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Forums - PC - Need help building a PC for the HTC Vive

I watched a Vive gameplay demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWproPHhHd0 and ran a VR performance test. Now I'm looking at parts.

 

 

This is what parts I have. 

MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard

AM3 AMD Phenom II 970 Deneb 3.5GHz Quad-Core 

GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5

8GB  RAM/ 60GB SSD/ 1TB HDD

 Corsair Tx 650w

 

The VR performance test says my cpu is capable and I'd like to overclock it. Appears I need an R9 290 gpu minimum. Think a new card will be enough?


*update*
I overclocked to 3.84 and steamVR green lit my cpu

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I'd upgrade my CPU if I were you cause that thing is ancient ...

Get at least an Intel i5-4590 since Oculus themselves recommended it or go for the i5-6600K like I did ...

No a new video card is NOT enough to say the least!



fatslob-:O said:
I'd upgrade my CPU if I were you cause that thing is ancient ...

Get at least an Intel i5-4590 since Oculus themselves recommended it or go for the i5-6600K like I did ...

No a new video card is NOT enough to say the least!

Will I have to replace my motherboard then? It's AM3.



snyps said:

Will I have to replace my motherboard then? It's AM3.

To break the bad news to you, yes you do need to get a new motherboard because of pin compatibility ... 

If you want to do some overclocking on Intel CPUs then you MUST get their designated "Z" series chipsets like their Z97 chipset for Haswell/Broadwell processors that are compatible with the LGA 1150 socket or the Z170 chipset to overclock the latest Skylake CPUs ... 

Don't forget to buy their CPUs with the "K" suffix either since they are the only ones with official overclocking support ...



I want to get a good enough VR with only spending $300-$400 on the build. What do you think is the most powerful card I could jam into my system to fall into the "VR works but not great" category?



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snyps said:
I want to get a good enough VR with only spending $300-$400 on the build. What do you think is the most powerful card I could jam into my system to fall into the "VR works but not great" category?

If you have to compromise I would either get an R9 390 or a GTX 970 but preferably the latter since you'll encounter front-end bottlenecks more often with AMD cards especially with your CPU ... 



fatslob-:O said:
snyps said:
I want to get a good enough VR with only spending $300-$400 on the build. What do you think is the most powerful card I could jam into my system to fall into the "VR works but not great" category?

If you have to compromise I would either get an R9 390 or a GTX 970 but preferrably the latter since you'll encounter front-end bottlenecks more often with AMD cards especially with your CPU ... 

Value wise is it better to go ahead and buy 390x/ 980ti since I'll get a new cpu down the road?



snyps said:

Value wise is it better to go ahead and buy 390x/ 980ti since I'll get a new cpu down the road?

How long down the road are we talking here ? It really depends ... 

If it's soon then yeah it seems like a good time to get a 390/X or a 980 Ti but with the imminent launch of next generation GPUs I would wait since we're probably going to squeeze out the last drop in terms of increasing perf/$ for a long while ... 

If not then don't bother since your not going to be able to use the hardware to it's full potential with most of it's lifetime usage ...



Well taking in consideration your list of specs you can try to use your existing RAM, PSU and disks BUT you will have to choose your CPU platform with care because with the newest Intel CPUs you have to buy DRR4 RAM and they are only retro-compatible with DDR3L (DDR3L is crap).

With that range I would spend the most on the GPU because developers (theorically) are delegating more tasks to the GPU and there are less CPU bound games today. Only few games, like GTA V or Metro, needs a potent CPU. You can see this video if you want to see some graphs and stuff like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9EJNa0y524 .

Interestingly the video shows that in 4K resolutions the difference between CPUs is rather small because the GPU performance is used at full rather than in 1080P, maybe you can use this to your advantage and use Virtual Super Resolution or something like that while using an inexpensive CPU. Your actual phenom is really old, maybe you could use it if you haven't even overclocked it. It would be nice if you could buy a new one but that makes sticking to the budget difficult.

If you want the best value go for the 390x, just avoid ASUS (they are pretty lazy with their coolers). It is one of the best value cards available and it has pretty good numbers on the Steam VR benchmark and DX12 games, it gets dangerously close to the 980 TI. I've got a friend that has a FX-8320 (overclocked to 4.5 ghz)  and a 290x (technically a downclocked 390x with half VRAM) and it got a pretty good score (7.6).

Fatslob says that you should compare the 390x/980TI but i would rather recommend turning that into a Fury(X)/980 Ti comparison. The 390x and the 980Ti are different tiers and their prices are very different. If you want the bang for your buck go for the 390x, it has good VR scores and it has fared really well in DX12 games. Only if you have the money jump to the Fury(X)/980 Ti tier. Maybe you should wait a little bit since Polaris and Pascal are comming soon, but that is your choice.

Also, the oculus recommendations are rather vague, and the utility they made just compares your hardware with a list, I recommend you checking the Steam VR benchmarks instead.



Yeah.. Upgrade your cpu to 8 core amd or quad core i5, and get a 290/970



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