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Hardware Upgrade Recommendation

bzowk
Explorer
Hey Guys - 

Been a Rift CV1 owner since before the touch controller's release and love it.  I'm wishing to upgrade my hardware to improve detail & performance in many titles.  Even Oculus Home runs in "Low" without ambient occlusion.  My system is custom built (specs below) but already pretty much at the best CPU for MB so if I go that route, I'd have to replace MB, CPU & RAM :(.  Love to do that, but adopting a 2nd child so funds are minimal. 

Overall: Given my current setup, would you suggest first investing in a new video card (if so, suggestions for best for buck) or put $ towards new system and replace graphics card in future?

Current System Specs
Below are the specs that would count towards performance...
  • CPU: Intel Quad Core i7-3770k @ 3.50GHz (OC'd to 4.20GHz)
  • RAM: 32gb (x4 - G Skill RipjawsX F3-1600C9-8GXM 8 GB DDR3-1600 DDR3 SDRAM  (9-9-9-24 @ 800 MHz))
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
  • Graphics Card: EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 (4gb DDR5 / GPU Clock: 975 MHz / Memory Clock: 1752 MHz)
  • OS: Windows 10 x64 (OS + all drivers up to date)
  • Storage: OS installed on SSD & VR Games/Apps installed on different SSD
  • VR: Oculus Rift CV1 + Touch Controllers + 3 Sensors (Additional USB3 Card used, too)
Thoughts or suggestions?  Thanks!
10 REPLIES 10

m70b1jr
Honored Guest
While both CPU and GPU are important, I would focus on getting a new GPU. Used VEGA 56's or VEGA 64's would be the best route. 

TomCgcmfc
MVP
MVP
Like everything VR, you are best to get the best Desktop gaming PC with best specs that you can afford.  I recently upgraded to a nice gaming PC w/i9 9900k, gtx1080ti, 32Gb 3000 ram, and 1Tb ssd.  This has really improved my Rift cv1 w/2x sensors performance a lot.
i9 13900K water cooled, RTX4090, Z790 MB w/wifi6e, 32Gb 6400 ram, 2x2TB SSD, 1000W PSU, Win 11, QPro, Q3, w/Link and Air Link, Vive Pro1 with Etsy lens mod and Index Controllers

zork2001
Heroic Explorer
just look for a used 1080 ti for less than $500, and Rift S. You should be golden for couple more years. 

hoppingbunny123
Rising Star
cpus most important. my upgrade from a i7 4790 to a ryzen 5 3600x made the fps jump. might be the ddr 4 being good quality too, the i7 4790 uses ddr 3.

i cant buy a new videocard for a while and i dont need one since i have a working one for my rift cv1. so i put my old i7 4790 to be my pc and put my ryzen 5 3600x away till i get my new videocard because i read the cpus age and deteriorate quality over time.

"

Given enough time, even the largest mountains in the world will
erode. Zoom in on the almost unimaginably-small nanometer-scale
transistors inside of a CPU that rapidly switch on and off billions of
times per second (at 5.0 GHz the transistors switch at a rate of 5
billion cycles per second), and it's easy to understand that these will
also erode, even under optimal operating conditions. This also includes
the incredibly tiny interconnects (wires) that connect the transistors.



Some factors increase the rate of wear and trigger electromigration
(the process of electrons slipping through the electrical pathways)
faster, such as higher current and thermal density. Because increasing
frequency requires pumping more power through the chip, thus generating
more heat, higher frequencies typically result in faster aging, and thus
lowered life span. These problems become more pronounced with smaller
feature sizes, such as when transistors become smaller inside modern
chips (like AMD's shrink to a 7nm process and Intel's shrink to 10nm),
simply because the chip is pushing more current through smaller
transistors and interconnects. 

"


so why age my new fancy cpu when my old i7 4790 is kicking butt for what i need right now. at least im future proof just need a new videocard for when i do eventually get a new videocard and vr unit.

OmegaM4N
Expert Trustee

bzowk said:

Hey Guys - 

Been a Rift CV1 owner since before the touch controller's release and love it.  I'm wishing to upgrade my hardware to improve detail & performance in many titles.  Even Oculus Home runs in "Low" without ambient occlusion.  My system is custom built (specs below) but already pretty much at the best CPU for MB so if I go that route, I'd have to replace MB, CPU & RAM :(.  Love to do that, but adopting a 2nd child so funds are minimal. 

Overall: Given my current setup, would you suggest first investing in a new video card (if so, suggestions for best for buck) or put $ towards new system and replace graphics card in future?

