Stormlands - performance on RTX 2080 Super

[loui100]

Hi,
I'm having problems getting Stormlands to play smoothly even on Medium settings (turning off ASW helps a lot, but it still rarely goes beyond 60 fps). My setup is RTX 2080 Super used in an eGPU with the 16-inch Macbook Pro (i9 processor). I've read the v12 update introduced big performance loss in Oculus and I was wondering whether that's the problem, or if it's my setup (eGPU or processor) causing such a huge bottleneck? Because surely with Nvidia's second fastest GPU, I should be able to play Stormlands smoothly on at least medium to high settings (even after taking into account the 8-10% performance loss due to eGPU, which I made up for with overclocking anyway). Can people with similar setups share their experience playing Stormlands currently? FYI I'm using Oculus Quest so I can't roll back to the 1.43 update ;/

[RuneSR2]

If you have v12 stuttering, it should affect all apps and games (I think). 

Stormland may be easy. Try to deactivate Real Time Shadows. You'll still get nice dynamic shadows. 

Problem solved? 

I use Ultra settings (all settings maxed), super sampling 2.0 (CV1) - and I use asw - but I've deactivated real time shadows. Stormland plays like a charm (granted I don't swim in solid 90 fps moments, but it does not matter due to asw - it feels like 90 fps). 

[RuneSR2]

Just saw that RTX 2080 Mobile seems significantly slower than my GTX 1080:

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2080-Mobile-Max-Q-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1080/m704710vs3603

Here it seems that eGPU may lower your speed compared to the desktop model:

https://www.techspot.com/review/1575-external-gpu-gtx-1080-8th-gen-ultraportables/page4.html

"A second major factor, the Thunderbolt 3 interface doesn’t deliver quite enough bandwidth to the GPU. Even with a four-lane Thunderbolt 3 setup providing PCIe 3.0 x4, stuttering is present in some games that can’t be attributed to extreme CPU loads or memory allocation issues. Granted, the number of games that stutter is less with the faster ultraportable CPU, but a game like The Witcher 3, for example, still experiences performance hitches when the CPU is only at 60% load and memory allocation is well below the limits of the system."

[loui100]

RuneSR2 said:

Just saw that RTX 2080 Mobile seems significantly slower than my GTX 1080:


Is eGPU same speed as the desktop model?

I'm using a desktop RTX 2080 SUPER, it's not a mobile card, just a desktop one used in an eGPU. There's some speed reduction to be expected when using eGPU but with OC I reach similar benchmark results to the "vanilla" settings in desktop computers. And RTX 2080 Super is 23% faster than 1080 according to that link, and yet I'm miles away from your performance in Stormlands. My experience was that when I played the game with ASW, it was constantly kicking in and stuttering and actually more nauseating than without ASW. Turning off ASW helped greatly, but I'm still rarely hitting the target 72 FPS (I'm on Oculus Quest), and that's with Real Time Shadows and Volumetric Fog off, and the rest on High. The game is still playable but not what I would expect from this GPU. I have zero problems in non-VR games (Jedi Fallen Order on Epic 1440p plays at a buttery smooth 60 fps) and Steam VR games seem to work OK (though only got to try Boneworks) so I'm hoping this is Oculus being buggy. It's annoying at any rate...

EDIT: Just saw you updated your post with info about eGPU reducing speed. You are right, it's not the perfect setup and some would say a waste of money as I could get a desktop PC, but an eGPU is somewhat cleaner for me. It still shouldn't reduce performance so much, just about 10%. I would check out Asthgar's Wrath to see if it also tanks so badly, but I've already spent so much on VR games this January and Saints and Sinners is coming out next week 😮 

[RuneSR2]

loui100 said:

RuneSR2 said:

Just saw that RTX 2080 Mobile seems significantly slower than my GTX 1080:


Is eGPU same speed as the desktop model?

I'm using a desktop RTX 2080 SUPER, it's not a mobile card, just a desktop one used in an eGPU. There's some speed reduction to be expected when using eGPU but with OC I reach similar benchmark results to the "vanilla" settings in desktop computers. And RTX 2080 Super is 23% faster than 1080 according to that link, and yet I'm miles away from your performance in Stormlands. My experience was that when I played the game with ASW, it was constantly kicking in and stuttering and actually more nauseating than without ASW. Turning off ASW helped greatly, but I'm still rarely hitting the target 72 FPS (I'm on Oculus Quest), and that's with Real Time Shadows and Volumetric Fog off, and the rest on High. The game is still playable but not what I would expect from this GPU. I have zero problems in non-VR games (Jedi Fallen Order on Epic 1440p plays at a buttery smooth 60 fps) and Steam VR games seem to work OK (though only got to try Boneworks) so I'm hoping this is Oculus being buggy. It's annoying at any rate...

