Headwarp

"Between 2002 and 2005, five different TrackIR camera models were released with steadily improving specifications." <- wiki quote TrackIR has had 17 years to mature. How many steam users are using trackIR and how many game devs do you see implementing it in the future? How many games have you played that utilize it since 2002. TrackIR is also not without it's faults.. adjusting curves which can be thrown off if you change the position of the camera, many people report having to lock to 60fps to eliminate stutters in DCS due to it. In another sim it stutters when mixed with a FFB joystick. Troubles I've not encountered in VR. Beyond the initial setup of VR, after finding the right supersampling/pixel density setting as well as in game settings that you're generally going to set with a monitor anyway, and in WMR maybe editing 4 backslashes out of a .cfg file, it's really just a matter of putting the headset on and going. Shoot let's talk about when 16:9 first emerged and how many .exe files I had to hex edit to support the resolution, and how many people who didn't want to go out and by a new monitor were actually trying to talk devs out of supporting said resolution. Now something I deal with at 3440x1440 with some devs, although not often because PC devs develop PC titles that support various methods of display and input. Peoples budgets are also different, and some folks might already have a rig capable of utilizing VR. Check out SVSMokey's non K i5 6500 @3.2ghz and a 1070, loving his rift. Tons of pancake users out there already with a 1080Ti or better on an overclocked cpu. I was playing dcs in VR on this rig with a 980Ti, albeit comprising with low textures and the native headset resolution. Anyway..what keeps you away is up to you and no foul or judgement to you for that. but there's no aspect of operating windows that wasn't somehow knowledge acquired over time.. personally having acquired that knowledge, initial setup from a fresh install of windows and dcs, takes about 5-10 minutes for me to be flying in VR. That's less time than I spend binding controls. It took a little tuning the first time around to get there, but, I can't think of a game I haven't had to adjust settings for. Having done that once, now i simply click the openbeta shortcut and presto, I'm in VR ready to connect to MP and start flying. Hardware needs to be upgraded from time to time. Anyone building or upgrading a PC within the last year or 3 that isn't buying the absolute bottom of the barrel hardware could probably fly a few sorties in a VR environment. Anybody upgrading in the future should be more than capable. This has been PC gaming throughout the entirety of my lifetime. It costs $$$ and has a shelf life. Bottom of the barrel hardware is kind of rare on these forums, compared to those of us who chase high-end hardware (even monitor users) , or even mid-range users. Although some of us get it when people are trying to do their best with a budget. It's neither for me or you to decide who buys what. But I tend to feel that if you can learn how to properly maintain and use a PC you can pretty quickly learn how to setup VR. Anyway.. I'm sticking with my final answer - If you have the money to blow, have fun. If you don't like it send it back. It will let you know what you want better than any person on a forum could describe for you. I imagine a VR headset would be easier to find from a retailer with a full return policy than a TIR unit. In the US I heart Best Buy for this convenience.

About 9 of us from a group of guys I fly with last night got together. Four of those people weren't wearing some type of VR headset. But let's also look at another topic of this thread.. TrackIR. Outside of Arma3, this device has mostly been utilized in racing sims, flight sims, and space sims... you know the same things making the best use of VR headsets.. but it's still a topic in this thread, not to mention the amount of modded PS Eye camera's out there, as well as alternatives like ED Tracker. AAA Game devs don't support TrackIR either. How big of a percentage of steam users do you think use TrackIR? And does that really reflect the entire population of trackIR users when most of that use is likely for flight sims that have a market outside of steam? How many steam users in total play hardcore flight sims like DCS World? Answer to the OP - if you're not prone to motion sickness and can afford the hardware for a VR flight experience.. you'll probably love it like almost every one of us at some point loved TrackIR before hand, despite any drawbacks. Just from my personal experience, like trackIR, it becomes a must have when it comes to simming once you've seen how it works with most people who seem to try it, and get beyond the initial setup. TrackIR is suddenly simming from a hotel room on a laptop with an xbox controller during the evening hours of a business trip because it's "Packing light." So frankly.. the argument I'm seeing against VR can also be said for TrackIR.. and a brand new TrackIR 5 unit still costs $150+ USD, where a lenovo explorer WMR headset without controllers can be had new for $99 usd. Either is better than neither. VR puts you in the cockpit. If you aren't sure, buy from a retailer with an excellent return policy. At that pricepoint, slightly more than the full price of the Hornet module, it's almost silly not to at least try it. Just keep in mind it won't have Odyssey, Vive Pro or Pimax resolution. The soothesaying is kind of laughable. DCS, as well as other flight sims and racing sims are committed to VR. I can't speak for occulus or valve but members of the WMR development team can be seen addressing the steam forums when problems are encountered showing a desire to improve upon what they've started. This debate happens with pretty much every piece of technology that gets released like people are offended at the thought of others spending money. If you got the dough to blow have fun, if you end up liking it you did your part in its continued survival. Otherwise send it back. Hardware and software used drive innovation in this market before everything became about big money.

