So, I own one of these fun little bad boys as my side gaming/gamedev-on-the-go laptop. It's certainly underspec'ed for VR and I knew that going in. But, I thought I'd see how the Oculus Rift ran on it anyway just for giggles. I figured it might still be good enough to play some simple games (Maybe Lucky's Tale at best?), demo some 360 photos/videos or play around in Virtual Desktop.
To my surprise, it's completely unusable! I can't even navigate Oculus Home at more than 5 FPS. Certainly not complaining, obviously it's underspec'ed for VR, I just expected it to be somewhat usable for some basic stuff. Really surprising to see how much power we need to just make the HMD work on a fundamental level. Really puts into perspective the kind of beasts of a machines we'll be needing to run the upcoming bleeding edge AAA titles in VR!
Just thought I'd share my experience, as it's probably totally useless information for most of you. 🙂
vr is definitely one of those things that pushes pc hardware to its limit. I have no complaints though. Staying on the bleeding edge is never cheap and the result is more than worth it at the moment.
VR needs more GPU power to do the same thing that ordinary display devices could achieve... For 1080P graphics, what happens between the HMD and the GPU is that the latter actually needs to render two almost-1080P frames, and overlap them to produce one single 1080P frame in stereoscopic 3D. On top of that, the HMD needs to maintain a refreshing rate of 90hz (or as close to that as possible) to reduce motion sickness, whereas in ordinary games 30 to 60 frames per seconds would suffice.
Basically it means your GPU will work 2 or 3 times as hard to do 1080P gaming...
VR needs more GPU power to do the same thing that ordinary display devices could achieve... For 1080P graphics, what happens between the HMD and the GPU is that the latter actually needs to render two almost-1080P frames, and overlap them to produce one single 1080P frame in stereoscopic 3D. On top of that, the HMD needs to maintain a refreshing rate of 90hz (or as close to that as possible) to reduce motion sickness, whereas in ordinary games 30 to 60 frames per seconds would suffice.
Basically it means your GPU will work 2 or 3 times as hard to do 1080P gaming...
Oh I know, I'm totally aware of the powerhouse needed for VR gaming. I was just surprised that I couldn't even play the most basic applications with a 870M.
2160x1200p90 is 233 million pixels per second, vs 1920x1080p60's 124 million. Sure, that's almost double the pixels per second, but I figured very low-demand games would still survive. Boy was I wrong. 🙂
You should be able to run basic stuff on that 870m. I'm betting it's more complicated than just power.
Cyber described a situation where laptops have added latency and issues because their external HDMI ports are bound directly to the iGPU. Even though the dGPU can render to that port, it does it through the iGPU.
I suspect that is more likely to be the case. Surely I wouldn't expect awesome performance, but what you describe is really quite suspicious.
You should be able to run basic stuff on that 870m. I'm betting it's more complicated than just power.
Cyber described a situation where laptops have added latency and issues because their external HDMI ports are bound directly to the iGPU. Even though the dGPU can render to that port, it does it through the iGPU.
I suspect that is more likely to be the case. Surely I wouldn't expect awesome performance, but what you describe is really quite suspicious.
You could be right, because while the 870m isnt exactly a powerhouse, I was expecting at least the Oculus Home screen to be "playable". (For reference, it can play Wolfenstein The New Order on max!) 🙂
Of course, the only way to know for sure is to somehow get an 870m installed in a desktop computer, and that's not exactly possible. I wonder if we have any VR guys here with similar-speed desktop equivelent cards? I somehow doubt it, since anyone with $600+Tax/Shipping to throw at an HMD no doubt has at least a mid-high range desktop card that would blow a 870m out of the water.
someone may have a second gaming desktop sitting around though I guess. 😉
