to uprade gpu. I think better graphics for future games, 4k, 3d and the desire to keep fps well above 60 for a vr solution will make people seek the best graphic card in at least an sli for foreseeable future.

[Bretspot]

I highly recommend a SSD for your main windows drive with maybe 50-100gb reserved for the current game you are playing.

[Namielus]

SSD with sata 3.0 is blazing fast, but I always try to remind people please turn off temp files , pagefile and these things.
SSD sucks badly for constant writing operations and can break down pretty fast. Reading files = no problem.

[wuliheron]

It doesn't really pay to plan upgrades way in advance, however, I'd definitely recommend people get a video card with at least 2gb vram on a single card and 3gb is better for id tech games. Also, the new AMD video cards are the only ones at this time with hardware acceleration for partially resident textures. Doom 4 will be Oculus ready and the first video game to take advantage of the technology. Essentially it allows the gpu to use system ram as virtual memory so it can plaster more textures on the screen that much faster and because of the Doom 4 engine that means the textures you see will be higher resolution. The id tech 5 doesn't require a lot of gpu grunt, but it will suck up every bit of vram it can get. A hex core i7 also has advantages for the id tech 5 and if you're really looking to push the envelope without spending a fortune on a enthusiast rig it's the best you'll be able to do until late next year.

[Valez]

Well, I don't think those high resolution textures will matter, not even with a 1080p-Rift.

[Randomoneh]

Well, I don't think those high resolution textures will matter, not even with a 1080p-Rift.

Exactly why wouldn't they?

[3dvison]

I may have asked in a diiferent thread, but is there a cheap wireless way to get the video signal to the RIFT with a desktop computer ?

[Dycus]

Wireless HDMI transmitter + very large battery is about the best you'll get. Those HDMI transmitters have no latency at all, but they draw tons of power. I'd guess you'd need a 11.1v, 6Ah LiPo battery for it to last about 2-3 hours. You'd be looking at about $600+ for the Rift, transmitter, and battery.

EDIT: Forgot you need a USB transmitter for the tracker, too. Those aren't so low latency, unfortunately.

[Dakor]

Hey, I'll buy a new PC as well (my first "gamer" pc, since I usually prefer consoles).
Right know im thinking about this config:

Core i7-2600, 3400 MHz (or i7-3770)
16384 MB DDR3 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce® GT630, 4096MB

I know the graphic card is not he best but this setup would coast about 630€ (800$). Thats cheaper than many alternatives I found.. And I can buy a new one later on anyway (when the UT4 engine is out).. I think it will be enough for the beginning, wont it?

[Neil]

Actually...unless I'm mistaken...I think the bigger opportunity is to set aside your old PC for Oculus, and a new PC for something else. The Oculus SDK is a very low resolution solution, and its limited PC performance requirements may be one of the few advantages for something like this. Remember that Doom 3 BFG will be the first Oculus game out of the gate, and that's hardly a performance hog, even back when it was run on computers of its day...in 3D.

Regards,
Neil

[Dakor]

Thanks but right know I only have a notebook:
Intel I5 2410-M 2,3ghz
4GB Ram
And an AMD Radeon HD 6600M 1024mb
It works fine with Unreal 3 Games on Normal or slightly higher. (But Arma 2 for example is simply nor playable.. unless you like sideshows)
(and more details = better game experience with the riff, i guess)

I already own a copy of doom 3 bfg and if I turn on motion blur and AA (but turn of v sync) I get about <40fps on 1366*768. Sometimes I get fps drops (specially with 3d turned on)
So a new PC is the only solution for me..

[Owen]

Rift generally won't reduce performance requirements that much, except for very simple scenes. Even if the number of pixels is less than most monitors, it renders at a higher FOV and does so twice per frame. This adds considerable driver and vertex processing cost.

Also smart developers will add fancier shaders for use with the Rift, to make the best use of limited resolution and improve immersion. And you will get the best results with some amount of supersampling to reduce aliasing caused by the lens distortion. With such large pixels, good antialiasing will be critical. And of course, you want to be able to guarantee a constant vsynced 60fps to avoid nauseating judder.

[cybereality]

I'm going to be using my (somewhat) aging rig to power the Rift:

Intel E8400
EVGA 780i
8GB DDR2
Nvidia GTX 470

[sergehag]

Who is planning on upgrading to or currently running Windows 8?

If were to upgrade I may consider Linux if they get better gpu driver support. Last time I checked I didn't see any sli support.

