So I cracked - bought AMD RX 6900XT

[TED]

I finally cracked after watching the 3080 I ordered last November get more and more delayed and uncertain, I snagged an RX6900XT. I still have my 3080 on order at a good price and won't cancel, but I wanted to finally retire my 2060 for VR (g2) . I have an AMD 5950 CPU and 64gb 3.6ghz RAM so I really hope this is finally going to be something I can get some food vr performance and settings out of. 

Anyone else using 6900xt care to share any tips and settings or anything that I should be aware of to get going? It should arrive in a couple of days. If its good and works well i will probably sell the 3080 unopened when it eventually comes. 

[FETUS]

I have the 6900XT and can try to get you up to speed. I'm using it with a 5800X and 5900X with G2 as well.

 

 

 

 

[TED]

3 hours ago, FETUS said:

I have the 6900XT and can try to get you up to speed. I'm using it with a 5800X and 5900X with G2 as well.

 

 

 

 

Awesome. Thanks very much. I'll let you know when I get it later on in the week. 

What are your initial impressions and feelings about using all AMD setup? How has your experience been with it, especially with the the g2? 

[Hartsblade]

I'm running a 5800x with a 6900xt as well, but I have the Index so ymmv.

 

Here are my settings. Please note that for me turning "Motion Smoothing" OFF removed a large amount of lag spikes in both CPU and GPU frame times. That may not be the same for the G2.

 

[TED]

Thanks very much for this. That really helps. I should be receiving it now Thursday evening when I get back from work, so hopefully now I have some good starting point from which I can refer to and tweak. 

[Hartsblade]

My pleasure. If anything it should be a good starting place.

 

Also, I've got PBO2 and Power Curve Optimizer turned on in the BIOS with a slight undervolt for the 5800x. 

[Tek]

I have a 6900xt (3700X, X570 mobo and 32GB 3200Ram). I played around a lot with settings and have a stable OC on my GPU at 2640MHz. My headset is a ViVE Cosmos Elite. I found the secret to great frames and graphis was to turn down the PD in DCS all the way to minimum and push the SteamVR SS to 500%.  I get a smooth 45Fps low down in most areas but it drops down to about 30 over places like Homs in the Syria Map.

[TED]

On 8/11/2021 at 11:45 AM, Tek said:

I have a 6900xt (3700X, X570 mobo and 32GB 3200Ram). I played around a lot with settings and have a stable OC on my GPU at 2640MHz. My headset is a ViVE Cosmos Elite. I found the secret to great frames and graphis was to turn down the PD in DCS all the way to minimum and push the SteamVR SS to 500%.  I get a smooth 45Fps low down in most areas but it drops down to about 30 over places like Homs in the Syria Map.

Excellent. Thank you as well. Interesting to see many different approaches. I've also read a lot of people recommend to switch off motion smoothing. Hopefully this evening I'll get to try it out. I think I've got some really useful tips here of some of the major areas to focus on to get going. You've all probably saved me hours and hours of fiddling around and cursing. If I can get those kind of results I'll be more than happy. 

[TED]

I got back from work last night and collected the 6900xt. Quick install and fired it up. After an initial bit of stupidity, where I'd forgotten to remove all the nvidia stuff, I got it going. I tried a few settings and used Hartsblade recommendations. Fired up dcs and harrier in PG with a load of weather and WOW! I never realised dcs could look that good in vr. No stutters, smooth as butter and just a wonderful experience. It was very late as I knew I wouldn't sleep until I'd got it working so at 2am I had to call it a day. I realised my PSU is only 650w so probably today I need to fix that and throw in an 850w.

Hige thanks for your tips guys. Helped me out no end and allowed me to get up and running very quickly in totally unknown terrain. 

[Hartsblade]

Awesome, glad to help.

[TED]

It looked absolutely awesome right up until the moment I changed my psu and forgot to swap out the cable to the sata ssd! 
 

Teds top tip - ALWAYS use ALL the cables provided when installing a new psu. It took me about 24 hours to work out why my pc wasn’t starting. When I eventually did, I found out my ssd was fried and that was the ssd with 1tb of dcs and MSFS all gone. I installed a new one and now waiting for the download to finish. Killing the time with a bottle of wine so I’m sure it’s gonna look even better when I get back on. No motion smoothing needed that’s for sure. 

@Hartsbladei see you went with all application msaa and anti aliasing. Did you find this to be a big issue with amd controlled msaa.?

[Hartsblade]

12 minutes ago, TED said:

@Hartsbladei see you went with all application msaa and anti aliasing. Did you find this to be a big issue with amd controlled msaa.?

I tried it but didn't notice any real benefit. I'm not running any AA at all really. It's a matter of whether the jagglies a really an issue visually for you. For me, visually I don't really notice them unless I'm looking for them. Try out the different options and see which fits you best.

 

Sorry to hear about your SSD.

[TED]

I got it revived and another ssd in and working. I did a bit of testing, basically maxing out as much as I i can with weather, clouds shadows, resolution at 200% with G2 and flying ka50 low from Beirut over the hills. It looked absolutely amazing. Steady at 30fps low down in what is about as demanding an environment for a GPU as dcs has. I played about a bit, but hartsblades settings seem to be pretty much on the money. I will experiment with a bit of an overclock and a few other things. I get some stutters low over the cities but nothing at all I can't live with. The frame rates stay around 30 so I'm not sure what it is that stutters yet. Overall I'm absolutely thrilled with the 6900.

Edited August 14, 2021 by TED

[TED]

Update to add that fps is significantly better than 30. My 200% was of course not the same and lower it to 50% gives something closer to g2 native resolution of 2160x2160 per eye, and 90% 3000x2932. A little over native resolution seems to be better giving fps in 60s low level. 