It was only limited to 4k res in FFXIV, and I'm guesing that mostly is to due with the amount of time required to train the neural network, and also wanting to get a public test base asap. Perhaps also a state of not knowing the future of the game as the head guy for FFXIV resigned. 3dMark Port royal allows for testing RT and DLSS at 1920x1080, 2560x1440, and 4k. Albeit, framerates were low as crap @4k due to the amount of ray tracing. like 15-17fps without dlss to 30-35fps with dlss. With the way it worked in FFXIV, allowing for enabling it at 5160x2160, I'm quite certain as long as it's implemented in a game @2560x1440 it will work for me at 3440x1440. 2560x1440 DLSS results, bare in mind lots of raytracing going on in the benchmark with some lovely shadows and reflections. I don't think most game devs will take it this far nor do you have to have RT enabled to use DLSS outside of this benchmark, but almost 50% improvement at 2560x1440. Frankly, the 2060 being on par with the GTX 1080, 2070 and up seems like too much for anything below 2560x1440, at least in dx11 or earlier. Nvidia has mentioned VR in regards to DLSS in interviews but just briefly so I'm inclined to think they'll eventually get to a point where they can offer it over a broader range of resolutions to support the various headsets and supersampling levels. We'll just have to wait and see. And there's the plus of NGX being able to work with all versions of directx and likely vulkan. But as it stands, it's still in the early stages. It's going to be the game developers that make or break the tech. I didn't feel a hint of pushiness btw so no foul there. I've just been keeping my eye on DLSS since before I bought my card, and it's grown into excitement overall for the future of the NGX SDK. ;) I could live without raytracing, but I want to see where machine learning can take us in gaming. *edit* just an afterthought - I'm not saying a 20 series card should be in everyone's immediate future, I don't tell people what to buy as much as share personal experience regarding options. Throughout 2019 and a bit onward, performance measured by traditional methods should be adequate.. and as you say - AMD is working on their counter to AI enhanced graphics. We're just getting our first tastes throughout 2019.

Frankly, I love FFB for helos in DCS, for the nature of force trim on the cyclic. But don't think it's necessary for the collective. I will say the purchase of an MSFFB2 from ebay immediately improved my ability to fly the Huey, Ka-50, and Mi-8. The effort to transition to hover felt so much easier. The gazelle's force trim seems a bit janky, trimming to artificial horizon rather than where you leave the stick. Down side is you can't add curves to an FFB stick or it throws off trimmed positions, so it can feel rather touchy. Personally I've trained myself to be extremely gentle in that regard. In the long run though, it's much easier to utilize than the return to center nature of using a non-ffb stick. I also love it for prop planes, as they tend to not require as many buttons as the rest of the aircraft featured in DCS, and it's nice to be able to feel things like airspeed and trim position. There are DIY methods of simulating force trim that doesn't include an FFB stick but rather a hydraulic system to hold the new center.. although that takes more knowhow than I have. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826280081&Description=throttle&cm_re=throttle-_-26-280-081-_-Product this guy right here is prob all you need if you're just looking for a collective and don't already own some kind of throttle. Imo don't use curves as it throws off the effect of a measured distance of throttle movement as you get away from the center, where if it's linear, half an inch of movement will feel familiar throughout the axis. I invert my WH throttle so pull is ascend, and push is descend. The longer the throw of said throttle unit, the less touchy it will feel. If help with immersion factor is needed.. imagine the Gazelle collective when you grip your throttle

