Nvidia 5080 in VR - initial thoughts

[Qcumber]

8 hours ago, Danoliver1 said:

You can easily overclock the 5080 to be almost as fast as a 4090.

Yes. Particularly since the 576 driver update. I get a 10-11% boost over stock. And a 16-17% boost over 572 stock speeds. 

 

Edited April 27 by Qcumber

[Koziolek]

Unfortunately 576 driver does nothing for me apart from frequent black screens 

 

BTW I read that the only gain is in Steel Nomad. In games it does nothing, maybe 1 fps

[Qcumber]

14 minutes ago, Koziolek said:

Unfortunately 576 driver does nothing for me apart from frequent black screens 

 

BTW I read that the only gain is in Steel Nomad. In games it does nothing, maybe 1 fps

I have just compared 272 vs 276 in Firestrike extreme. There is no overall difference except in the physics test. 

5080 (272)	40404	45765	38136	22583
5080 (276)	40804	45609	41343	22549
	101%	100%	108%	100%

 

 

[Qcumber]

And in game test shows no difference either. Green is 276. Blue is 272. This is an F-16 flight low over Cairo. 

[Rainer_B.]

On 4/25/2025 at 12:12 PM, Qcumber said:

I would wait for the 5080ti. Unless you manage to get an MSRP 5080 and sell your 4080 for a similar price. 

and they are still waiting and waiting. I got a MSI 5080 for retail, my 3080 12G will go in my second PC and the old 2070 Super will make a Friend very happy. You buy when you need it or you will never buy a Thing.

[Qcumber]

4 minutes ago, Rainer_B. said:

and they are still waiting and waiting. I got a MSI 5080 for retail, my 3080 12G will go in my second PC and the old 2070 Super will make a Friend very happy. You buy when you need it or you will never buy a Thing.

That's what I did. Managed to get an FE for £949. But then I was upgrading from a 4070.

[Aapje]

2 hours ago, Rainer_B. said:

and they are still waiting and waiting. I got a MSI 5080 for retail, my 3080 12G will go in my second PC and the old 2070 Super will make a Friend very happy. You buy when you need it or you will never buy a Thing.

That's not true, you can delay or hasten your upgrade based on the situation. Part of being a smart consumer is recognizing the time to strike.

That said, the 5080 is not a bad card to buy right now, aside from the pricing that may keep improving over the coming months. It has enough VRAM. But anything below a 5080 is not good, and there's a lot to be said to wait for a likely Super-version with more VRAM.

[Hempstead]

Yippee! I got my hands on a 9950X3D at MSRP, sorta! All I had to do is flew to Taiwan, walked into the first shop off the escalator in the infamous/famous KwangHwa Market and asked about it.
 

OK OK, I have some business to do in Taiwan. So I thought I’d give it a shot. That market hasn’t disappointed me since the 80’s.

 

With the RTX 5080 I already have, I can finally start ordering other parts for the new gaming rig.

[whitav8]

Qcumber,

   Could you please confirm which versions(s) of XRFrametools you use - one for capture and possibly second for conversion to CSV.

Thanks much!

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, whitav8 said:

Qcumber,

   Could you please confirm which versions(s) of XRFrametools you use - one for capture and possibly second for conversion to CSV.

Thanks much!

The latest version of XRFrametools has now corrected the issue with exporting individual frames data so you should now only need one version. I have updated the VR benchmark methods thread to reflect this. Also an updated spreadsheet to correct some errors and add a VRAM chart. 

https://github.com/fredemmott/XRFrameTools/releases/tag/v0.2.0

 

 

 

 

[Qcumber]

The 5080 seems to particularly shine in VR (with racing sims at least). 

 

 

[Hempstead]

Finally got all the parts of my 9950X3D + PNY RTX-5080 OC + 128GB RAM machine, brought it up and seemed stabilized. And got some DCS modules installed with minimal setup. Jumped into an F-16 on both Mariana and NTTR maps.

Texture and Terrain Texture both set high, DLSS on, QuadView on…. Quest Pro device res. set to the highest, 90Hz, PD 1.0. Got pretty much 90fps all around.

Have not done much testings yet, like with a lot of explosions, AH64, F-4E etc. yet. But, the first impression is very smooth and very little to no stuttering.

[Hempstead]

On 4/29/2025 at 6:41 AM, Aapje said:

That's not true, you can delay or hasten your upgrade based on the situation. Part of being a smart consumer is recognizing the time to strike.

That said, the 5080 is not a bad card to buy right now, aside from the pricing that may keep improving over the coming months. It has enough VRAM. But anything below a 5080 is not good, and there's a lot to be said to wait for a likely Super-version with more VRAM.

And the news/rumor making the round is that Nvidia might be increasing the prices of gfx cards! Not sure how true that is, but the PNY 5080 OC card I got for MSRP is now listed by the same retailer for USD$200 more than I paid.

[CL30]

Long thread so probably forget replies at this point, but what VR are you guys using (with good results) with your 5080s?