Stormland is probably your worst case-scenario of a VR game, meaning it's one of the most demanding VR games you can find. With my settings I rarely get 90 fps, but thanks to asw 2.0 I don't perceive any stuttering - but of course I can see the asw and lack of real fps when I move my hands/arms quickly. 

If you don't get solid 72 fps, you may be down to 36 fps, which may not be a good experience, especially if asw does not work optimally. Oculus Link for Quest is still quite new, maybe the beta software is to blame for the performance... You could try to make a post on Oculus Reddit and see if anyone has ideas beyond reducing settings. 

[loui100]

RuneSR2 said:

loui100 said:

RuneSR2 said:

Just saw that RTX 2080 Mobile seems significantly slower than my GTX 1080:


Is eGPU same speed as the desktop model?

I'm using a desktop RTX 2080 SUPER, it's not a mobile card, just a desktop one used in an eGPU. There's some speed reduction to be expected when using eGPU but with OC I reach similar benchmark results to the "vanilla" settings in desktop computers. And RTX 2080 Super is 23% faster than 1080 according to that link, and yet I'm miles away from your performance in Stormlands. My experience was that when I played the game with ASW, it was constantly kicking in and stuttering and actually more nauseating than without ASW. Turning off ASW helped greatly, but I'm still rarely hitting the target 72 FPS (I'm on Oculus Quest), and that's with Real Time Shadows and Volumetric Fog off, and the rest on High. The game is still playable but not what I would expect from this GPU. I have zero problems in non-VR games (Jedi Fallen Order on Epic 1440p plays at a buttery smooth 60 fps) and Steam VR games seem to work OK (though only got to try Boneworks) so I'm hoping this is Oculus being buggy. It's annoying at any rate...

Stormland is probably your worst case-scenario of a VR game, meaning it's one of the most demanding VR games you can find. With my settings I rarely get 90 fps, but thanks to asw 2.0 I don't perceive any stuttering - but of course I can see the asw and lack of real fps when I move my hands/arms quickly. 

If you don't get solid 72 fps, you may be down to 36 fps, which may not be a good experience, especially if asw does not work optimally. Oculus Link for Quest is still quite new, maybe the beta software is to blame for the performance... You could try to make a post on Oculus Reddit and see if anyone has ideas beyond reducing settings. 

Yeah, Stormlands may be a bit of a trial by fire. In a sense, I'm paying the early adopter penalty on all fronts: eGPU (still an early technology in a sense), Oculus Link/Quest, VR itself... Oculus keeps releasing updates via PTC that supposedly fix some performance issues, but sadly I can't use those until they release the equivalent update for the Oculus Quest. Hopefully they will fix the stability soon...

[SkScotchegg]

That's strange because I have a standard RTX 2080 with an old intel i5 4690k and I run Stormland fine on my Rift S.

The only demanding games that struggles out of the 100+ VR games I've tried is Asgard's Wrath, it's playable but I can feel the fps hit.

But yeah Stormland is fine for me and look how old my CPU is! lol

[loui100]

SkScotchegg said:

That's strange because I have a standard RTX 2080 with an old intel i5 4690k and I run Stormland fine on my Rift S.

The only demanding games that struggles out of the 100+ VR games I've tried is Asgard's Wrath, it's playable but I can feel the fps hit.

But yeah Stormland is fine for me and look how old my CPU is! lol

Question, though: which version of Oculus software are you using? Are you signed up for the PTC beta channel thing? Are you on v13 now? Maybe v12 (which I'm stuck with cause of Oculus Quest) is the issue

[BeastyBaiter]

eGPU's are well known to massively drop performance. 10% is not a realistic loss, I have no personal experience but those I trust who have tested it show 30% in the absolute best case scenarios and often over 50%. You basically bought a $1000 RTX 1660 Ti. eGPU's have their uses but generally are not a good idea.

[loui100]

BeastyBaiter said:

eGPU's are well known to massively drop performance. 10% is not a realistic loss, I have no personal experience but those I trust who have tested it show 30% in the absolute best case scenarios and often over 50%. You basically bought a $1000 RTX 1660 Ti. eGPU's have their uses but generally are not a good idea.

I'm not sure where you got those statistics. My experience anywhere outside some Oculus games has been roughly 5-10%. I get 50-60 fps on max settings in 4K in games like Jedi Fallen Order and Battlefield 5 (Raytracing on), which is pretty much on par with what this card should be getting, give or take a few fps. So I wouldn't say I bought a 1000 dollar 1660 Ti, and I paid 680 pounds for it, not 1000 dollars. Mind you, eGPUs used to lose way more performance before Thunderbolt 3. It may be you talked to someone who only has experience with Thunderbolt 2 eGPUs. From my perspective, after OC the difference is pretty much non-existent. Though Stormland still works like shit lol. But Oculus is apparently close to fixing the frame drops.