6900XT vs 6800XT for VR

[gmetzo]

High everyone, I am building a new computer and the only thing that's missing is the GPU.

DCS is not the only game I play although it is by far the most demanding one. Now I know that this is due to ancient code and what not, and that as long as it's as is, we will never be able to achieve the performance we achieve in other games, but I would at least like to push it as much as I can.

For months now, I see a fuck ton of benchmarks for " regular " gaming. In these benchmarks anything beyond a 6800xt or a 3080 offers an advantage that only makes sense if you have a couple of thousands lying around and don't know what to do with them. Both these cars are enough for everything. VR though is a scary, hungry monster and my headset in particular, the Pimax 8K X even more so! 

This is why I am making this post, in the hope that some 6900XT and 6800XT owners can come in and offer me their first hand experience regarding VR DCS.

My brain, tells me go for the 6800. There is decent availability where I am and although the price premium is there, I can at least save 400-500 and throw that on some simulation hardware.

My irrational fear of the VR boogieman though, tells me that those 5-10 frames or whatever that the 6900 will provide may mean life or death, or in this case, provide me with some much wanted breathing room. This, and the fact that I do not wish to upgrade every time a new thing comes out.

Usually I keep my system intact for a minimum of 2 years and then build a new one from scratch. 

( Last system with a first gen Ryzen and a gtx 1060 has served me with distinction!  For christ's sake, it can even handle VR at a capacity which is not motion sickness inducing! )

So what are your thoughts? 99% of the games I play will not make sense for me to get the 6900. That 1% however, which is DCS is my most favorite game and so I am perfectly fine wasting some hard earned money if it means I'll get just a little bit closer to the fabled 70+ FPS experience!

[cordite]

At this point, whichever XT you can get, at a price that works for you. If only a 6900 XT is available, go for it. Or you can wait, and hope the availability and prices get more reasonable soon.

[gmetzo]

anyone who follows the news knows prices ain't going down. in fact these might be the best prices we can get.

1.) manufacturers state a shortage on stuff like GDDR6 memory that will naturally up costs

2.) nvidia and amd both say that availability will not improve before late '21

3.) numbers. covid and isolation is our new reality. isolation means boredom and feeling hollow. computer building and or console buying fills the void and alleviates boredom

computer universe listed the cheapest 3090 on launch at 1700 euros. right now cheapest you can get in computeruniverse is 2-2.1K euros. cheapest 6900 started at 1400 and almost every model got hit by a +100 so we are looking at the 1400 euros card costing now 1500, 1500 cards 1600 and so on and so forth.

[Eaglewings]

High everyone, I am building a new computer and the only thing that's missing is the GPU.
DCS is not the only game I play although it is by far the most demanding one. Now I know that this is due to ancient code and what not, and that as long as it's as is, we will never be able to achieve the performance we achieve in other games, but I would at least like to push it as much as I can.
For months now, I see a fuck ton of benchmarks for " regular " gaming. In these benchmarks anything beyond a 6800xt or a 3080 offers an advantage that only makes sense if you have a couple of thousands lying around and don't know what to do with them. Both these cars are enough for everything. VR though is a scary, hungry monster and my headset in particular, the Pimax 8K X even more so! 
This is why I am making this post, in the hope that some 6900XT and 6800XT owners can come in and offer me their first hand experience regarding VR DCS.
My brain, tells me go for the 6800. There is decent availability where I am and although the price premium is there, I can at least save 400-500 and throw that on some simulation hardware.
My irrational fear of the VR boogieman though, tells me that those 5-10 frames or whatever that the 6900 will provide may mean life or death, or in this case, provide me with some much wanted breathing room. This, and the fact that I do not wish to upgrade every time a new thing comes out.
Usually I keep my system intact for a minimum of 2 years and then build a new one from scratch. 
( Last system with a first gen Ryzen and a gtx 1060 has served me with distinction!  For christ's sake, it can even handle VR at a capacity which is not motion sickness inducing! )
So what are your thoughts? 99% of the games I play will not make sense for me to get the 6900. That 1% however, which is DCS is my most favorite game and so I am perfectly fine wasting some hard earned money if it means I'll get just a little bit closer to the fabled 70+ FPS experience!