I’m starting to plan for my next PC, and have been planning on a 5080. I’ve always been Intel, so leaning towards a 14700k and 64GB RAM (maybe 96). I will also need new VR as I still have a Rift S….not that I’ve been able to play DCS at all over the last year. Not sure what the good options are these days. I definitely won’t want top of the line, bank-breaking VR, but a good set still.

[Qcumber]

2 hours ago, CL30 said:

Long thread so probably forget replies at this point, but what VR are you guys using (with good results) with your 5080s?

I’m starting to plan for my next PC, and have been planning on a 5080. I’ve always been Intel, so leaning towards a 14700k and 64GB RAM (maybe 96). I will also need new VR as I still have a Rift S….not that I’ve been able to play DCS at all over the last year. Not sure what the good options are these days. I definitely won’t want top of the line, bank-breaking VR, but a good set still.

Quest Pro for me. I got mine second hand for £300 about 18 months ago. You can still get some good deals new. The eye tracking makes a big difference.

I've been considering a pimax super but it is very expensive and so far it appears to be very "buggy" according to various threads on this forum. I'm happy to wait a while as the QP is still very good. 

[Aapje]

16 hours ago, CL30 said:

I’ve always been Intel, so leaning towards a 14700k and 64GB RAM (maybe 96).

I don't really understand this. Why limit yourself to a worse CPU rather than get the much better one?

Quote

 I definitely won’t want top of the line, bank-breaking VR, but a good set still.

Quest 3, Quest Pro (2nd hand), or Pimax Crystal Light are the good sets for a decent price.

[CL30]

2 hours ago, Aapje said:

I don't really understand this. Why limit yourself to a worse CPU rather than get the much better one?

Quest 3, Quest Pro (2nd hand), or Pimax Crystal Light are the good sets for a decent price.

What would you suggest for AMD? I don’t mind switching, I’m just more familiar with the Intel offerings.

 

16 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Quest Pro for me. I got mine second hand for £300 about 18 months ago. You can still get some good deals new. The eye tracking makes a big difference.

I've been considering a pimax super but it is very expensive and so far it appears to be very "buggy" according to various threads on this forum. I'm happy to wait a while as the QP is still very good. 

Cool, thanks! I’ll start looking at it. 

[Mr_sukebe]

As of right now, the optimum CPU is an AMD9800x3d.

[ChariotOfFLAME]

But any X3D will do

[CL30]

Serious question, but what makes them better than the Intel chips, like the 14700k, for DCS? &nbsp
 

I kinda stopped playing regularly right after multi-threading was introduced, but I thought you really only need a couple fast cores. 
 

Not trying to start anything, haha, just curious. 

[Mr_sukebe]

DCS is now multi core.  From what I’ve seen, it seems to primarily be using 4 cores.

The 13 and 14 series both suffer from potential degradation issues.  I’ve not looked into the details as I didn’t buy one.

The AMD 7800x3d and then 9800x3d have pretty much consistently been shown in benchmarks to be a little faster than the Intels, a little cheaper and use less power.  The only concern I’ve seen is with the use of memory.  Seems that AMD have still to fully resolve their memory management, meaning that it you want reliability, only buy a single pair of RAM.  Right now, the largest fast DDR5 module that can be bought is 48GB.  64GB will currently happily run DCS.  If however I was building a new rig, I’d be inclined to go for 96GB for at least a little future proofing.

[CL30]

8 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

DCS is now multi core.  From what I’ve seen, it seems to primarily be using 4 cores.

The 13 and 14 series both suffer from potential degradation issues.  I’ve not looked into the details as I didn’t buy one.

The AMD 7800x3d and then 9800x3d have pretty much consistently been shown in benchmarks to be a little faster than the Intels, a little cheaper and use less power.  The only concern I’ve seen is with the use of memory.  Seems that AMD have still to fully resolve their memory management, meaning that it you want reliability, only buy a single pair of RAM.  Right now, the largest fast DDR5 module that can be bought is 48GB.  64GB will currently happily run DCS.  If however I was building a new rig, I’d be inclined to go for 96GB for at least a little future proofing.

Thanks for the explanation! I hate being out of the loop and having to get caught up. I'll be sure to opt for two sticks of RAM, but for sure if I go with AMD, and guessing I will now unless something changes.  

[Qcumber]

14 hours ago, CL30 said:

Serious question, but what makes them better than the Intel chips, like the 14700k, for DCS? &nbsp
 

I kinda stopped playing regularly right after multi-threading was introduced, but I thought you really only need a couple fast cores. 
 

Not trying to start anything, haha, just curious. 

Also the 3d chips have a larger cache than others which makes them well suited to gaming. 

[Aapje]

On 5/31/2025 at 3:14 AM, CL30 said:

Serious question, but what makes them better than the Intel chips, like the 14700k, for DCS?

The Intel-chips focus more on having a lot of cores, but games are pretty much always constrained by the fastest core, once you have sufficient cores to offload the less critical work. So the end result is that the Intel CPUs are better suited for productivity software, not games.

