VR performance with 1080ti

[Authense]

Hi, I have been working on this issue for quite a while now and I have decided to reach out for your help now as I am running out of options:

System: latest Core I7 I7700 (no k, standard, but constantly running at 4 ghz), MSI geforce 1080ti, 16GB, Windows 10 64bit, HTC Vive. Fanatec CSR wheel and pedals

Tweaks tried so far:
reduced in game graphic settings to a minimum. low details, low shadows, low smoke etc.
Supersampling on (1,5-2,0) / off
MSAA forced in NVIDIA settings
Anti-Aliasing on/off/ reduced
render target multiplier maxed out - nice for the VR steam menu, but no effect on in game performance

Overclocking the 1080ti fails with Assetto Corsa crashing when entering VR every time.

On top of that, distant rendering is quite blurry and I was astonished watching some Videos of other folks claiming that this would be there actual lense view quality. I do not get that at all.

Symptom:
I am getting nowhere near the VR performance that others pretend to have both in resolution quality and FPS. I cannot get 90 FPS together wit other cars on the track. At the start it is around 65 and lower and during race high 70ties and some low 80ties. On a long straight without other cars around I can hit 90 FPS depending the track, i.e. Monza, but not in Spa for instance.

Whatelse can I do or try?
Is there a reference setup with which you get to 90 FPS on a specific track with XY cars on the grid for testing? Reason is I do not know what I should expect as I cannot find references, only people on Youtube claiming with their settings they would constantly hit 90FPS, well, I don't.

Of course, if I only do training, I also hit 90 FPS constantly. But in a race during overtaking for instance it is in the low 70ties and really bad in corners with two cars side by side.

Many thanks in advance,

Chris

 

[RasmusP]

Agreed: yes and no. It's probably the CPU then but when you're on the edge with your graphics card, the cars of course will increase the load on that too. Your 1080 ti of course laughs about a few cars more

To the settings: as you already said, the only things that change the CPU load are:
- shadows a little bit
- reflection frequency and render distance
- overlay apps
- amount of cars
- World detail a little bit

Not much one can do about it... Apps are huge btw! Pulling me down at online race starts from 120+ fps to barely 60!

 

[JoelGL]

How differently (even just a little) do these apply regarding MP?

 

[RasmusP]

How differently (even just a little) do these apply regarding MP?

The settings I listed? Directly!
I don't know how it works but just loaded car slots already increase the CPU load. So driving on an empty server with 5 slots or 30 slots will make a difference.
The only thing that's different online is that the driving of the other cars won't be calculated but their paths, appearance, reflections etc still stress the CPU.
I'd say from my gut that 5 online cars = 1 AI car.

 

[Authense]

Hi Rasmus,
what do you think about this quote?

"16X AF, 0XAA, No shadows, No reflections, smoke normal, everything else max. Supersampling at 3.0. This is with a 1080. 5.0 looks much better, might be doable with a ti"

I will test it later today and let you know.

I do 16x AF, 8XAA, no shadows, normal/static reflections, no smoke and max world today at SS 3.0. I also think that 4.0 looks slightly better although some people say, you do a lot of up-rendering for a lot of down-sizing afterwards and that it just costs you performance.

However, cars in -say- 200m distance are anything but sharp and the speed marks (200,100,50) only become crips 50-100m before you already pass them. That makes it a little tough to find the best breaking point if you do not know the track by heart.

I am really looking forward to ACC and its VR performance.

Project Cars 2 is crap on my computer in comparison, both graphics and handling. I have tried it after having been deeply into AC for a few weeks now and it looks awful and stutters even at low settings and SS does not seem to do any good compared to AC. 2mins and done.

On a sidenote for the young guys:
Boy do I have fun with AC in VR, this is a dream come true. I have played Pole Position 2 on Commodore Amiga some 30 years ago and all the racing sims during the 90ies including Formula 1 Grand Prix 1-5 (or whatever the final count of versions was) and Codemasters F1 Version 1-100 ;-) ever since and they don't even offer VR yet.

In two years or earlier 4K will come to VR, I can hardly believe that anyway will have monitors anymore after that. And the 1080ti will be way tooooo slow.