[Libertine]

I've got over 700 hours of 3D gaming in 1280x720 under my belt, and i can tell you, you probably DON'T need to upgrade. I currently use a 2600+ and GTX 570 in SLI. But i only went SLI because i wanted to try a 1080P 3D monitor and mistakenly thought *bleeping, bleep, bleeping* 300MHZ HDMI 3DTV's would be out this year. One GTX570 was fine for most everything.

Disclaimer: drunk

[Metathias]

I would say if you have a way. Try to maximize the amount of ram you can stick in the system. My next computer will have a minimum of 32GB of ram. Hopefully 64GB or better. I know that sounds ridiculous with most games only using at most 3 to 4 gbyte of ram + OS. And It would be if it were not for what you can use with the left over ram. You can create a RAMDisk Drive with the left other ram to shuffle all possible game data into a RAM Disk buffer for play. And with modern RAMDisk programs Its about as difficult to use as Daemon Tools. For those who question the efficacy of ramdisk options. There are plenty of benchmarks online to consider. 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.

[Valez]

Well, I don't think those high resolution textures will matter, not even with a 1080p-Rift.

Exactly why wouldn't they?

Because with the Rift-resolution spread arround the high FOV I'm not sure ou would be able to see a difference between high resolution textures (especially if the Doom 4 textures are even more high res than "normal" high resolution texture) and normal textures. Just check the pictures looking in the Rift, or the FOV-Simulator thread.

[marbas]

Because with the Rift-resolution spread arround the high FOV I'm not sure ou would be able to see a difference between high resolution textures (especially if the Doom 4 textures are even more high res than "normal" high resolution texture) and normal textures. Just check the pictures looking in the Rift, or the FOV-Simulator thread.

Screen res and texture res are not related. You will still get better visuals with increased texture res even when displayed on a low res screen.

[marbas]

Who is planning on upgrading to or currently running Windows 8?

If were to upgrade I may consider Linux if they get better gpu driver support. Last time I checked I didn't see any sli support.

I tested win8 and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I guess I'll stick to win7 to the bitter end... in other words win9.

[Mart]

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.

[Valez]

Because with the Rift-resolution spread arround the high FOV I'm not sure ou would be able to see a difference between high resolution textures (especially if the Doom 4 textures are even more high res than "normal" high resolution texture) and normal textures. Just check the pictures looking in the Rift, or the FOV-Simulator thread.

Screen res and texture res are not related. You will still get better visuals with increased texture res even when displayed on a low res screen.

Could you elaborate this?
I can not see how this ccould be, and I am honestly curious abaut this.
Suppose you are looking at an object which takes 200*200 pixel on the screen. Wouldn't any texture, covering the object, bigger than 200*200 just be the same quality as an 200*200 texture?

[Fredz]

Who is planning on upgrading to or currently running Windows 8?
If were to upgrade I may consider Linux if they get better gpu driver support. Last time I checked I didn't see any sli support.

From the NVIDIA README, SLI seems to be supported under Linux :
http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L ... E/sli.html

I also recently build a new PC mainly for the Rift, which is running Linux. I'm quite far from the configs that have been posted here, as I don't like spending a ton of money on hardware and Linux seems to be less of a memory hog than W7/8. But I think it should be adequate for the games I intend to run on it, even in stereo 3D. When the consumer Rift will be closer I may upgrade again if its resolution is higher than the devkit.

Processor : Intel G630
GPU : Geforce GTX 460 1Go (on its way home)
Memory : 4GB DDR3
Hard drive : Caviar Blue SATA III 500GB
System : Linux (Debian/unstable)

[marbas]

Could you elaborate this?
I can not see how this ccould be, and I am honestly curious abaut this.
Suppose you are looking at an object which takes 200*200 pixel on the screen. Wouldn't any texture, covering the object, bigger than 200*200 just be the same quality as an 200*200 texture?

For starters realtime 3D is dynamic. You never stay still observing objects at a fixed size and distance. Moving closer to a textured surface will reveal more detail using higher res textures. On the opposite, moving closer to a surface with low res would look more rough.

[Kiree]

Because with the Rift-resolution spread arround the high FOV I'm not sure ou would be able to see a difference between high resolution textures (especially if the Doom 4 textures are even more high res than "normal" high resolution texture) and normal textures. Just check the pictures looking in the Rift, or the FOV-Simulator thread.

Screen res and texture res are not related. You will still get better visuals with increased texture res even when displayed on a low res screen.