Lol I would like it if it did matter in DCS. I mean I get ED's stance on proprietary tech and all but this is one that offers a significant performance increase at least to RTX users.. and DLSS is not limited to directx afaict based on games touted to implement it, also doesn't stop anyone from still using their non RTX cards, although I have a feeling it would lead to quite a few people buying 20 series cards for the sim. I doubt tensor cores will be going away on nvidia gpu's in the future as well. There could well be a chance that as tensors gain capabilities for parts of the rendering pipeline that allows for being slightly less reliant on streaming processors, and shove more RT and Tensor cores on a die. But that's just speculation on my part. That's not a knock on AMD.. competition is good in a free market, and it's good they're looking into DirectML. AI enhanced graphics and gaming sounds pretty awesome to me, and much like the future. Deep Learning AI can drive a car. I wonder how well it could fly a virtual aircraft. ;) Not to mention AI driven cheat protection and other goodies purported for the NGX SDK. Anyway.. the Radeon VII is definitely impressive... and hopefully a sign that AMD plans to keep nvidia on it's toes.

BFV is getting DLSS "soon" according to the latest nvidia driver news. Which will allow for better performance with and without raytracing currently using an RTX card. LIkely to be limited to 1440p and 4K. But still.. it gives a considerable edge to the RTX cards in the title. 2070 will potentially outperform a 1080Ti with the aid of DLSS. I was also using dx12 in BFV last night, and it seems they've fixed some issues with it. I had to adjust my resolution to 5160x2160 to experience DLSS in FFXIV on my 21:9 but.. it looked pretty good and was actually playable around 55fps and often above 60fps at that resolution.. which says good things to me about DLSS. Hopefully they find a way to make this work across a broader range of resolutions to utilize it in VR titles. FFXIV was basically nvidia's first wide scale test of DLSS. I anticipate 1440p support with BFV. Frankly raytracing is hard to notice in the game as they've toned it down to increase performance, and you're generally too busy to stand around looking at reflections. but with dlss I'll probably be able to get away with it even @ 3440x1440. As it stands I have to lower my resolution to about 75% to keep my 100fps minimum with DXR enabled. DLSS is by far the feature I've been most excited for with the RTX series, as well as what we may see over the next period of years with the NGX sdk. Still think ED should be keeping an eye on the tech given the performance hit from MSAA. NGX being the SDK that deals with tensor core operations, this is going to be where this new technology shines. DLSS is just feature #1. I mean the value of even the 2060 goes up in titles that will support this feature, which is already competing with a 1080 @$350USD https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-games-at-ces-2019/ I may have to purchase a copy of 3Dmark to see if I run into any resolution restrictions with DLSS. 3dmark is like $5 right now >.< Could give me info I don't have yet regarding DLSS. If I do I'll post my findings. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/nvidia-dlss-3dmark-port-royal-benchmark/

shouldn't be any problem with more than one input device unless you're trying to use two of the same device, at which point it may confuse the two. like SVgamer72 said just unbind the x52 stick axes, or the game will get confused and fight your inputs. Keeping both plugged in will be a good thing anyway if you decide there are certain aircraft you appreciate having more buttons in, plugging in an FFB stick while the game is running causes the msffb2 to only have center forces ime. I use my WH stick for most jets and go with FFB for prop aircraft and helos.. love that force trim.