I seems to be in the same situation.
On i5 core 7600k and a gtx 1060 just hanging there in dcs with my O+ headset

The experience has been really be okay, I would surely like to have some eye candy setting turned up.
My newly purchased Syria map has really tested my system and those magnificent clouds and weather upgrade are around the corner. It would be tough for me not to be able to fly in those clouds in vr when the update is released.

I skipped the Turing and radeon 5000 era with my hope squarely placed on the next generation gpus. I did not see the present stock and price situation coming and I kind of wished I got a gpu upgrade early last year.

The 6800 and 6800xt with 16g vram are what I am looking at. Something to carry me till the next full upgrade. I saw some stock on Amazon but the prices are just overwhelming for my budget right now.
At this point, I can only hope prices get close to mrsp before I get one.



Sent from my H3223 using Tapatalk

[gmetzo]

i sincerely hope we finally see the fabled MSR price, but I am quite the cynic I am afraid.

[reece146]

I am watching the market on and off. I would like to upgrade my 2070 Super to something more VR friendly and move the 2070 to one of my graphics workstations. I play at 4K currently with lots of detail turned on.

 

The on again - off again 3080Ti is currently on again. I have a feeling that price-wise it will slot between the 6800XT and 6900XT. It will likely be closer to the 6900XT but possibly a touch faster and/or just generally better for MSFS2020/DCS at 4k and VR.

 

It seems there are similarities between running 4K and VR and also between DCS vs MSFS2020 so those are the benchmarks I tend to pay more attention towards.

 

Locally the regular 3080 is ~C$1200 while the 6900XT is ~$1600. At those prices the 3080 makes a lot of sense with the 6800XT being a good option also at ~$1200. 3090 is totally stupid at  ~$2500. I could buy one if I wanted to but will not because it's just stupidly priced. They are all ridiculously priced and we are being screwed over by the manufacturers (MSRP is prob $200 more than they should be) but you have to pay to play.

 

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by reece146

[gmetzo]

We are looking at similar prices in europe it seems. I've seen the 6900 outdoing the 3080 in " regular benchmarks " and even go toe to toe with the 3090, the only question is how does that translate to the highly " irregular " DCS and MFS giants. some vr benchmarks showed that the 6900 can pull the same vr frames with the 3090 but the 3090 was smoother ( less dropped frames or red lines in the benchmark ). but again, no comparison between the two within vr. personally I was was aiming for the 3090 but that is back when it was in an ALMOST similar price to the 6900. now that the 3090 has gone full retard I am thinking of going for the 6900.

Now 3080 may perhaps make more sense in general but personally can't find it anywhere withing the eu and certainly not with a proper price. Radeon on the other hand it seems that people don't really like so that means within the EU anyhow, higher availability and less insulting prices. 

However every time I hit F5 on my GPU bookmarks prices go up. For example the 6900 I was aiming for at my payday was 1400 euros and at the moment it has reached 1500something euros. I fear that it's heading down the 3090 path. If it ever gets to the 2000 mark I am just gonna forget about it and either grab a 3080 if its available or a 6800 and fuck off.....

HOWEVER, and that's the reason why I am asking for userbase feedback, I am looking to make an informed decision in regards to VR performance with those cards. I've seen a few with the 6800 but not a single one with the 6900....

[reece146]

At this rate I'm seriously thinking about getting a pilots license and a real Yak-52. Might be cheaper in the long run.

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

Personally I went for the 6900XT, for a few reasons:

- Availability: no 6800XT anywhere to be seen in my country (Belgium) when I decided to build a new PC;

- I wanted a USB-C port on the graphics card instead of having to use one on the motherboard: I had bad experiences with using a VR headset connected to motherboard-USB-C;

- Even if the 6900XT would be only 10% faster than the 6800XT (no DCS benchmarks to prove or disprove that), that 10% could be the difference between 90 and 45 fps, or between 45 and 30 fps because of motion smoothing / ASW whatever you want to call the technology;

- A user here on the forum who claimed to have prerelease samples of the 6900XT, said it's slightly faster than a 3090 (in DCS VR) and delivers more consistent frametimes (in DCS VR).