The AMD X3D-chips have the innovation of having a very big cache-chiplet under or on top of the compute chiplet. This is mainly beneficial for gaming, since games tend to require heavy processing of data that is often too big to fit in the relatively small cache on the compute chip(let), but is small enough to fit in the 96 MB of X3D-cache. As a result, the CPU has to retrieve things from RAM less often, which has a bunch of advantages:

- It improves the outliers, since chips without X3D-cache regularly find that they need to get data from RAM, which is way slower than getting it from the cache. So you get inconsistent performance. In gaming, having consistent performance is more important for a good experience than having a better average FPS, and this is even more true for VR. So X3D makes the gaming much more smooth.

- It makes the speed & latency of the RAM far less important, since having to wait for RAM is far less common. So effectively, it's like buying very fast RAM, but without the expense. The 14700 is much more sensitive to the RAM speed/latency.

- It increases efficiency substantially, which also means that it is easier to cool the system and your PC pumps less heat into your house.

- Simulation games like DCS tend to profit from the X3D-cache more than the average game. 

There is also the issue that Intel has been failing in a variety of ways basically since the 9000-series that is in your system. In particular their foundry, but also their designs. This is why AMD could catch up to them in the first place (and then move past them). To cope, they've been pushing the 13th and 14th gen to their limits, which in turn caused them to fail in large numbers, which we hope is fixed by now. But buying the 14700, you are risking that this is not fully fixed (and you need to make sure to get the newest BIOS). And since they push the CPUs so hard, they are pushed quite a bit out of their most efficient zone, so the chips use a lot of juice.

Also, it's quite telling that you are considering the 14700, because it is not actually from their newest CPU line up, but their newer CPUs are slower than the older ones.

Finally, AMD has innovated (seemingly mostly by accident at first, but now they do it intentionally) by having their platform support many generations of CPU. We've seen that early buyers of AM4 could get amazing gains for a very modest outlay, by upgrading their CPU only, rather than having to replace their motherboard as well. Buying into AMD means that you have a much bigger chance of being able to do a relatively cheap, but significant upgrade. And because of this, AMD motherboards and CPUs also keep their value better on the 2nd hand market.

Edited June 1 by Aapje

[CL30]

13 hours ago, Aapje said:

The Intel-chips focus more on having a lot of cores, but games are pretty much always constrained by the fastest core, once you have sufficient cores to offload the less critical work. So the end result is that the Intel CPUs are better suited for productivity software, not games.

The AMD X3D-chips have the innovation of having a very big cache-chiplet under or on top of the compute chiplet. This is mainly beneficial for gaming, since games tend to require heavy processing of data that is often too big to fit in the relatively small cache on the compute chip(let), but is small enough to fit in the 96 MB of X3D-cache. As a result, the CPU has to retrieve things from RAM less often, which has a bunch of advantages:

- It improves the outliers, since chips without X3D-cache regularly find that they need to get data from RAM, which is way slower than getting it from the cache. So you get inconsistent performance. In gaming, having consistent performance is more important for a good experience than having a better average FPS, and this is even more true for VR. So X3D makes the gaming much more smooth.

- It makes the speed & latency of the RAM far less important, since having to wait for RAM is far less common. So effectively, it's like buying very fast RAM, but without the expense. The 14700 is much more sensitive to the RAM speed/latency.

- It increases efficiency substantially, which also means that it is easier to cool the system and your PC pumps less heat into your house.

- Simulation games like DCS tend to profit from the X3D-cache more than the average game. 

There is also the issue that Intel has been failing in a variety of ways basically since the 9000-series that is in your system. In particular their foundry, but also their designs. This is why AMD could catch up to them in the first place (and then move past them). To cope, they've been pushing the 13th and 14th gen to their limits, which in turn caused them to fail in large numbers, which we hope is fixed by now. But buying the 14700, you are risking that this is not fully fixed (and you need to make sure to get the newest BIOS). And since they push the CPUs so hard, they are pushed quite a bit out of their most efficient zone, so the chips use a lot of juice.

Also, it's quite telling that you are considering the 14700, because it is not actually from their newest CPU line up, but their newer CPUs are slower than the older ones.

Finally, AMD has innovated (seemingly mostly by accident at first, but now they do it intentionally) by having their platform support many generations of CPU. We've seen that early buyers of AM4 could get amazing gains for a very modest outlay, by upgrading their CPU only, rather than having to replace their motherboard as well. Buying into AMD means that you have a much bigger chance of being able to do a relatively cheap, but significant upgrade. And because of this, AMD motherboards and CPUs also keep their value better on the 2nd hand market.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to type all that out. That’s a great summary!

TBH, I had the 14700K in my build list for a while. Threw it in there because its price point was better than the 14900K, and it’s still fast, and I didn’t want all the heat that it sounds like the 14900 generates. Those were my only reasons, lol. Same reasons for when I built my current PC with that 9600K…though a couple years ago I upgraded it to a 9900K and RTX3090.

You all make a very good case for the switch to AMD. I’m hoping to start buying parts over the coming month or two.