^^ I held out for a higher resolution headset because of talk of visiblity.. Critique of my odyssey? I want external sensors/camera so the controller tracking is on par with the rift and the vive. Not important for dcs Sweet spot is small but.. not hard to negotiate.. probably the heaviest headset out there. At times not the most comfortable thing in the world..other times it doesnt bother me at all. Image can't be as crisp and clear as a monitor, and it's harder to identify things.. and daggumit i need more peripheral vision for checking 6 and I don't have the owl's neck that I did with TrackIR. In my opinion VR games out there aren't living up to the potential of the market, but for a seated simming experience? Flight and racing sims I think are a perfect market for VR. For me personally, and just about anybody I know who has adopted a VR headset for simming, the pros seem to outweigh the cons. I have a friend who claimed not to have the budget for a new pc. Then he found the lenovo explorer at what is a low price in his region of the world. Not long after he buys himself an 8600k and a used 1080Ti, and when he isn't on his laptop out of town if he's simming he's in his lenovo. I still play games that have no VR support.. but when I put on the headset the first time it was pretty much mind blown.. when I hopped into my first virtual cockpit it was like mind double blown. Words don't do it justice. My friends in VR told me for like a year how awesome it was and i'm like "Nah nah..resolution nah".. then i put one on and im like "Ok i get it now guys". Even Wags has as VR headset at this point and ED sounds committed to improving the VR experience. I've seen steam threads where WMR devs have been in contact with ED to make things work, mentions of ED talking with someone making "VR gloves" and being in touch with Pimax. I'm not saying it's for everybody. But gloss over the issues? I think i've covered every "issue" i've had in this thread and others as well personally. Count me in as someone who was skeptical, until I put on the headset and now it's the only way I fly.

When you live in a city where 1Gb up/down is the standard and hear it's not normal :cry: J/k.. I could have 10Gbit up/down for a few hundred USD a month.. so if any server admins are looking for rental space.. *cough*

If you're going to use process lasso be sure after running any game executable for the first time after installing PLasso to right click the executable in the process lasso window and "Exclude from Probalance" Probalance tries to keep processes in check that it thinks are using more CPU than it should. You don't want it messing with dcs.exe or your other games. Frankly.. i don't remember this being a feature the first time I installed process lasso.. Since it was added I've made sure to exclude every game I run on my system, as well as any VR software. There's also a way to add .exe files to the list of programs excluded from problance somewhere within the options if you don't want to alt tab out of your game to find it in the list of programs running in the process lasso window. Other than that the only thing I've seen it recommended on these forums for is to disable logical cores for dx11/dx9/dx10 titles without completely disabling hyper-threading. I don't mind letting probalance keep my background tasks in check.. but I don't think it's really needed and added an extra step for most of our main reasons for using Process Lasso

I have to wonder why it was tested on a 5960x @4.2ghz. Some heavy bottlenecking there @ 2560x1440 and lower resolution in at least a couple of the dx11 titles. Still.. thing looks like a good contender @ $700

Hah sorry man I wasn't attempting to insult your intelligence or anything. Thanks for the photo on my pro and good luck with your thermal solution. My comments were mostly just personal measures I've adopted in my pc builds and maintenance. Didn't mean to imply intel coolers wont do their job. Simply that aftermarket coolers tend to have a pretty significant drop in temps. Which does allow some headroom for faster clockspeeds, and extra performance is always nice. The advice of 85C or lower is just more "erring on the side of caution", leaves a little room for shifts in ambient temps or perhaps some dust on a cooler, as well as offering some peace of mind concerning the overall lifetime of components. So i do now understand you're talking about the transfer of heat from silicon to spreader.. I'm a little curious as whether or not the cpu was delidded before hand or not.. and at the same time my mind just wants to say, if you're going to delid that sucker, throw a better cooler on it at the same time and turn that multiplier up! But I digress lol. You sound like you have a plan.