Chris

 

[RasmusP]

Try it. The more supersampling the better
Not sure if 5x is possible without normal AA but worth a try. Just let open hardware monitor run in the background logging the gpu load so you can check the headroom the 1080 ti has

 

[JoelGL]

I believe with the latest SteamVR, computation of SS is different already, so 3.0 is like 1.7 equivalent for Rift (ie. 1.7 x^2), is this accurate? Most say no significant advantage going over 1.5 (ie. 2.25 for Vive).

BTW, got me thinking, @RasmusP, if AC runs in only 2 threads, why then would the 8700k (stock 3.7GHz, 4.3GHz turbo) be significantly faster than an i5-8670k OC'ed to 4.2GHz, since both would only use 2 cores?

 

[Authense]

That's what they say. But over-supersampling won't harm, it will just stutter if its too much. I get this when I run dashboard and set its rendertargetmultiplier to 3 and then launch AC from within SteamVR with SS 3. It's clear, the GPU then tries to render both, AC in front and the crispy dashboard in the back. That's too much and also not required. The Dashboard can be activated without restarting SteamVR if I ever need it after 3 hrs in AC in VR ;-)

 

[RasmusP]

BTW, got me thinking, @RasmusP, if AC runs in only 2 threads, why then would the 8700k (stock 3.7GHz, 4.3GHz turbo) be significantly faster than an i5-8670k OC'ed to 4.2GHz, since both would only use 2 cores?

That's what bothered me too. 2 game threads don't mean that windows will only utilize 2 cores.
Also the 8700k can run up to 4.7 GHz on a single core. Not sure how it would be split while running Assetto Corsa but it might go 4.7 at "the main core" and lower on the other cores.

As I explained above, more cores or threads still increase the performance. I tested it with deactivating hyperthreading. I lost quite some fps!
So I increased the overclock until the fps where the same and that was with around +300/400 MHz.
Now if you can overclock an i5 400 MHz over the i7 it will be the same (same CPU generation of course) but if you look at the casual overclocking stats of the 8700k you'll see that they easily run 4.9 GHz on all cores and therefore beat the i5's as I barely see i5's running at 5.3 GHz.
The other side of the coin shows when comparing the amd ryzen CPUs with the 8700k in games where the CPU is mostly single thread limited (like ac).
Benchmarks for counter strike go for example show differences like 220 fps for ryzen and 350 fps for the i7! Although they are more or less the same when rendering or in games that use very good multi threading like the latest assassin's creed!
So more cores or threads will give a performance boost and higher clockspeeds will too. And then the pure performance per core per clock matters also of course.
These 3 factors combined make the 8700k with decent cooling and slight oc THE gaming cpu at the moment.

The factors in CPUs:
Single thread performance:
I7 = i5 > amd
Multi thread performance:
I7 = amd > i5
Performance per core per clock:
Latest gen > older gen
amd > i7 > i5 (i7 has bigger cache etc)
Maximum overclock:
I5 > i7 > amd
Cooling:
I7 = i5 > amd

Combined the i7 wins clearly. But amd is coming close lately especially when you only play current games!
For us sim racer with ancient single thread engines... The i7 beats them all!


@RainhamIron can sing a song about it. He upgraded from an i7 4970k that ran at 4.9 GHz to an i7 8700k that runs at 4.8 GHz and the boost is massive. Like really massive!

BTW I am not a fan of Intel! In fact I'm waiting for the next amd generation but the facts are telling a clear story for the 8700k.
And why I always recommend the i7 over the i5: 3 friends of mine have the i5 2500k while I invested 40€ more for the I7 2600k.
While they really struggle with the current games like the Witcher 3, battlefield 1, assassins creed: origins, kingdom come deliverance etc - I can still play them! On the edge but I can play them!

I only race and don't own any of these games but I tested it for them and they all regret not having bought the i7 back then. It's 7 years now! Who cares about 40€ over 7 years?

