Iām wondering how much pcvr performance is assisted by the headset. I know that you need a pretty good gaming pc to run pcvr at high frames but will the headset you use boost performance or is it all just the pc. Iām using a quest 3 with wired link but would a valve index/vive increase performance
I've found that the main factor for good PCVR 'Performance' with my Q2/3/Pro headsets is a good gaming PC, together with a decent Link cable and/or good wifi6 router setup with Air Link (or Virtual Desktop). The only differences are purely Visual imho. This is due to different lens and screen type/resolution.
I have a pretty highend +2.5yo gaming PC (i913900k/rtx4090/64Gb 6400ram). I get the very best overall PCVR results with a meta official link cable connected to my z790mb usb3.2 gen2 type-c port at 900mbps max dynamic bitrate. Air Link also works very well, but distance clarity is a little poorer and minor compression artifacts are a little bit more noticeable.
The headset does have it's own GPU and CPU, but it doesn't assist the PC in any way. In fact using a Quest will have a slight performance drop compared to a Rift or other brands like Vive/Index. This is because a Rift or Vive directly pass the raw game gfx over a video cable, while Quests require the PC to compress the video into a stream which adds an extra hit to the PC's GPU.
Also a Quest 3 is significantly higher resolution than a Vive or Index, so there's a bit more overhead if you want to really take advantage of what it can do.
So I guess technically a Vive or Index will give you slightly better performance, mainly because they are lower res devices. (Quest 3 is 2064 x 2208 per eye, Vive is 1080 x 1200 per eye, Index is 1440x1600 per eye)
That's very interesting information. šš» I only do standalone as I don't have a gaming pc and not really interested in being tethered. I was very interested in your point about resolution. This would probably mean that potentially my Quest 3s would perform better than the 3 in this case too? It's good to get these technical insights as a very new user. Appreciated !
Probably yes. The Quest 3s has the same CPU and GPU as the Quest 3, but the lower resolution and field of view of the Quest 2. So it should be a slightly lower workload for the Quest 3s.
I don't know off the top of my head what the actual render resolution of both are in stand alone mode though. Quests don't run at full resolution by default when not connected to a PC. Maybe the 3 and 3s both do the same render resolution despite their panels being different resolutions, I'm not sure. I'll have a google around and see if the sizes are known (just getting ready for work at the moment).
