5700XT for VR (Oculus Rift v1)

lopoetve

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Short version: How's the 5700XT for VR (Oculus Rift v1)? Trying to figure out which video card to put where.

I'm building out my room-scale VR system so that my wife and I both have similar capabilities. We mostly play Arizona sunshine together, and she plays things like beat sabre/etc for a workout. I play more serious VR games when I feel like playing VR.

Hers: 6700K + GTX 1080. Just for workout videos and VR.
Mine: 3950X + ? 80% of the time is a linux server, 20% of the time VR/backup gaming system (1080P or VR)
HTPC: 1950X + ? 80% of the time is a HTPC server, 20% of the time console style gaming (4k).

Available cards: 2080TI, 5700XT. Given those 3 systems, what would you put where? The HTPC does benefit from having an Nvidia card, as it has NVENC for transcoding (way better than AMD for H.264, which is most of the on-the-fly encoding it does). I was leaning towards dropping the 2080 into the HTPC, and the 5700XT into the VR system - but I've never tried AMD with VR - always ended up being Nvidia, and I've heard about stuttering issues/etc? I could also drop the 2080TI into her system, move the 1080 (it's a triple fan silent beast) into the HTPC (deal with 4k later, if it happens), and the 5700 into VR2... or some other combination.
 
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I have no input on the total buildouts as I have no experience the NV hardware, but I have a 5700 (XT flashed) paired with HTC Vive Original - and it does just fine.
 
Experience with my own HMDs and my 2080 Ti is that whichever machine gets used for the heaviest VR games should have the 2080 Ti and the other should have the 5700XT.

If Arizona Sunshine is the heaviest game your wife plays, then that's the one that should have the 5700XT, which is a fine card, but weaker than the 2080 Ti.

90% of my gaming is VR cockpit games these days, and even a 2080 Ti is really only "enough" for most of those.
 
5700XT and 1080 are about the same - no real reason to swap there, other than possibly free up the 1080 for the HTPC - which is a neat idea, but she's on an mATX box, and I'm not sure that the Red Devil I have will fit in that case :p
 
Short version: How's the 5700XT for VR (Oculus Rift v1)? Trying to figure out which video card to put where.

I'm building out my room-scale VR system so that my wife and I both have similar capabilities. We mostly play Arizona sunshine together, and she plays things like beat sabre/etc for a workout. I play more serious VR games when I feel like playing VR.

Hers: 6700K + GTX 1080. Just for workout videos and VR.
Mine: 3950X + ? 80% of the time is a linux server, 20% of the time VR/backup gaming system (1080P or VR)
HTPC: 1950X + ? 80% of the time is a HTPC server, 20% of the time console style gaming (1080P right now, 4k in the future).

Available cards: 2080TI, 5700XT. Given those 3 systems, what would you put where? The HTPC does benefit from having an Nvidia card, as it has NVENC for transcoding (way better than AMD for H.264, which is most of the on-the-fly encoding it does). I was leaning towards dropping the 2080 into the HTPC, and the 5700XT into the VR system - but I've never tried AMD with VR - always ended up being Nvidia, and I've heard about stuttering issues/etc? I could also drop the 2080TI into her system, move the 1080 (it's a triple fan silent beast) into the HTPC (deal with 4k later, if it happens), and the 5700 into VR2... or some other combination.
That 1950x should be great for H.264 transcoding on the CPU and would generally result in even better quality than NVENC. NVENC's H.264 is only competitive with CPU encoding, if your software exposes all of the features. Many do not. So if the HTPC server doesn't end up with an Nvidia card, it should be fine.

I would put the 2080ti in whichever machine is doing the most demanding gaming.
 
That 1950x should be great for H.264 transcoding on the CPU and would generally result in even better quality than NVENC. NVENC's H.264 is only competitive with CPU encoding, if your software exposes all of the features. Many do not. So if the HTPC server doesn't end up with an Nvidia card, it should be fine.

I would put the 2080ti in whichever machine is doing the most demanding gaming.
What about H.265? Limited content in the collection so far, but it might matter in the future? Plex is the media app- can use nvenc just fine, but didn’t think about pounding the cpu.
 
What about H.265? Limited content in the collection so far, but it might matter in the future? Plex is the media app- can use nvenc just fine, but didn’t think about pounding the cpu.
It depends. NVENC is solid for H.265. Clearly better than H.264. And also very fast. However, if your threadripper is fast enough to do an H.265 stream----it still may not matter.

and again, If the software utilizes enough features, NVENC H.265 can compare well to doing it on CPU, in terms of quality. I dunno what kind of features Plex supports for NVENC.
 
It depends. NVENC is solid for H.265. Clearly better than H.264. And also very fast. However, if your threadripper is fast enough to do an H.265 stream----it still may not matter.

and again, If the software utilizes enough features, NVENC H.265 can compare well to doing it on CPU, in terms of quality. I dunno what kind of features Plex supports for NVENC.
Supposedly most of them. I've got it running on an old GTX970 now, and it does quite well - but I'm only doing H.264, as it doesn't support 265, and I don't have any 265 content yet.

You make a good point though - time to go see what kind of encoding speed that chip can do on its own. I do plan on attaching a 4k TV though, at some point next year, and neither the 970 nor the 5700 will do 4k gaming worth a damn.
 
Answer: 1 H265 stream, and it stonks the processor, which is... undesirable. I'll stick with Nvidia in that one for the hardware encoder, since I have mixed content (and the AMD H264 encoder is non-good, and you can't pick between hardware/software except universally).
 
Supposedly most of them. I've got it running on an old GTX970 now, and it does quite well - but I'm only doing H.264, as it doesn't support 265, and I don't have any 265 content yet.

You make a good point though - time to go see what kind of encoding speed that chip can do on its own. I do plan on attaching a 4k TV though, at some point next year, and neither the 970 nor the 5700 will do 4k gaming worth a damn.
Well regardless of the source files----for any transcodes, you could be/should be streaming everything as H.265, if you can, for better quality.

For H.264 source files which aren't transcoded, just streamed: the decoder shouldn't matter. They all should be basically the same quality for decoding (CPU/NVENC/Quicksync/AMD).
 
Well regardless of the source files----for any transcodes, you could be/should be streaming everything as H.265, if you can, for better quality.

Directplay (no transcode, just transmit) is best - just sends the file across the wire. It's for when I'm out of the house that I need to transcode to a lower bit-rate, and that's where the CPUs get hammered - drop to 15mbps max takes a lot of horsepower. More than I'd like to spare, in fact - the system runs other tasks at the same time. :(

So offload to the GPU - and to get good offload on both formats (I'm not re-ripping the huge pile of stuff I have any time soon) - I need Nvidia, since they have both encoders working well (AMD has a better 265, but Nvidia has a better 264 and a good 265).
 
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