5600X vs 5900X VR in Elite Dangerous

Raelcreve

n00b
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Nov 25, 2020
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Finally got my 5900X from AMD.com and installed it a few weekends ago. I've had some time in VR in Elite Dangerous and wanted to update folks on a few questions that have been going around. In truth I wanted the 5900 just for this setup (I've got a full controller setup so I've already invested a lot of money in my immersion).

My rig is a MSI X570 Tomahawk, 32 GB of 3200 G. SKILL TridentZ RAM, XFX Merc 6800 XT, Samsung 980 M.2, and at first a 5600X, now a 5900X. Coming from an MSI Intel Mobo running a 5920 6 Core, RTX 2080, 32 GB of 2400 Corsair, Samsung 960 M.2.

I play a lot of different games on a 32" Samsung G5 1440p 144Mhz and Samsung Odyssey+ VR.

I played all of CP'77 on the 5600 version with no issues. However, Elite gave me lots of problems in VR. I'd get CPU bound with High/Medium settings and 150%. Avg 60-70 FPS. Reprojection and Framedrops would be unpleasant, but not unplayable. I'd get the old CPU couldn't keep up so the GPU would lag out...this was the problem on my Intel setup but even worse graphics.

The 5900 has made a world of difference. High/Ultra with 200% and I'm averaging 89-90 FPS with almost no Repro or Framedrops. Honestly I've not even taken the time to tweak the settings yet, but it looks and runs amazingly well. The CPU never hits a wall. I plan on spending some time to get all the settings just right, but it looks like there is a lot of headroom for some serious clarity.

So yes, for normal gaming a 5600 is fine. However in VR gaming a 5900 is the way to go.
 
It's actually rare that more cores helps VR, so that's good to hear. Usually VR will hammer a single core for draw calls (as it has to draw the scene twice, once for each eye) unless single pass stereo or liquidVR is enabled. DX12 fixes a lot of that, but usually throwing cores at it, unless the engine is specifically optimized for VR and threading, doesn't help. I'd be interested to see if there are other games that do the same - I know the ones I play in VR often either don't care much about the CPU at all (Alyx, Onward) or care about single threaded speed (iRacing, MSFS).
 
If you aren't already, also try turning on AMD's anti-lag feature in your graphics driver. The GPU will queue up less frames, delivering them "just in time", improving latency and lowering GPU usage, (but not lowering framerate). Not all games like it but it generally works well. Should be useful for VR.
 
If you aren't already, also try turning on AMD's anti-lag feature in your graphics driver. The GPU will queue up less frames, delivering them "just in time", improving latency and lowering GPU usage, (but not lowering framerate). Not all games like it but it generally works well. Should be useful for VR.
At first I was thinking that this might be some special sauce that running an AMD CPU provides. :) The following word placement tweak helps:
If you aren't already, also try turning on anti-lag feature in your AMD graphics driver. The GPU will...
 
At first I was thinking that this might be some special sauce that running an AMD CPU provides. :) The following word placement tweak helps:
Nvidia has a similar feature which they just call "low latency" and you can turn it "on" to change the render queue to 1 frame or "ultra" where it changes to no frames in the queue and becomes a true "just in time" frame delivery.

I don't have VR. But in my experience with strandard games. Having such features turned on, along with freesync or gsync, results in a noticeably more responsive game.
 
Nvidia has a similar feature which they just call "low latency" and you can turn it "on" to change the render queue to 1 frame or "ultra" where it changes to no frames in the queue and becomes a true "just in time" frame delivery.

I don't have VR. But in my experience with strandard games. Having such features turned on, along with freesync or gsync, results in a noticeably more responsive game.
Yup, found it. Mine was set to "Off", so I turned it on. Given the hardware I'm pushing, it probably won't make much of a noticable impact, but I guess it still doesn't hurt to have it enabled to get the very best possible VR performance. VR gaming is the primary way I'm gaming these days anyways.

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