- I have been using intel/nvidia systems for almost 20 years now and I really wanted to switch back to AMD, to reward them for their innovation and becoming competitive again. I was getting nostalic of the old days of the AthlonXP mopping the floor with anything intel released, and the brilliance of the Radeon 9700Pro.

 

Also, there have been reports in the tech media by people who fully expect rDNA2 to age pretty well, and deliver more performance as time goes on due to drivers becoming more mature.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Raven (Elysian Angel)

[Mars Exulte]

6 hours ago, cordite said:

At this point, whatever GPU you can get, of whatever manufacturer

 Ftfy. I was reading earlier Chinese crypto miners have resorted to mass purchase of 3000 series laptops for mining cause they can't get GPUs. 2018 was nothing compared to the scarcity we're dealing with now.

[DutchCoolHand]

7 hours ago, reece146 said:

At this rate I'm seriously thinking about getting a pilots license and a real Yak-52. Might be cheaper in the long run.

As someone who bought his first airplane almost a year ago, I can say no it is not cheaper

[Strong05]

Just got a 6800xt and using it with a G2 and so far I can't recommend.  Hoping to find something that will up the fps but so far running at 100% SS in steam (with PD set to 1.0 in dcs) and it turns into a slide show real fast.  Seems the bandwidth of the 3080 might be the better option for VR and 4k.

[DutchCoolHand]

2 minutes ago, Strong05 said:

Just got a 6800xt and using it with a G2 and so far I can't recommend.  Hoping to find something that will up the fps but so far running at 100% SS in steam (with PD set to 1.0 in dcs) and it turns into a slide show real fast.  Seems the bandwidth of the 3080 might be the better option for VR and 4k.

Wow that is surprising. What CPU are you using? I just upgraded to a 5600X together with a RTX2070 and a Quest2 I can get 25 -45fps. 

[Strong05]

5600x at 4.8Ghz all core.  Had a 1080ti before this, and the 6800xt is better, but I'm not sure it's the 50-70% more performance that was indicated by all the benchmarks.  I get a lot more artifacts while in asynchronous reprojection then with the 1080ti too.

[gmetzo]

encouraging words all in all! /s

[gmetzo]

13 hours ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Personally I went for the 6900XT, for a few reasons:

- Availability: no 6800XT anywhere to be seen in my country (Belgium) when I decided to build a new PC;

- I wanted a USB-C port on the graphics card instead of having to use one on the motherboard: I had bad experiences with using a VR headset connected to motherboard-USB-C;

- Even if the 6900XT would be only 10% faster than the 6800XT (no DCS benchmarks to prove or disprove that), that 10% could be the difference between 90 and 45 fps, or between 45 and 30 fps because of motion smoothing / ASW whatever you want to call the technology;

- A user here on the forum who claimed to have prerelease samples of the 6900XT, said it's slightly faster than a 3090 (in DCS VR) and delivers more consistent frametimes (in DCS VR).

- I have been using intel/nvidia systems for almost 20 years now and I really wanted to switch back to AMD, to reward them for their innovation and becoming competitive again. I was getting nostalic of the old days of the AthlonXP mopping the floor with anything intel released, and the brilliance of the Radeon 9700Pro.

 

Also, there have been reports in the tech media by people who fully expect rDNA2 to age pretty well, and deliver more performance as time goes on due to drivers becoming more mature.

 

hi there, what psu do you have in terms of watts? i am afraid 850w will not be enough for the 6900xt and thinking about 1000w to be safe. but how about you?