Could you elaborate this?
I can not see how this ccould be, and I am honestly curious abaut this.
Suppose you are looking at an object which takes 200*200 pixel on the screen. Wouldn't any texture, covering the object, bigger than 200*200 just be the same quality as an 200*200 texture?

Yes, it would be the same quality, unless you use supersampling and negative LOD (level of detail) bias. And even then, you quickly get into diminishing returns.

Usually, the problem is that you can move so close that the 200*200 texture will cover 400*400 pixels on screen, and the developers didn't ship any higher resolution texture because it wouldn't fit into RAM. But I really doubt that will be an issue in modern games with the Rift dev kit.

[Fredz]

Moving closer to a textured surface will reveal more detail using higher res textures. On the opposite, moving closer to a surface with low res would look more rough.

It matters on a high res display with 1920 columns or more, but I'm not sure the difference would really be noticeable on the Rift with its 640 columns. I guess a good anti-aliasing implementation would be a lot more useful in this case.

Could be a good idea to test some scenes in 640x480 with different texture resolutions and anti-aliasing algorithms to find the optimal parameters for the Rift.

[wuliheron]

Doubling the texture resolution quadruples the memory required and already some newer games are making higher resolution textures optional that are straining the stand 1gb vram limits at 1080p resolutions.

Another concern is the high frame rate required. Video games try to anticipate what you will do next and pre-load textures into memory. For example, as you approach a corner they'll load the scene around the corner into memory so it's ready to display and the game doesn't stutter. At 120fps the more often there is memory free to do this the better.

Doom 4 will be the first Oculus ready game to make extensive use of partially resident textures which are enormous at even low texture resolutions compared to traditional repeated textures. However, other games are already using the technology to a lesser extent for specific scenes and you can expect more games to use them in the future.

At any rate, there is no way I would spend over $300.oo on a new video card these days with less than 2gb of vram except for a budget system. Sure, it will play older games fine without it and it will play newer ones at slightly lower resolutions fine without it, but it's obvious the standards are changing once again for a lot of reasons and 1gb vram @ 1080p just becoming outdated. Personally I don't like buying a new video card any more often than I have to and a little future proofing is a good thing. Other settings I can turn down to compensate for a lack of number crunching capacity, but the textures demand whatever they demand for memory and frame rates because they are roughly 80% of the data.

Anti-aliasing is not as big an issue as far as I can tell. Sure it takes number crunching capacity, but if the screen resolution is low it requires less and if the screen resolution is high the need for AA is reduced anyway.

[stinkvis]

Could you elaborate this?
I can not see how this ccould be, and I am honestly curious abaut this.
Suppose you are looking at an object which takes 200*200 pixel on the screen. Wouldn't any texture, covering the object, bigger than 200*200 just be the same quality as an 200*200 texture?

Yes, but in most cases the object will not always take up 200*200 pixels. As soon as you move closer to the object it will start taking up more of your view, and in that case I think the difference will definitely be noticeable.
edit: Hadn't noticed that there was a 3rd page where this was already answered lol.

[Valez]

Suppose it is my fault for not being clearer:

Of course you stand right in front of the 200*200 object.

I am allready familiar with the concept of things appearing bigger, when moving towards them.

About ram on graphic cards:
Isn't the need of more ram mainly tied to higher resolutions? And wasn't putting 2GB ram on some 6950s not mainly
a marketing move?
Aside from that, on all current cards are at least 2gb, imho.

[stinkvis]

If you can't get any closer than 200*200 pixels on screen, the object in question is probably very small in comparison to the rest of the world in the first place (think the size of a matchbox or pencil sharpener), which means other objects are likely to have much higher resolution textures anyway. So while having higher resolution textures may not make sense for that specific object, it still would for the rest of the world.

[Valez]

Obviously there may be bigger objects.
That alone doesn't explain why texture and screen resolution are unrelated.

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.
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.

Now I don't now how much different textures of what size you would need to have a whole level plastered with optimal textures, and how
much ram you would need on the graphics card to render a game with this optimal textures (taking into texture streaming and other things)
at 60 fps. But looking at Skyrim and BF3 even at 1920*1200 with 1GB vram, I doubt you would need much vram for this with a 1080p Rift.


Coming to gaming pcs there is one good rule of thumb:
Buy only when your games aren't running to your satisfaction anymore, and if you buy,
buy only reasonable prized hardware.

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.

[stinkvis]

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.

[Valez]

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.



I am sorry if my use of language is reason for the confusion, English is not my native tongue.