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Varjo Aero - Upgrading VR or upgrade my PC?


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Hi friends

Could I please trouble you for some advice?

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading my Rift S to the Varjo Aero. However, I've recently tried the Rift S in DCS again and my VR performance is still dissatisfying (flying Apache gets me 40fps on some SP maps and as low as 20fps on MP servers). So that kind of implies that my system would struggle to get the best out of the aero, if it cant even handle the Rift S. I've tried to optimise DCS settings, but feel I've hit a wall. Id be happy with a consistent 40fps on a nice VR headset.

PC Specs

Asus Z490 Gaming

i7-10700KF running at 4.9G

64G RAM

Asus GTX3080 (mild curve overclock)

nvme drives for OS and DCS

Win10

 

Openvr tells me that my CPU is the usual culprit that runs out of headroom on MP servers. And in SP, i tend to get GPU headroom limits. 

In an ideal world, Id go a faster LGA1700 CPU and a 4080, but that would be a substantially big upgrade cost on top of the aero.

So, I'm not sure what to do here. Either way, the Rift S has to go. If not the Aero, then perhaps the Reverb G2 as an interim?

Would appreciate any advice on the most sensible path forward.

Cheers

 


Edited by skiboss

Discord - Psycho#8075

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First I'd figure if you have bottlenecks (RAM/CPU most likely) and if it's the case, get rid of them.

All (Intel/AMD) CPU controllers have limits that cause them to throttle down under load, I'm not so versed in Intel tech but I'm quite sure they can't manage more than 4 banks/ranks, so if you have 4 X 2 ranks/banks RAM kit, your CPU will throttle down under load anyway, the other thing with Intel is frequency, the higher, the better.

Your CPU is very powerful but it can't manage fast RAM, being limited to DDR4-2933, one possibility if you're planning to compromise to get a better headset is to get a B.die kit, Cl-14, you would be able to run your RAM at least to 3200MHz, they are more expensive but worth the investment plus good value for resell.

Intel: How to Overclock RAM.

G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR

Make sure your motherboard supports the RAM if you chose to go for one, better buy them full kit (X 4), not mixing up two different kits even from the same batch.

If the GSkill isn't supported look for its Corsair equivalent.

B-Die Finder  Find Samsung B-Die DDR 4 memory kits on Amazon, Newegg and many more.

In my humble opinion you already have a fast system (3.80 GHz/5.10 GHz, GTX3080) you just need to optimize it for VR and RAM is one issue you can easily sort out, last opinion before I leave you alone, once the B.die kit is fitted, forget about O.Cing the rest of your system, itself it will run at 3200MHz without O.Cing it and all channels will stay fully opened under load.

VR Headset. Think Pico4 as an alternative.

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/317396-looking-for-a-performance-estimate-for-a-new-computer-build/?do=findComment&comment=5135201


Edited by Thinder
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Win 11Pro. Corsair RM1000X PSU. ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PLUS [WI-FI], AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D, Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X 24GB GDDR6. 32 GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series (4 x 8GB) RAM Cl14 DDR4 3600. Thrustmaster HOTAS WARTHOG Thrustmaster. TWCS Throttle. PICO 4 256GB.

WARNING: Message from AMD: Windows Automatic Update may have replaced their driver by one of their own. Check your drivers.

M-2000C. Mirage F1. F/A-18C Hornet. F-15C. F-5E Tiger II. MiG-29 "Fulcrum".  Avatar: Escadron de Chasse 3/3 Ardennes. Fly like a Maineyak.

 

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@Thinder I can see how the CPU/ram would be the bottle neck with the Quest 2, but if he goes to the Pico 4 or Aero, I'd expect the GPU to hit a wall hard as well. I'm give to understand you need a 40 series card to run the Pico 4 in the virtual desktop mode at all. 

I'm running a VP2, which, while it is not an Aero or Pico, does chew up a 3080 Ti well enough that I'm probably going to upgrade the GPU soon. 

On CPUs, the Zen 4 Vcache chips are coming out in a couple of weeks. Given fluid dynamics is apparently known to love lots of cache, and flight sims' adjacentcy to it, I'd expect those to be very good for DCS. May be worth waiting a couple of weeks to see if they are good, and going for an AM5 build. 

