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]

Looks great indeed! A year ago I did some air flow diagrams because I wasn't happy with my cooling. My criticism about AiO Watercooling is mainly due to bad air flow but with the watercooler in the top it's a different story!
And it works beautifully as you proofed
Here are my charts and why I would always say: put the WC in the top or go air only:

 

[Authense]

Rasmus, very interesting indeed and valuable ground work.

Another point is to change the Fan Setup in the BIOS as they can be measuring MB or CPU temps and the watercolor onboard connector must be changed from "FAN" to watercooler to allows for maximum power all the time. Of course, you need to take notes about what is connected to which connector.

In my case the chassis fan was set to MB by the factory and I changed that to CPU.

Why?

If the CPU is under stress and requires more cooling it will go hand in hand with the GPU which itself will produce additional heat through its 2 fans and the watercooler fans will be at maximum RPM blowing even more hot air into the case. In this moment I want the chassis fan to kick in based on the same measure instead of waiting for MB temp to rise.

It seems that the Kraken software can not override these BIOS settings, which is technically correct but not wanted in this case. The Kraken software also does not know which onboard connector is used and the ASRock windows utility tells you they are all fans because it only reads what the BIOS says.

In a nutshell, one would need to note what is connected to which connector on the MB and change the BIOS accordingly for this kind of setup to work.

Chris

 

[RasmusP]

See this pic:

To the back of the case there is a chassis fan that sucks hot air out of the case

I just had a look again. I'm 99% that these 2 fans will rotate clockwise when watch from the perspective of that photo.
Meaning that the suck air from inside the case through the radiator and push it to the outside.
Similar to what my chart looks like when the watercooling is in the top.

Doesn't really matter as I'd say that it's better this way than suckling air from outside of the case into the case. But I thought it would be good to check!

To the connectors: interesting bios settings! I agree, always make all fans cpu dependant. The gpu can handle itself.

One thing I noticed with my old asrock p67 pro3 (2011) is that speed Fan (little old program to control fans) can only control my fans when the bios is fixed at a certain level instead of some kind of automation.
Might be worth a try to just put all fans, kraken etc to "level 5" or something and test if the kraken software can control them then from within windows

 

[Authense]

Hi Rasmus, look at this pic of some other guys installation I just found:

This is a representation of the default installation from the manual. This label side where it says "NZXT" is pointed inside in order to suck the hot air out of the cooler into the case? Because this way it cannot suck cold air from outside the case and through the cooler, or can it?

I will double check the arrow on the side of the fan. Thanks for the reminder. Temps are great so I might keep it this way.

Chris

 

[Poloman]

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

Thanks for looking into my problem.
I was away,and managed to test a few things before reading your post.

ASW shouldnt make a difference really,and my issue was there,with it off everything was working WRONG,turning it on,i do get proper 90 fps,which is weird.
Still,with it on,my gpu was sitting low (40% usage) and i was still getting frame drops after a while.
I think that at somepoint it was idling and was dropping its clock,but gpu-z didnt show anything.

Thought,the way i fixed it,was shifting almost all setting up a couple of ticks,now running with pretty much everything on max ,with my gpu still not running at 100% (im running at around 70%),which gives some headroom when there are many cars around.


PS.Also pit-screen is broken,it is way too heavy for some reason.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

My system was CPU bound, 1080Ti with i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor OCed to 4.4GHz.
And I got quite massive boost for VR by disabling Hyper Threading.

Can push SS to 250% now. This is with Odyssey.

 

[Authense]

Yep, tried this today, I have no performance reduction with this setting but also no FPS increase detected either.

 

[RasmusP]

For me hyperthreading never reduced the fps Always increased them in all games no matter if they are single threaded or extremely multi threaded.
Some times HT gives extreme amounts of micro stuttering though! Battlefield 4 beta, Risen 2 are two examples I remember clearly.

In assetto corsa, single screen at full HD, deactivating HT reduces the fps by around 20 percent for me. Might be different with more than 4 cores and VR though!

 

[Authense]

Yep, that is exactly what I found out in researching this topic. It does not help for desktop applications - they say - but in VR it is worth trying. I do not have the technical background but they say, that with the CPU being on the edge in VR it does not help the performance if it shuffles workload around between 4 real and 4 hyper cores. I also got wrong temp measures for the hyper cores all the time, which does not look nice but certainly is just a bug in certain hardware tools.

 

[RasmusP]

Yep, that is exactly what I found out in researching this topic. It does not help for desktop applications - they say - but in VR it is worth trying. I do not have the technical background but they say, that with the CPU being on the edge in VR it does not help the performance if it shuffles workload around between 4 real and 4 hyper cores. I also got wrong temp measures for the hyper cores all the time, which does not look nice but certainly is just a bug in certain hardware tools.