In commenting on my own statements at what point did I twist your words rather than attempt to explain myself and admit I might have been wrong? I think maybe you're twisting my words. And you're going to tell me what I meant are you? So, when I went to http://www.f-16.net and looked up the pylon arrangement for the F-16 (after your response to my first post in the thread) for a total of 6 a2a missiles and aim-9 and aim-120 showed 1 and 9, 8 and 2, 7 and 3 and the sparrow being limited to 3 and 7 was I missing that there might be dual racks for 8/2 and 3/7 as well for the F-16? I could be missing that factor and would again stand corrected if so, but thats where my comment came from. Not your words. Also.. based on what we can do in DCS, which I mean.. I'm just going based off the memory of fully loading my hornet with spamraams using dual racks shortly after they were implemented in the hornet, maybe it's 12 not 10? Again.. could be wrong. My bad? Frankly, I readily admit to not knowing all there is to know about pylon arrangement for both aircraft by memory. One isn't in the game yet, and the other has features to come and I'm a hand's on kind of guy. But I'm pretty sure air to air is a delivery method, I'm pretty sure air to ground is a delivery method, as well as being pretty sure surface to air is a delivery method for explosive ordinance. In the same post you bolded one setence from, I also said I'm waiting to fly my beloved in MP, in the next stated I'm waiting the data link.. which comes with working IFF and all kinds of information to help me fling a buttload of aim-120. You notice I didn't say I'm waiting for the TGP, or I'm waiting for ground radar. Once I get that data link you wont be able to get me out of the cockpit. So, I don't know. In others terms I already said "Yep.. there's room for error there, you're probably right but i can still carry a bunch of spamraams". I concede. "The Viper carries less" was an erroneous statement.. except when it comes to spamraams, which you're welcome to correct me there if I'm wrong if you'd like. I'm really not all that concerned about having been wrong as you seem to be about being right. Vampyre's quote doesn't take away that the capability is there within DCS World either at this point in time. Would it cause a twitch in your eye if I told you I abuse the paddle switch to disable the g-limiter in non-combat scenarios within the simulator? I'm less concerned about having made an erroneous statement than some accusation of twisting someone elses words like I'm supposed to be caught in some lie rather than having made a simple mistake. If you'd like, you can continue to try and educate me in PM's.. but I think we're off scope from the topic of this thread, and I'm cool with leaving it here as a simple misunderstanding rather than entertain an attack of my character or continue to derail this thread. - So what aircraft in DCS will you always come home to? *nudge nudge.. you know..the topic*

45 fps on a monitor and 45 fps in VR with reprojected frames are completely different sensations. 45fps even on a g-sync monitor can be a bit choppy. 45fps in VR with reprojection feels as smooth as 90fps with slightly distorted images and a bit of aliasing. At times aircraft fly by and it looks like their wings are flapping like a bird on crack. Or in prop planes the gunsight will sometimes look a bit distorted, but performs like butter. In another sim i fly when I hit 90 fps the image clears up as motion reprojection turns off, but the gameplay itself, as far as input lag and performance still feels the same. Sitting in the A-10C in VR you get to see how big and roomy that cockpit actually is. Seat height adjustment required lol. Nothing quite like looking to the right and left and seeing life sized wings, and the sensation of depth perception from the 3d rendering. Leaning forward and looking over the nose is easier than with TIR5, in ww2 aircraft my accuracy with guns and cannons was immediately improved by being able to guage distance better, as well as I had an easier time looking over the nose to see where my tracers were. All the power to people still holding out.. but at least for me, since putting on the headset, it's the only way to "fly". It is more difficult to check my six, as I'm lacking peripheral vision and I'm in a fixed racing seat. But this has just made me more grateful to have wingmen to fly with lol. I don't fly mp solo anymore. In reply to posts about aircraft spotting - back when I was using my 980Ti and had to stick with 1.0 PD and low settings in my odyssey.. it was stupidly easier to spot blurred objects in the sky even 30-40NM away than it ever was on a monitor. Now that I'm on a better gpu running a higher pixel density and high texture settings it's a bit more difficult to spot them. I do wish there was a solution for that made visibility similar regardless of resolution, as I enjoy the visual clarity from higher resolutions in the headset, but miss the ease of spotting targets at 1.0 PD.

I must've picked up the 970 from another thread or someone else's post. could've sworn i double checked before saying so. 1080Ti, 2080, and 2080Ti are all really aimed at 4K gaming, but the 2080Ti is the king of that realm performance wise at the moment. . But the extra gpu power allows for DSR or supersampling if available within a title, which equates about the same to increasing resolution when regarding performance. I wouldn't buy a gpu for DSR or supersampling by any means, but it's a nice perk if you already have the extra gpu power. 5ghz CPU's being a bottleneck is mostly a concern with dx11 titles at 2560x1440 and lower in regards to 1080Ti/2080 or 2080Ti. As far as DCS VR - the difference won't be horribly different with the the current state of the game. But ED Is both working on VR optimization and vulkan.. which could be singing a different story. Then again..who knows what kind of hardware will be out by the time that happens. Start putting that $$ back. Make a decision when the hole burning in your pocket gets too hot.

