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Do I need more juice... or will my i5 rig suit my new Rift purchase?

Sitruz
Protege
Hi All,

Massively pleased about the Oculus sale. I've been wanting to get in VR for ages but the standard price just wasn't feasible. Anyway, went for it. Impressed so far. I have a small area of play but it still works perfectly fine for me. I have some left tilting going on which is quite annoying, but given what people in here are saying it's not worth doing anything about as nothing seems to fix it.

I have a MSI 1080 Gaming X Plus which I know cuts the mustard, but my CPU is only an i5 and I have 8Gb RAM. I've only tried a few games and on the face of it they appeared to play fine with no isues, but then I went sniffing around the settings and started looking at the Tray Tool and Super sampling lol. Sigh.  😞

So looking at the performance graph. Robo Recall for example on standard 1 Pixel Density in-game, and Tray Tool on 0 (so just using the performance overlay)... my left graph (frames) is 90 constant with the odd drop. But my right graph is about 30-40% but drops down and jumps back up regularly.

If I boost the PD in-game to say even 1.1, left side is fine, but my right side graph drops way into the red. Fluctuating between 10 and minus figures. This doesn't seem to affect my game, or if it does I can't see it. But it is saying that its dropping tons of application frames.

Whats the general thoughts on this? It clearly visually hasn't affected me much, but at the same time that ultra low / minus max performance headroom is concerning me. I want to make sure I'm getting the best experience I can now I've paid for the Rift. Will moving to an i7 help me out here much? Will i see a lot of improvement in the games?

Many thanks guys, appreciate the help and advice.
32 REPLIES 32

RJulianSaunders
Explorer
Whether it's an "i5" isn't the most important marker here. An i5 6600K wipes the floor with an i7 720. Anybody would need the other numbers to let you know if your CPU can run what you want to run in VR at the requisite 90fps.

Ryguy21
Protege
Arizona Sunshine requires an i7 to run at max settings but I don't know if any other games do.

CrashFu
Consultant
I have an i5-4690k,  myself, and I can safely say I've had no trouble enjoying almost every VR game available on decent graphics settings..

The only exception I am aware of (other than Arizona Sunshine, as Rycci mentioned)  is that with my current CPU I cannot host videos for other people to watch with me in BigScreen ...  I can use the app to watch videos / play non-VR PC games by myself, but if I invite in any other users, they see an unwatchable 1fps slide-show, lol. :sweat:

It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

Sitruz
Protege


Whether it's an "i5" isn't the most important marker here. An i5 6600K wipes the floor with an i7 720. Anybody would need the other numbers to let you know if your CPU can run what you want to run in VR at the requisite 90fps.


Ah right. Sorry guys.

My CPU is an i5-4690K CPU @ 3.50GHz. Not overclocked or anything.

Like you @CrashFu I've not noticed anything visually in game that makes me think there's a problem. It's only since I've looked at Super Sampling and displaying the performance graph with the Tray Tool that it got me concerned.

I've seen the visual improvement now from Super Sampling while standing around in the gun range area of Robo Recall :). All the blurred text that's now readable etc haha so I want to crank up that Super Sampling in all my games. Just wondered whether it needs a beastly processor to do that or not.

Cheers all.

Anonymous
Not applicable
If you have a decent cooler, that I5-4690k processor just begs to be overclocked.

nalex66
MVP
MVP
SS doesn't really depend on the CPU, it's just more load on the GPU.

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

Sitruz
Protege

nalex66 said:

SS doesn't really depend on the CPU, it's just more load on the GPU.


Ah right. Well the graph for my GPU barely flickers. Its an MSI 1080 Gaming X Plus so that side seems fine.

What will the low CPU graph ultimately show me? If it sits at 10% and constantly fluctuates into minus figures, am I or can I, expect to see can poor performance in the rift? If not, I may just leave it and crank up the SS until I visually notice problems?

nalex66
MVP
MVP
I don't use the tray tool myself, so I can't tell you much about that graph, but with a 1080 you should have no trouble going up to 1.5 ss, which should give you a noticeable visual improvement. Above that it starts to be a lot of load on your GPU, so whether you can push it further will depend on the game. At 2.0 you're essentially trying to render 4K at 90 fps. 

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

Anonymous
Not applicable
I've got a Zotak 1080 Amp Extreme edition along with the same CPU you're running Sitruz and the CPU has yet to be a limiting factor for me. I've noticed most VR experiences and games are very much GPU dependent and hardly any put significant pressure on the CPU.