Current System Specs
Below are the specs that would count towards performance...
  • CPU: Intel Quad Core i7-3770k @ 3.50GHz (OC'd to 4.20GHz)
  • RAM: 32gb (x4 - G Skill RipjawsX F3-1600C9-8GXM 8 GB DDR3-1600 DDR3 SDRAM  (9-9-9-24 @ 800 MHz))
  • Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
  • Graphics Card: EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 (4gb DDR5 / GPU Clock: 975 MHz / Memory Clock: 1752 MHz)
  • OS: Windows 10 x64 (OS + all drivers up to date)
  • Storage: OS installed on SSD & VR Games/Apps installed on different SSD
  • VR: Oculus Rift CV1 + Touch Controllers + 3 Sensors (Additional USB3 Card used, too)
Thoughts or suggestions?  Thanks!


You have almost the same PC i had up to last year, and all i did then was drop in a GTX1080 to repleace my 970, and what a boost i got in VR from my old GTX970....oh and i still have everything else the same, and my rig just loves VR, Elite Dangerous on full VR settings is awesome....so yeah, a GTX1080 or AMD equivalent would do the trick, and the cheaper the better. 😉
CV1/Vive-knuckles)/Dell Vr Visor/Go/Quest II/ PSVR.

Tadin
Heroic Explorer
Yeah, I have to agree, a new GPU is your best bet, 1080's are great ! I went from a 970 to a 1080 and the difference is huge !

Anonymous
Not applicable


cpus most important. my upgrade from a i7 4790 to a ryzen 5 3600x made the fps jump. might be the ddr 4 being good quality too, the i7 4790 uses ddr 3.

i cant buy a new videocard for a while and i dont need one since i have a working one for my rift cv1. so i put my old i7 4790 to be my pc and put my ryzen 5 3600x away till i get my new videocard because i read the cpus age and deteriorate quality over time.

"

Given enough time, even the largest mountains in the world will
erode. Zoom in on the almost unimaginably-small nanometer-scale
transistors inside of a CPU that rapidly switch on and off billions of
times per second (at 5.0 GHz the transistors switch at a rate of 5
billion cycles per second), and it's easy to understand that these will
also erode, even under optimal operating conditions. This also includes
the incredibly tiny interconnects (wires) that connect the transistors.



Some factors increase the rate of wear and trigger electromigration
(the process of electrons slipping through the electrical pathways)
faster, such as higher current and thermal density. Because increasing
frequency requires pumping more power through the chip, thus generating
more heat, higher frequencies typically result in faster aging, and thus
lowered life span. These problems become more pronounced with smaller
feature sizes, such as when transistors become smaller inside modern
chips (like AMD's shrink to a 7nm process and Intel's shrink to 10nm),
simply because the chip is pushing more current through smaller
transistors and interconnects. 

"


so why age my new fancy cpu when my old i7 4790 is kicking butt for what i need right now. at least im future proof just need a new videocard for when i do eventually get a new videocard and vr unit.



VR uses GPU more than CPU. If your CPU swap resulted in more FPS, that's because your CPU was bottlenecking your GPU. If your CPU only supports DDR3, then that's an issue, but if you have an i7-7700k for instance, then buy the most kick-ass GPU you can afford, but making sure it doesn't bottleneck from the CPU. There's plenty of youtube videos testing CPUs with GPUs. Also, the amount of RAM comes into play...there's at least one title that suggests 32GB's of RAM. It's one of the painting/drawing apps though...the bigger the image being worked on, the more memory required.

bzowk
Explorer
Thanks guys - 

I read all replies and have just three more questions, please...

1. CPU Bottlenecking 
I totally understand that a GPU may be limited by CPU.  Given that, if I were to upgrade to something like a 1080ti and keep the 3770k, will that occur to a noticeable degree?  I understand that this could be app/game specific, but am talking overall.

2. Pinned Windows Change Thoughts?
I frequently use an Oculus Dash pinned window while using VR to watch a video or sometimes even attend a presentation.  Nothing beats fishing in Catch & Release which in a boring one :)..   Doing this obviously requires more resources resulting in the game/app being more sluggish.  Obviously, the apps used may vary requirements but I'm sure that most of the sluggishness is due to GPU limitations, but wanted to make sure in case there wasn't a detail I was unaware of.

3. Upgrade to Rift S
I believe I should upgrade my GPU prior to Rift, but since it was brought up; based on the reviews I read, the Rift S really isn't that big of an upgrade not to mention it seems the Rift's legacy tracking system of wall mounted sensors is still considered superior even though more to maintain.  Is the cost really worth it?  For that matter, since Quest is soon releasing abilities to use PC resources; I've considered it as well.  The things I'd wish to upgrade about the Rift most include resolution (sometimes use desktop and small text hard to read) and FOV.

Thanks ,Guys

hoppingbunny123
Rising Star
your cpu is worse than my i7 4790, both use ddr3;


so your cpu is bottle-necking the vr fps. i suggest you get a new ryzen 5 3600x cpu, and a ddr4 ram, see this video for some tips;


the rift s is the same as the cv1. it has more pixels though so its probably harder on the cpu, gpu.

i played some games for a while and think if you get a new videocard it should be a 8GB videocard. the videocard ram gets used on the games.