THe F-16 is limited to 6 a2a missiles, 6 amraams, or 6 aim-9, or whatever combination of both and a maximum of two aim-7.. although you'd probably want the amraam. The Hornet last I checked can carry a total of 10 Aim-120 when setup strictly for a2a I mean.. I wasn't completely right but I"m not completely wrong either. Either aircraft is formidable no matter how you look at it. Bug's still going to be my champion as soona s we get data link...until the viper is developed in DCS. :)

Good to hear. And thanks for pointing me to the f-10 menu and addressing my post! I am not above admitting there's a possibility of myself having overlooked something.

The OP After the suggestion to pair with a Z mobo was made, it sounded like it was coming from a friend. And I'm with you on let's be friends. I agree with the advice on pairing the chip with a board that can make best use of it.. but he'd probably be ok with the b150A if that's what he already has it and doesn't want to spend more money. Seems he already decided on the z170. WHich aint a bad thing.. he can speed that chip up. But I'm calling left field when I see it :P Out there.

I mean.. seems those VRMS are holding up then.

To be fair, the OP kind of put it in a way that could easily be taken as "I've picked out these individual parts for a build. Opinons? " A new in box asrock z170 could be had for $69 on newegg atm, which is less expensive than the only b150 board they have in stock for $87 and at least will let you take advantage of the unlocked multiplyer if you choose to. That being the only suggested change to the build for 1080p isn't by any means causing the build to be "high end" or even to a lot of people expensive lol. it just offers more options. Sensible suggestion. Not one person indicated that build wouldn't be fine for 1080p. Joke's on somebody at least. Hope you enjoy your new build OP. I don't think any foul was intended lol.. I'm just like Huh?

Dont read unless you've played at least a few missions >.< Spoiler below I'll be going further than that later on today. It's not JTAC, afaik jtac will repeat coordinates all you want until you commit. There may be a space bar trigger in missions i haven't gotten to yet, which will probably be all I need hopefully. Thanks for taking the time to respond, and sorry to be a bother if you baltic already for the most part has us covered.

*Looks at thread and sees no mention of 5ghz and 2080 being necessary for this person's 1080p resolution, but criticism hinting at a motherboard that might better support the unlocked multiplier of the K series and net him some inexpensive performance increases, and someone mentioning they themselves run 5ghz and an AMD RX580* So i mean. Do people's personal decisions not involving your money make them jokers or did something else trigger the name calling?

Might be jumping the gun based on my time spent so far, however is there any hope you guys might be able to add the functionality of requesting grid coordinates be repeated? I'm flying in VR, and am unsure what I've done with all my pens. By the time I've got the CDU configured for entering a new waypoint the coordinates and captions are off the screen. My flash card memory failing me would be an unfortunate reason for having to restart a mission. If I'm missing something, do tell. Otherwise, I'd appreciate any consideration for allowing us this one interaction with command.