On B-die kits, need to be very careful when hunting for them. I've had at least one kit I got turn out to be a later rev that had changed the chips the Hynix. 

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3 hours ago, Voyager said:

@Thinder I can see how the CPU/ram would be the bottle neck with the Quest 2, but if he goes to the Pico 4 or Aero, I'd expect the GPU to hit a wall hard as well. I'm give to understand you need a 40 series card to run the Pico 4 in the virtual desktop mode at all. 
 

If you remove your CPU/RAM bottleneck, your GPU will also run faster under load, I have experienced that first hand, simply because it is not the GPU or the RAM that decides the bandwidth but the CPU controller, and the right RAM will allow any CPU to use the maximum bandwidth available.

Quote

I'm running a VP2, which, while it is not an Aero or Pico, does chew up a 3080 Ti well enough that I'm probably going to upgrade the GPU soon.  

That's all very well, but again, it's not the GPU which will decide when to throttle down.

Quote

On CPUs, the Zen 4 Vcache chips are coming out in a couple of weeks. Given fluid dynamics is apparently known to love lots of cache, and flight sims' adjacentcy to it, I'd expect those to be very good for DCS. May be worth waiting a couple of weeks to see if they are good, and going for an AM5 build.

You missed the point here. Ryzen 3 or 4 3D caches are designed for lower latency, the Zen 4 will have to run with Cl which are far from advantageous for Ryzen CPUs because the material which the DDR 5 RAM chips are made of is nowhere near the latency a Cl14 can offer to take full advantage of the cache, we're years away from that happening.

It's not like I haven't done my home work on the subject before even bounding a GSkill kit to my 5600X back in January 2021, I followed the advises of AMD and GSkill technicians, not the forum noises and other legends about what RAM bounding can do, and it's pretty much the same for DDR5, when they say something, people should listen.

Lower latency allows your CPU to work less for more data transfer because it takes less time to get it than from higher Cl RAM and that's why the cache benefits more from lower Cl. 

Now, I worked with CATIA and Fluent (now Simulia), that's REAL, Industrial fluid dymanics and no, it's not depending on cache or even less the amount or RAM you can allocate to it than multi-treading power and specialized GPUs, so Intel systems are better suited to the task here. For the students suite, Dassault-systeme recommend 2GB of RAM minimum but specify higher CPU frequency is better, the HP ZBook Fury G9 nVidia RTX A1000 is a workstations certified by Dassault Systeme. Specifications Intel® Core™ i7-12800HX (up to 4.8 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 25 MB L3 cache, 16 cores, 24 threads) 32 GB DDR5-4800 MHz RAM (1 x 32 GB).

So until DDR5 come with lower Cl, it's always gonna be the case, now is not the right time to build an AMD/DDR5 system, AMD are well aware of the DDR5 issue and added a lot of features to Zen4 to increase frequency and compete with Intel, it still isn't a good situation in regard to Zen4 3D architecture and RAM latency.

So you can of course contribute to the RAM manufacturer financing their R&D or wait until someone come up with a die that suits the Zen4 with lower latency than Cl32, DDR5 is far more suited for Intel CPUs because of the high frequencies, so if you absolutely want to use DDR5 then go for an Intel system.

Your system is not optimized so you don't know its full potential yet, a DDR5 system will require a new motherboard, CPU, RAM kit and that's not going to be cheap, if you start by the RAM, you'll be able to keep your system running until DDR5 latency lowers, then go for the GPU, after that you can chose AMD or Intel and DDR5.

My advise is based on experience, I gained 18.91% performance in Graphic score at 4K simply by combining a Cl14 RAM with a Ryzen 3D compared to a 5600X, not gonna happen with DDR5, that's why AMD is using higher CPU frequencies with the Zen 4 to compete with the Intel CPUs but you can bet your next X-Mass turkey that the Intel equivalent will always be faster.

Quote

On B-die kits, need to be very careful when hunting for them. I've had at least one kit I got turn out to be a later rev that had changed the chips the Hynix.

I know where to get genuine B.die RAM kits, I even might upgrade from 32GB to 64GB 3600MHz Cl14, that will only be my 3rd GSkill RAM kit since I started to use them.