[Qiou87]

10 hours ago, Strong05 said:

Just got a 6800xt and using it with a G2 and so far I can't recommend.  Hoping to find something that will up the fps but so far running at 100% SS in steam (with PD set to 1.0 in dcs) and it turns into a slide show real fast.  Seems the bandwidth of the 3080 might be the better option for VR and 4k.

Check with FPSVR but for me 100% SS in SteamVR is not 100% headset resolution, it is applying something like 40% supersampling by default. I lowered SteamVR Supersampling to 50% and FPSVR shows me 76% of supersampling. So to run the headset at true 100% you might need to lower your supersampling.

 

In the end what matters is what you can see. Even at this 50% setting (76% real), everything looks crisp and sharp, and I get 45fps stable with a meager 2070S. I would be surprised if your 6800XT cannot run the headset at its true 100% resolution (which would be a lower SteamVR setting than 100%, maybe like 75%?).

1 hour ago, gmetzo said:

hi there, what psu do you have in terms of watts? i am afraid 850w will not be enough for the 6900xt and thinking about 1000w to be safe. but how about you?

The card uses around 320W at the max, why would you need a 1000W PSU for that? Even if you have a very hungry Core i9 processor, a 750/850W PSU will be enough. 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Qiou87

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

2 hours ago, gmetzo said:

hi there, what psu do you have in terms of watts?

I've been using a 1000W PSU for a few years now, and I believe it's still overkill but better be on the safe side: PSUs work best when they're not completely under load: there's an efficiency curve, as most people know. Still, 1 kW will get me where I need to be for years to come. 850W should be fine though :-)

  

11 hours ago, Strong05 said:

Just got a 6800xt and using it with a G2 and so far I can't recommend.  Hoping to find something that will up the fps but so far running at 100% SS in steam (with PD set to 1.0 in dcs) and it turns into a slide show real fast.  Seems the bandwidth of the 3080 might be the better option for VR and 4k.

I can't run 100% SteamSS either with my 6900XT: it looks brilliant but you're simply asking too much of the current technology. As stated earlier, use 50% instead for DCS in the application-specific settings, and 100% in the global settings. fpsVR is correct in stating an output of 76% since Steam global and per-application settings work as a multiplier: one doesn't override the other.

 

This is the brilliance of the Reverb G2: it will continue to be relevant as we get new generations of graphics cards, since they *will* have enough raw horsepower to run DCS at higher SS settings, which will only benefit us as users.

[Strong05]

1 hour ago, Qiou87 said:

Check with FPSVR but for me 100% SS in SteamVR is not 100% headset resolution, it is applying something like 40% supersampling by default. I lowered SteamVR Supersampling to 50% and FPSVR shows me 76% of supersampling. So to run the headset at true 100% you might need to lower your supersampling.

 

In the end what matters is what you can see. Even at this 50% setting (76% real), everything looks crisp and sharp, and I get 45fps stable with a meager 2070S. I would be surprised if your 6800XT cannot run the headset at its true 100% resolution (which would be a lower SteamVR setting than 100%, maybe like 75%?).

The card uses around 320W at the max, why would you need a 1000W PSU for that? Even if you have a very hungry Core i9 processor, a 750/850W PSU will be enough. 

 

It's possible, but 50%SS for me looks way way worse then in my Index.  Something weird is going on between WMR and steamvr.  Forcing DX11 on with SS set to 100% seems to net good clarity and significantly better smoothness and fps.

[Qiou87]

10 minutes ago, Strong05 said:

It's possible, but 50%SS for me looks way way worse then in my Index.  Something weird is going on between WMR and steamvr.  Forcing DX11 on with SS set to 100% seems to net good clarity and significantly better smoothness and fps.

In the end you have to find what works for you ; 50% (76% effective) is great for me, much better than my Rift S with 140% SS (real) and similar smoothness. There is some weird stuff going on there with WMR and SteamVR, for sure. I just wanted to point out that 100% in SteamVR might not be the ultimate goal if it is already over the headset's "optimal" resolution. I tend to value smoothness more than pure graphics, but we each have our preferences.