All very confusing with resolution numbers. 

[Jarhead0331]

I was in the same boat as you…built a new rig with a 3080 and after 60 days, I got sick of waiting for a 3080, so I switched to a 6900xt. After having 2 cards DOA, I finally got one that works and I’ve been happy. My first AMD set-up in over 20 years.

 

My approach is totally different to some of the suggestions above. 
 

I’m using the Open VR FSR mod and have Steam VR global resolution set to 36% and per application setting set to 100%. I’ve bumped PD to 1.5 to compensate for image degradation caused by the open VR file and I get steady FPS in the 50s and 60s. I’m currently using a Pimax 8kx, but also run a G2.

Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900X 3.7GHz 12-Core
Motherboard: MSI B550-A PRO - ATX
Memory: G.SKILL Z Trident Total 64 GB Dual Channel Memory
Graphics Card:AMD Radeon™ RX 6900 XT, 16GB of dedicated GDDR6 
Operating System Storage: 1TB Patriot P300 PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe

DCS storage: WD BLACK SN850 NVMe M.2 2280 2TB PCI-Express 4.0 x4 3D NAND w/ Heatsink.
CPU Liquid Cooling: CLX Quench 240 Closed Liquid Cooler
Secondary Storage: 4TB 3.5in Seagate Barracuda HDD
Chassis Selection: Set Eclipse P400S Mid Tower Black/Red
Chassis Fans: CLX Red Ring Fan
Power Supply: EVGA 850 B3 - 80+ Bronze 850W

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Jarhead0331

[TED]

Yes there are just so many variables. I have the steam vr res set to around 2800x2600 (something like that), then used all the msaa from amd. All switched off in dcs, with just some antisopotric filter. My test mission out of Beirut with low sun, clouds, shadows and hight settings, I am now getting steady 60fps over the trees and hills and 45-47 lownover central Beirut and all very smooth, even looking out the side. I'm very impressed. It seems like there are many different ways to get the results. 

The only thing I need to see if I can tweak out is the jagged edges. Not sure yet if it's possible. It's not a huge issue but would be nice to improve it. 

[Hartsblade]

Got to do a little flying last night and noticed that Wednesday's beta update looks to have changed something performance wise.

 

While performance is roughly the same, I'm seeing spikes in CPU frame times that were not there before and GPU frame times seem to have increased. Especially down low over high density population centers.

[TED]

Gotta love dcs dropping updates! Its a constant arms race against the machine. 

Out of interest what is your thinking with undervolting the GPU? I'm experimenting with different settings and currently running a gpu overclock done through adrenaline, as well as slight OC on the cpu in bios. Performance is pretty dsmbed good now. Not sure if I noticed much difference between undervolt and OC but I'll have to look closer. 

[Hartsblade]

I am already using the undervolt preset in Adrenaline. It seems that undervolting is giving the best performance boost.

 

I've got PBO2 turned on in the bios with a -10 (undervolt) performance curve for my 5800x as well as having Smart Accesd Memory turned on.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Hartsblade

[TED]

15 hours ago, Hartsblade said:

Got to do a little flying last night and noticed that Wednesday's beta update looks to have changed something performance wise.

 

While performance is roughly the same, I'm seeing spikes in CPU frame times that were not there before and GPU frame times seem to have increased. Especially down low over high density population centers.

Have you updated your BIOS recently? I checked mine a couple days ago and was a couple of new firmwares since i last did it. A quick download, reboot with the new update via usb and it may help. After i did mine i noticed some slight improvements in the general efficiency of my machine. 

 

[Hartsblade]

1 hour ago, TED said:

Have you updated your BIOS recently? I checked mine a couple days ago and was a couple of new firmwares since i last did it. A quick download, reboot with the new update via usb and it may help. After i did mine i noticed some slight improvements in the general efficiency of my machine. 

 

That's kinda funny, I just updated my bios earlier on Saturday. I was starting to wonder if that might have contributed to it...

[TED]

Could be the bios update. It will have reset your overclock and any other settings. Possibly you missed one when you reloaded it? I had to reselect for example the setting for Re-size bar had been disabled when i updated the bios, meaning SAM wasnt activated. There was a few other things as well that nearly caught me out with my overclock. All had to be re-done.

Edited August 16, 2021 by TED

[Hartsblade]

1 hour ago, TED said:

Could be the bios update. It will have reset your overclock and any other settings. Possibly you missed one when you reloaded it? I had to reselect for example the eating for Re-size bar had been disabled when i updated the bios, meaning SAM wasnt activated. There was a few other things as well that nearly caught me out with my overclock. All had to be re-done.

I'll double check, but pretty sure I restored all of my settings.

[Hunter Joker]

On 8/10/2021 at 10:13 AM, FETUS said:

I have the 6900XT and can try to get you up to speed. I'm using it with a 5800X and 5900X with G2 as well.

 

 

 

 

Hi, I have a 5600X with a 6900XT and having  some problems in getting performance under the G2 (arrived 3 days ago). In 2d I can cracnk up more than 110fps in The Channel SP with all DCS settings maxed and 60/80 on MP servers.
But in VR I'm stucked at 45fps with a lot of reprojection time (48%).

I follow some guides online but I still have problems, it seems for some reason my 6900XT didn't go...probably a settings problem.
And then we come...I'm totally noob and so I didn't know anything about:

- Windoews Mixed Reality

- SteamVR

-SteamVR for WMR

- DCS settings VR

So my question/prey....could You post there all the settings for every part of the puzzle? I'm asking beacuse I'm so frustrated that I'm start thinking to resend the Reverb G2 back and come back to Trackir and 2d...

 

Thx.

Bye.

 

[Topo]

Your resolution in SteamVR settings?