 

PS your GPU isn't fairing that bad compared to my RX 7900 XTX, start by optimizing it...

3080 Ti vs Radeon RX 7900 XTX


Edited by Thinder
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Win 11Pro. Corsair RM1000X PSU. ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PLUS [WI-FI], AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D, Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X 24GB GDDR6. 32 GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series (4 x 8GB) RAM Cl14 DDR4 3600. Thrustmaster HOTAS WARTHOG Thrustmaster. TWCS Throttle. PICO 4 256GB.

WARNING: Message from AMD: Windows Automatic Update may have replaced their driver by one of their own. Check your drivers.

M-2000C. Mirage F1. F/A-18C Hornet. F-15C. F-5E Tiger II. MiG-29 "Fulcrum".  Avatar: Escadron de Chasse 3/3 Ardennes. Fly like a Maineyak.

 

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7 hours ago, Thinder said:

First I'd figure if you have bottlenecks (RAM/CPU most likely) and if it's the case, get rid of them.

All (Intel/AMD) CPU controllers have limits that cause them to throttle down under load, I'm not so versed in Intel tech but I'm quite sure they can't manage more than 4 banks/ranks, so if you have 4 X 2 ranks/banks RAM kit, your CPU will throttle down under load anyway, the other thing with Intel is frequency, the higher, the better.

Your CPU is very powerful but it can't manage fast RAM, being limited to DDR4-2933, one possibility if you're planning to compromise to get a better headset is to get a B.die kit, Cl-14, you would be able to run your RAM at least to 3200MHz, they are more expensive but worth the investment plus good value for resell.

Intel: How to Overclock RAM.

G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR

Make sure your motherboard supports the RAM if you chose to go for one, better buy them full kit (X 4), not mixing up two different kits even from the same batch.

If the GSkill isn't supported look for its Corsair equivalent.

B-Die Finder  Find Samsung B-Die DDR 4 memory kits on Amazon, Newegg and many more.

In my humble opinion you already have a fast system (3.80 GHz/5.10 GHz, GTX3080) you just need to optimize it for VR and RAM is one issue you can easily sort out, last opinion before I leave you alone, once the B.die kit is fitted, forget about O.Cing the rest of your system, itself it will run at 3200MHz without O.Cing it and all channels will stay fully opened under load.

VR Headset. Think Pico4 as an alternative.

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/317396-looking-for-a-performance-estimate-for-a-new-computer-build/?do=findComment&comment=5135201

 

Thank you for the detailed reply @Thinder

The RAM i have is Patriot Viper Steel Series DDR4 64GB (2x32GB) 3600MHz PC4-28800 Dual Memory Kit - PVS464G360C8K   CL18 :(  You've made a good suggestion about the CPU and RAM bottleneck that I hadnt considered. Very difficult to find CL14 ram though, and at the cost, would it not be better to invest in DDR5 and a new LGA1700 CPU? How much more performance could one squeeze from CL14 over CL16 RAM? 

Again, I appreciate your time and advice mate.

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Discord - Psycho#8075

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9 hours ago, skiboss said:

Thank you for the detailed reply @Thinder

The RAM i have is Patriot Viper Steel Series DDR4 64GB (2x32GB) 3600MHz PC4-28800 Dual Memory Kit - PVS464G360C8K   CL18 :(  You've made a good suggestion about the CPU and RAM bottleneck that I hadnt considered. Very difficult to find CL14 ram though, and at the cost, would it not be better to invest in DDR5 and a new LGA1700 CPU? How much more performance could one squeeze from CL14 over CL16 RAM? 

Again, I appreciate your time and advice mate.

From your PoV a Cl14 kit would allow you to run your RAM at 3200MHz for a start instead of DDR4-2933 and it will remove the RAM/CPU bottleneck, Intel CPUs make better use of faster RAM than Ryzen 3D and it's certainly the case for the Ryzen 4 as well, they have increased the size of the cache, it's for a good reason.

This is an estimate of what your system is losing at 4K, when I say "gain" from better CPU/RAM bounding, in reality it is recovery of lost performances and apparently you're also putting more strain on your GPU with O.C for much lower results than it is potentially possible because your CPU limits its bandwidth under load.