 

[Authense]

Try it. The more supersampling the better
Not sure if 5x is possible without normal AA but worth a try. Just let open hardware monitor run in the background logging the gpu load so you can check the headroom the 1080 ti has

0XAA looks awful. SS 5 is not looking better than 4 and 4 looks slightly better than 3 but could as well be subjective /an illusion. Anyway, 90 FPS all the way with no more than 15 opponents. That's as good as it gets with i7 7700 + 1080ti.

Will wait and see what ACC brings.

 

[RasmusP]

0XAA looks awful. SS 5 is not looking better than 4 and 4 looks slightly better than 3 but could as well be subjective /an illusion. Anyway, 90 FPS all the way with no more than 15 opponents. That's as good as it gets with i7 7700 + 1080ti.

Will wait and see what ACC brings.

You could also get premium and join our casual club events. Should reduce the CPU load drastically and give you nice and real people to race with
I'm normally not advertising it but I couldn't resist this time.

I agree btw, 0x AA would be unbearable for me too, even when I'd use 4x Downsampling. 1080p Monitor though for me.

 

[Authense]

Sure, would love to join. Will you send me details?

 

[RasmusP]

Sure, would love to join. Will you send me details?

Have sent you a PM

 

[Poloman]

After noticing this thread,i have the same setup (7700k@5GHz,1080ti@2GHz) i search and found that im actually running 45FPS with the reprojection almost always on.
Now,when i did set it up,i used ingame benchmark,but it seems that it doesnt use any CPU.

But then,tried online,and OMG,i am missing frames everywhere,even in pits in an empty server:

GPU is under 40% usage.
Any ideas here folks?
I even tried with vanilla assetto corsa,no mods,no apps,everything low-off,still the same behavior.

 

[Authense]

Hi Stavros,

I will try to help you because some other comments and suggestions have helped me and I can now sort them into useful and not applicable for my setup.

First of all, here is what I have done yesterday in the case of Project Cars 2:
https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/solved-vr-with-vive-and-1080ti-and-7700k.156113/

Maybe you want to give it a try as a general thougth? No need to uninstall entire games though. 95% of the files do not change so there is no point.

Summary:
I can confirm that Assetto Corsa runs perfectly in VR with standard settings in nvidia control panel (load defaults for the game) and in game and with SS at 3.0 (or less) set up in SteamVR. 20 cars on the grid, 90 FPS.

Analysis and hints:

First of all you must allow asynchronous reprojection and I can see you don't in your screenshots. The ASW rate will be well below 10% but you cannot get 90 FPS without allowing at least some reprojection. From that alone it is clear that it defaults back to 45 FPS with both your CPU and GPU relaxing on the beach.

I am not eager to test further but I have the impression, that earlier settings from before I upgraded GPU and CPU are somehow not being updated automatically and you can get stuck in a mismatch of graphics setup files and available PC power.

This could also make sense in case the user has adapted any setting to his personal needs or based on good ideas from other people and then neither nvidia nor AC offer any resetting option when finding better hardware.

At least for PC2 the improvement has been drastic after resetting the drivers to default and also in Assetto Corsa the track surface has never been looking this smooth. AC is less sensitive to driver mismatch in my case, meaning PC2 had been at 10% of what I have got now and AC at 80%.

I am currently running the 7700k@4,9Ghz (which is a standard Turbo setting in my AsRock Bios which is even speed stepping from 4,2 to 4,9) and also my 1080ti@2,0Ghz like you.

Consider to forget about the comments (if you do) that overclocking could be an issue here, it is not. Temp in idle mode is around 32 degrees, in game slightly under 70 degrees (or under CPU-Z stress test) and my dealer says, this is well below the red line for my CPU. The GPU never ever gets close to the red zone and it is summer and really warm in my racing room. All good.