Edited February 10, 2021 by Qiou87

[plasma1945]

On 2/9/2021 at 1:55 PM, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

Personally I went for the 6900XT, for a few reasons:

- Availability: no 6800XT anywhere to be seen in my country (Belgium) when I decided to build a new PC;

- I wanted a USB-C port on the graphics card instead of having to use one on the motherboard: I had bad experiences with using a VR headset connected to motherboard-USB-C;

- Even if the 6900XT would be only 10% faster than the 6800XT (no DCS benchmarks to prove or disprove that), that 10% could be the difference between 90 and 45 fps, or between 45 and 30 fps because of motion smoothing / ASW whatever you want to call the technology;

- A user here on the forum who claimed to have prerelease samples of the 6900XT, said it's slightly faster than a 3090 (in DCS VR) and delivers more consistent frametimes (in DCS VR).

- I have been using intel/nvidia systems for almost 20 years now and I really wanted to switch back to AMD, to reward them for their innovation and becoming competitive again. I was getting nostalic of the old days of the AthlonXP mopping the floor with anything intel released, and the brilliance of the Radeon 9700Pro.

 

Also, there have been reports in the tech media by people who fully expect rDNA2 to age pretty well, and deliver more performance as time goes on due to drivers becoming more mature.

 

Hi Raven, 

@Raven (Elysian Angel) need your wisdom pls..

ive got a chance to pick up an 6900xt and have a reverb g2 with an intel 10700 rig. Currently ive got a 3060TI and getting about 20-30fps in multiplayer (sometimes 40) under 2.5.6 --- whats your feedback on 6900xt, what fps are you getting and how are you doing in Multiplayer for FPS? I have been an nvidia fanboy for a while, but I dont think I will be able to get a 3090 for a few years.. whats your FPS trying to decide if its worth getting, if you get 45-50 fps in DCS MP stable it will be worth it for me. 

Any issues with 6900xt... (have reverb g2).. 

Cheers

plas

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

54 minutes ago, plasma1945 said:

whats your feedback on 6900xt

Hello Plas,

 

First off, I haven't flown in multiplayer in about a year and a half so I'm afraid I can't comment on that. I have been focussing on SP campaigns since I had too many gathering dust.
I have been using nVidia cards exclusively for the better part of 20 years so I know where you're coming from Not fangirl-ism but just practical reasons.

That being said, I'm quite happy about the card: even in quite densily populated SP campaigns I have been getting good framerates (just over 60 fps average according to the Radeon software).
Don't overdo it on settings however: the G2 has a high resolution as you know, so in Steam I use 100% global SS and 50% app-specific, with DCS PD at 1.0 and MSAA off. Yes the shimmering is annoying but I just can't justify the performance loss when enabling it. I do hope DCS will get an anti-aliasing method at some point that won't cut the framerate in half...

The most obvious advantage of the 6900XT over your 3060Ti (next to raw horsepower) is double the amount of VRAM, so you'll be able to set Terrain Textures to HIGH without issues, even in Syria and The Channel

I hope this helps!

[plasma1945]

Super awesome advice. Thank you very very much for your insight, the VRAM is definitely a consideration, as the 3060Ti vram loses 2gb before I even start loading the mission (just on the hangar) ..

and also need a bigger PSU since mine is 650 Bronze, you mentioned a 1000 or 850 above in another thread. Thanks very much again! ...

 

re VRAM -- I was trying to tweak.. and I posted in another thread about editing an LUA file to purge the Mig29 out of the Hangar to relieve some VRAM waste during the menu screen (you might not need it, but it speeds up the loading a little bit).

 

Thanks again, will go see if I can find that card, if its still there hahaha!

 

ps the shimmering is evil. 

[Svsmokey]

FWIW , with a RiftS and a 6800xt , i'm running msaax4 (and pd 1.4) with excellent performance , and-at least in the air-the shimmering/flickering/aliasing is gone . Still get it on the airfields tho .

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

3 minutes ago, Svsmokey said:

with a RiftS

Sure, but a RiftS got 3.6 million pixels compared to 9.3 million for the G2