Intel logoCore i7-10700KFandNVIDIA logoGeForce RTX 3080 Ti Bottleneck Calculator.

Intelbottleneck.jpg

In my case, at 4K I gained more running Cl14 than the bottleneck created by the CPU, so it's all gain.

I haven't been running Intel for ages so it is difficult for me to evaluate the precise gain you'll experience with a Cl14 kit but it is substantial in terms of both frequency and latency.

I suggest you contact Intel tech support, give them a precise resume of your system stats and start by asking their opinion in the matter, their processor has specific characteristics and reacts to lower latency differently differently to a Ryzen, in your case it is meant to increase RAM frequency. Same for your motherboard, you need to know precisely which RAM it supports.

I agree that those kits are more expensive than high street kits but they also resell very well for the same reason, should you need to recover some money for another RAM kit purchase in the future, I do that every single time, in the UK, we can use CEX, otherwise I'm sure you could ask for a good price selling through EBay.

To purchase them, Newegg has always been a good place for me, G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR

You won't need more than 32GB, but make sure you purchase them in ONE SINGLE kit, buying two different kits even from the same batch can cause issues such as blue screen, failure to boot etc.

I don't know if your Motherboard and CPU would allow you to run the kit at 3600MHz but they overclock very well, they were designed for cases such as yours and AMD players using CPUs previous to Ryzen 3 for the same reason, controllers limit, their range of timing allows for increased frequencies impossible with non-B.die RAM.

In your case I'd focus on this first then the GPU before thinking about going for DDR5, but that's my choice, the way I upgraded my AMD system for specific reasons, it might well be better for you to go straight to an Intel/DDR5 system, but as I mentioned, I don't think now is the right time to invest in a DDR5/AMD system, there aren't any RAM manufacturers with the die that would really benefit the Zen4 today.

Don't forget your Power Supply Unit, those new tech are power hungry and the last thing you want is to have a system but not enough power to run it, it can cause real damages and cost a lot to replace, I got myself a brand new Corsair RM1000X through EBay and I can resell a750W and a 850W the same way, consider the second hand market as well.

So I chose to optimize a Zen3/D system and wait for a new chips material, since you haven't got an AMD system you don't have to do it this way, but do your home work, contact motherboard and CPU manufacturers for details about support, the Intel article is also giving useful information. Intel: How to Overclock RAM.

They used an I9 9900K for their test with the same RAM limits than your i7-10700KF: DDR4-2666.

>>>

In the case of the Pico4, the real issue here is software support, I once managed some settings that gave me both FPS and clarity of details I can't reproduce today, things have changed since the last DCS update and I'm sure Steam and Microsoft have also a part of responsibility in the matter, but I know that my system has the potential I need.

Microsoft are trying to get their hands on everything they possibly can and it does affect supported software big time, and you never hear those who test the Pico4 on Youtube video tell you about their system levels of optimization, all they tell you is it demands more from your system not why nor how to reduce the requirements to get it to run smooth at higher settings.

I know it is possible to get the Pico to run both smoothly and fast at high DCS settings, it's just a matter of time before the support for it is out there, for the time being, it's not the FPS my issue but the quality of the image I can get from different DCS settings and I'm working at it, mainly pixel density and details refresh, otherwise my headset is good.

Anyway weight all of that out and fly like a Maineyak.

Maineyaks-HEADONLY-transparent.webp


Edited by Thinder
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Win 11Pro. Corsair RM1000X PSU. ASUS TUF Gaming X570-PLUS [WI-FI], AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3D, Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X 24GB GDDR6. 32 GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series (4 x 8GB) RAM Cl14 DDR4 3600. Thrustmaster HOTAS WARTHOG Thrustmaster. TWCS Throttle. PICO 4 256GB.

WARNING: Message from AMD: Windows Automatic Update may have replaced their driver by one of their own. Check your drivers.

M-2000C. Mirage F1. F/A-18C Hornet. F-15C. F-5E Tiger II. MiG-29 "Fulcrum".  Avatar: Escadron de Chasse 3/3 Ardennes. Fly like a Maineyak.

 

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