On a few side notes (maybe there is something there for you that you haven't tried),

• SteamVR dashboard, Steam overlay and OpenVR advanced settings overlay are disabled under SteamVR settings and make sure, there is no other window on the desktop steeling focus on AC. I can see that in race directly through some stuttering and artifacts and it has always been the focus issue. I have Content manager running as launcher with no issue, there is a hibernation setting in Content manager that is enabled. Again, enable ASW in SteamVR!
• Click "switch to direct mode" in SteamVR settings at least once to make sure you are in the correct mode, just as a precaution
• I have Microsoft security settings fully running (firewall, virus scanner..) in the background with no issue, also a hardware / fan control app for my water cooling. No impact on FPS. This has been a tip I had found somewhere and it has no impact in my setup.
• At some point my old Fanatec CSR was bugging me with FFB clipping and that also caused some stuttering solved by updated drivers, a USB 2.0 port and reduced in game FFB. I have not tested further but this lagging could have cost me FPS as well
• Make sure you close MSI Afterburner or any other OC-Software after applying your tweak and disable all hardware monitoring on the GPU from that tool. You will know that modern Mainboards, CPUs and GPU will protect themselves and switch off when too hot.
• Use a demanding GPU benchmark tool to confirm that your 1080ti is up to speed, I use "Valley benchmark" at max settings in OC and get 120-180 FPS on average in full screen, no stuttering, all smooth and just beautiful - deemed as "GPU ok" without even looking further. This GPU can easily deliver 90 FPS. AC and PC2 will also work nicely with max settings in 2D as another reassurance test.
• I always update to the latest Nvidia driver as updates will most probably apply for the lastest GPU generation

That is pretty much my complete setup and path to the current situation in which I can fully enjoy VR gaming.

Hope it helps in your case, otherwise let me know.

Chris

 

[Authense]

Hi Rasmus,

one big thank you goes out to you for driving my attention towards my previous CPU and updating that.

Your other hints are all true and will especially apply to less maximized hardware setups but I can now play with them and get a stable cause and effect ratio, i.e. shadows, reflection settings etc. and I can surely still drive the GPU to the limits with all and every AC settings maxed out. It makes logical sense now as root cause problems have been solved.

Chris

 

[RasmusP]

Awesome to read that, thank you

Jfyi about temperatures: below 85°c it's all fine. Both for CPU and gpu. I often read about "stay below 70°c or your CPU will die quickly". Nonsense really! This false information comes from a different measurement. Iirc there is a critical temperature somewhere in the CPU which is way lower than 100°c.
The temperature you read out with the hardware monitoring is a different one though that has no problem with getting close to 100!

Now 100 is really close to the automatic self shutdown of the PC but 85°c is still completely okay for CPU and gpu. The best cooler however will keep it below or around 70°c.

 

[Authense]

Hi Rasmus, agreed. And the water cooling surprisingly does that easily. Again, it is warm in the room due to the current temperatures and the Tower sits in a corner with only 40cm to the back wall and still and with OC I am below 70.

Dealer told me in writing, that even temps above 85 are ok and problems start when temps are constantly above 100. They sell a lot of PCs and you would know them would I tell the name. Berlin. Really big. Excellent service, support and "Kulanz".

Chris

 

[RasmusP]

Really cool dealer!

BTW there's a German video where der8auer and a buddy try what happens when you take off the cooler of the 8700k while running a benchmark.
Interestingly it just slowly clocks down to 800 MHz and after some time it even tries to go up again.
Other than becoming really slow, absolutely nothing happens. Crazy stuff

May I ask about your fan configuration btw? The kraken is 240mm, where did you put it?
Do you have other fans in the case too? If yes, where?

 

[Authense]

Sure. The Kraken obviously sits with the Cooler on top of the CPU and with the water-cooling unit under the roof of the Bitfenix case. The fans are applied on top of the inner case frame so they sit right under the top end of the case, they suck air inside und push it through the water-cooling unit. See this pic:

To the back of the case there is a chassis fan that sucks hot air out of the case, so a nice airflow is being created. The standard setup with the Kraken fans attached underneath the water-cooler and so to speak inside the case was not possible as the outside fan would collide with the chassis fan.

Because there is plenty of room now for the air to move it seems to be a very good setup. There is "nothing" above where the CPU socket sits as opposed to a big standard cooler such as the "bequiet" I have had before.

Further questions, let me know.

Chris

 

[Authense]

Here you can see the nice space inside the tower through the glass window and the rear chassis fan. Looks awesome.