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Anonymous
October 16, 2016
Solved

One or two graphics cards in laptop for VR?

  • October 16, 2016
  • 7 replies
  • 2857 views
Hi, I'm about to get a laptop to both demo and develop VR content. As a general rule I can see that maxing out most specs will make sense- the big thing I'm trying to decide though is whether to get a system with one or two GeForce GTX 1080 graphics cards. I want it to work well right now but also be somewhat futureproof- it would cost more and I'm willing to make the investment if it will lead to a substantial gain but not if it won't. Any advice much appreciated.
Best answer by bo3b
No reason to do it at present.  Essentially nothing in VR uses SLI at present.  NVidia Funhouse, Steam VR performance test, and Elite Dangerous are the only ones I know of.

Also for a laptop, I assume you might be looking at something like a Sager, which I have.  If you go with SLI, even 1070 SLI, you also have to carry an extra power brick.  For the 1080 SLI it's thus two 330W power bricks, which is really over the top considering it isn't used in VR.

In the future, SLI might be supported better, but I would still discourage buying SLI for VR.  I used SLI for 3D Vision for years, and have recently given up on it, because of the poor support even for 3D Vision games.

It's a shame, it's a natural fit for VR, one card per eye.  But no devs seem to be interested, even when Nvidia has a good SDK for it.

7 replies

bo3bAnswer
Inspiring
October 20, 2016
No reason to do it at present.  Essentially nothing in VR uses SLI at present.  NVidia Funhouse, Steam VR performance test, and Elite Dangerous are the only ones I know of.

Also for a laptop, I assume you might be looking at something like a Sager, which I have.  If you go with SLI, even 1070 SLI, you also have to carry an extra power brick.  For the 1080 SLI it's thus two 330W power bricks, which is really over the top considering it isn't used in VR.

In the future, SLI might be supported better, but I would still discourage buying SLI for VR.  I used SLI for 3D Vision for years, and have recently given up on it, because of the poor support even for 3D Vision games.

It's a shame, it's a natural fit for VR, one card per eye.  But no devs seem to be interested, even when Nvidia has a good SDK for it.
Anonymous
October 20, 2016
Thanks bo3b, that's good advice. In practice is running one or more screens on a Nvidia 1080 equipped laptop in addition to the VR headset doable or does it cause problems? From a demo perspective I'd also like to do some projection of what is being experienced whilst also monitoring on the laptop's panel.
bo3b
Inspiring
October 21, 2016
I've done an external screen via DP, plus the internal laptop monitor, plus either Rift or Vive all at once, and it works without any glitches.  Typically I use the laptop monitor as the non-player watcher view, because this laptop is ginormous.

You could also connect a projector, but be wary of the single HDMI port that you will typically see.  Vive can do DP to free up HDMI, but Rift is locked.  Typical projectors that I run only have HDMI.

From a performance standpoint there is no impact by running multiple screens.  Compared to drawing the VR environment, monitor updates are not measurable, even for mirroring windows.
Anonymous
October 21, 2016
Would a DP to HDMI adaptor OR a HDMI splitter be the way forward for a projector would you say?
bo3b
Inspiring
October 23, 2016

JFL said:

Would a DP to HDMI adaptor OR a HDMI splitter be the way forward for a projector would you say?


I don't have experience with those adapters, so I can't make a good recommendation.  You might want to search the 3D Vision forums. I know I've read other people using splitters and adapters for their Surround setups.  IIRC, there are known good active adapters, and some that don't work at all.

However, I had a bad cable with my Rift, and for a long time I used a DVI-D to HDMI adapter that worked fine.  I had a second adapter that didn't work at all, and looked the same.  Could have been related to the bad pins on my HDMI Rift connector though.  

Anonymous
October 23, 2016
Great thanks
Ochiniwa
Participant
November 6, 2016

bo3b said:

No reason to do it at present.  Essentially nothing in VR uses SLI at present.  NVidia Funhouse, Steam VR performance test, and Elite Dangerous are the only ones I know of.




As far as I can tell, Elite Dangerous does not support SLI anymore either. With the recent patches from NVIDIA I am unable to get my 2 GTX 1080 to work in SLI in VR. Whenever a game is launched, the Oculus software jumps in and somehow overrides setting now allowing SLI.

It is a shame and I just cannot understand why SLI cannot be supported.
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