You get temperatures for them? Interesting! All hardware monitoring I know of only show the 4 real cores. With which one do you see these temps?

 

[Authense]

You get temperatures for them? Interesting! All hardware monitoring I know of only show the 4 real cores. With which one do you see these temps?

With the CAM utility that came with my Kraken water cooling hardware. It gave me i.e. 52-55 degrees for Core 1-4 and then i.e. 80 degrees for Core 7 or so.

By the way I forgot to mention that my Unigine Valley score jumped quite a bit with hyper threading disabled and I could see my system hitting reference benchmark figures that I would have missed by some percent before. And that is a Desktop benchmark. I don't know why though.

Also in CPU-Z when I run benchmark and click 4 cores with hyperthreading disabled I get to what is expected from my CPU around 103-105% but not with HT enabled.

 

[RasmusP]

With the CAM utility that came with my Kraken water cooling hardware. It gave me i.e. 52-55 degrees for Core 1-4 and then i.e. 80 degrees for Core 7 or so.

By the way I forgot to mention that my Unigine Valley score jumped quite a bit with hyper threading disabled and I could see my system hitting reference benchmark figures that I would have missed by some percent before. And that is a Desktop benchmark. I don't know why though.

Also in CPU-Z when I run benchmark and click 4 cores with hyperthreading disabled I get to what is expected from my CPU around 103-105% but not with HT enabled.

Maybe it runs a lower turbo with HT on? Would be the only thing I could think of!
I know I can go 100 MHz higher without HT but the performance is still worse then.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

For me hyperthreading never reduced the fps Always increased them in all games no matter if they are single threaded or extremely multi threaded.
Some times HT gives extreme amounts of micro stuttering though! Battlefield 4 beta, Risen 2 are two examples I remember clearly.

In assetto corsa, single screen at full HD, deactivating HT reduces the fps by around 20 percent for me. Might be different with more than 4 cores and VR though!

At first I thought I got some boost in 2D benchmark but it was due to removing Headlights Mod.
In VR on the other hand the gain was indisputable. Could be specific CPU architecture related as well. But I was floored when I saw the jump in performance.
This guy saw some gain in 2D as well, in GTA V, jump to 3:50

 

[9XI]

I am also considering acquiring a VR headset to use with my 1080Ti graphics card. My CPU is an Intel 10850. Can I anticipate a smooth experience?

 

[RasmusP]

I am also considering acquiring a VR headset to use with my 1080Ti graphics card. My CPU is an Intel 10850. Can I anticipate a smooth experience?

Depends on the VR headset but yes, lots of people happily enjoyed and still enjoy VR with a higher end 10th gen CPU and 1080 ti.
You won't be able to use night racing with 50 cars and rain at maximum settings but "normal" racing or fancy stuff at medium settings should run completely fine

 

[9XI]

Depends on the VR headset but yes, lots of people happily enjoyed and still enjoy VR with a higher end 10th gen CPU and 1080 ti.
You won't be able to use night racing with 50 cars and rain at maximum settings but "normal" racing or fancy stuff at medium settings should run completely fine

Thank you for your reassuring words. I'm inclined towards purchasing a used HP Reverb G2 and plan to spend most of my time playing Assetto Corsa. ;-)

 

[Vintagedriver01]

I am also considering acquiring a VR headset to use with my 1080Ti graphics card. My CPU is an Intel 10850. Can I anticipate a smooth experience?

I did have an GTX1080 so an ti should do better, for getting into VR you only have to lower your setting to keep it playable and maybe use 60FPS settings. Be aware that the HP reverb is a WMR headset and WMR is been phased out by MS.

 

[RasmusP]

Ti is 16-25% faster. When the ti still delivers 90 fps, the non-ti is between 72-77 fps.

Thanks to the CSP render stats, you'll know exactly what to dial down or what to raise in the settings for the best looks
Here's a screenshot by me:

My frames are plummeting in vr.

I just built a PC with 32gb, an i7-12700k, an rtx 3080, and play with a quest 2 headset. Anytime I hop on the no hesi servers, or anytime I load a race with over 10 cars, my framerate is just terrible. Unplayable. Im not even running high settings. Is my computer just not powerful enough? I...

www.racedepartment.com

 

[9XI]

Thanks, guys. I've seen the announcement about the discontinuation of WMR support. What are your thoughts on this? I think we still have a few productive years ahead with the HP goggles.

 

[9XI]

Okay, one more question. Can I use the headset without Steam VR and without content manager?

Happy new year!