yet 1080Ti's can only be found used for around the original MSRP. Or unopened listed for outrageous prices, in many cases minus a warranty. It really boils down to personal value. I value going big and not having to think about stuff for awhile. If spending the money for my rig would have caused suffering on mine or someone else's behalf, I'd have compromised a bit. I also won't be considering any upgrades any time soon.. as it's an endless race.. new hardware will be released and developers will keep finding ways to hog those resources. It took me 6 generations of intel to upgrade my CPU, ram and motherboard, which, was the best I could afford at the time. It's not "future proofing" as much as it is having experienced the cycle of software development's response to hardware development. I buy hardware with the intention of using it until it's obsolete. It's also why I haven't spent more than $15 grand on vehicles in my lifetime of which I've owned several. Which, kind of helps with having extra cash for top tier hardware. As well as the decision not to add to the population of this overpopulated planet. Which i only mention, as an example of how not all of us have the same priorities. It's really up to him to decide how much he values his $$ and time. Not everybody walks the same path. And as i mentioned.. i see 97-99% gpu usage in some cases.. perhaps not in others. I'm getting what I paid for. And i use my PC enough to justify the ends. Some people are content with a 1024x768 4:3 screen. Others are still trying to find a solution to 8K gaming. Some people are content with a rift.. others want pimax or StarVR. One size fits all doesn't apply here. 'Tis subjective. I did say in one my responses to the OP that if he's considering a 2080Ti he might want a high resolution monitor to go with it. "Buy the best you can afford" and sometimes even "Hold out for a little extra cash for this over this" is the moral of any opinions I've shared in "i'm considering an ugprade" threads. Afford being whatever doesn't put you or loved ones in financial disaster or massive debts or negatively affect quality of life. . Doing so has worked out well for me personally, where passing up or not holding out for what I really want for something that saves me a buck has at times ended up costing more in the long run, and that's not limited to personal computers. At the same time, people can be content with less. And back to future proofing.. I bought my 8700k when it was achieving the highest clock frequency out of the box that we'd seen to date. I waited another year for a gpu. And the gpu upgrade was mostly due to falling in love with my 21:9 and my 980Ti struggling. It's just a benefit that I also happen to think that when vulkan comes around, I'm more than prepared to enjoy the performance benefits from it. We'll have to see if by then this rig can pull 90fps minimum in DCS VR, it's just not happening with dx11 and today's hardware. For now I'm enjoying the benefit of supersampling for clarity. There's no way I was using the settings I am now in VR with a 900 series gpu. Which replaced a 680 4GB, that I'd probably have used up to the 10 series if again, not for this monitor. The 980Ti was just never enough for some newer titles at this res including DCS World. If I had waited for the 1080Ti to replace the 680, and stuck with 1080P before buying this monitor, I would still be using it rather than thinking about the 20 series at all. Now we have gpu's that target 4k, I'd be willing to bet money I'll use this hardware into 2023 and perhaps beyond unless Intel or AMD suddenly say something along the lines of "Hey this box in my hand is one cpu, with xx physical cores and clocks at 5.9-6.5ghz." And i'm inclined to think we'll see more dx12 or vulkan titles by then as well. It's only within the last few years that dx11 has been the goto api for game developers. Seems kind of familiar to the transition from dx9 to dx10. Dx11 happened so fast dx10 was completely skipped by many devs, but probably more to do with the benefit of a 64-bit api. DX12/Vulkan are still in the early stages of adoption, but have shown to offer significant performance increases as well as changing how we view cpu limitations. To top it off.. my best friend gets a 2500k + 980Ti rig for free because the effort to sell them isn't really worth it. System will still beast at 1080p, perhaps even 2560x1440 OP - whether you end up with a 2080Ti, 2080, maybe even a 2070, it's going to put a grin on your face compared to your 970. If you have a Best Buy near by their return policies are awesome. 14 days to return any product, unlike some retailers where you can only exchange if defective with no refund options. You can order an online only item and return it to a local store. Don't overthink it. Define your budget, whether or not time = saving money for more wiggle room. Do you need everything all at once? Or can you get by to spread the brunt of the investment out over a period of months? Don't make yourself uncomfortable financially. All the choices can get the head spinning. Just avoid the unauthorized retailers lol. The truly hard part is responding to the in-stock notices fast enough to beat them to it and get them at listed prices with full manufacturer's warranties. EVGA warranties are at least transferable afaik. Not all brands allow for that. You might want to call their customer service and double check that thought rather than quote me on that if you want a gpu so bad you'd pay scalper prices. A line I will not cross personally. That black edition you were looking at isn't a bad option. It's not the fastest option but pretty close to it.. and far from the worst. The fact that you were eyeballing it, as well as a new 9th gen build says to me you can arrange the financial responsibilities of said purchase. I'd buy from best buy if possible if you have any doubt as EVGA store has a restocking fee for returns.