gtx 1080 vs 1070 vs 1060 in vr

[comanzo]

So I am still lost in terms of what GPU I desire. I know for regular gaming, the gtx 1060 wins in terms of price to performance. That is solely what I am looking for in VR as well, the best price to performance. Price honestly doesn't bother me as I can afford all three of them. However, I would rather spend money on other things (such as games,etc.), and feel like I got more value for it, rather than getting a gtx 1080 and regretting I spent so much money. Now, I have been looking all over the web for benchmarks of VR comparing these three cards, only to not find much.

I have heard claims that the performance difference between gtx 1070/80 in vr are the same as in regular gaming (about 20-25%), while others have said it's a huge difference due to the different architecture of the gtx 1080, as well as it's GDDR5X and high bandwidth memory. Some websites claim that if you go into vr, it can definitely become the best bang for your buck gpu as it offers performance like no other.

So my question is, is it also a performance difference of 20-25% between gtx 1080 and 1070 like in regular gaming, or is it much better? If it's the same, then honestly, I don't think that justifies the 45-55% increase in price. How about between the 1070 and the 1060? Do they also have the same performance difference like in regular gaming? I game in a 1440p 144hz monitor if that helps provide a more accurate answer for what GPU I should get. I appreciate any help on this matter as I just started pc gaming, and need help badly. Thanks in advance.

 

[ajpaolello]

1080 will be better than 1070. 1070 will be better than 1060. 1060 does VR pretty well. For 1440p 144hz I would go with the 1070 minimum. 1080 would probably be able to get up to the 144hz but a 1070 is pretty good at 1440p

 

[KalTorak]

the 1070 has exactly 75% of the 1080s raw power, (based on the same chip, but the 1070 has 25% disabled) the 1060 is a different chip. The 1070 also runs at slightly lower clocks.

The 1080 also runs GDDR5X rather than the 1070 & 1060s GDDR5.

All the cards have SMP and Ansel support, however the 1060 cannot be put in an SLI setup.

I would say get the 1070 or 1080 for VR, if you lag behind you can always plop another in and run in VR SLI (one card per eye)

 

[comanzo]

the 1070 has exactly 75% of the 1080s raw power, (based on the same chip, but the 1070 has 25% disabled) the 1060 is a different chip. The 1070 also runs at slightly lower clocks.

The 1080 also runs GDDR5X rather than the 1070 & 1060s GDDR5.

All the cards have SMP and Ansel support, however the 1060 cannot be put in an SLI setup.

I would say get the 1070 or 1080 for VR, if you lag behind you can always plop another in and run in VR SLI (one card per eye)

The thing is, if I go sli, I would have to also get a new motherboard. I have a 750W psu, and I don't think that would be enough for two 1070's AND an overclock. So I don't think sli would be an option. Would you say to get a 1080 in this scenario, since my psu and mobo would also have to be upgraded? Or get a 1070, and wait for 1080ti? Do you think I should still go sli?

 

[comanzo]

1080 will be better than 1070. 1070 will be better than 1060. 1060 does VR pretty well. For 1440p 144hz I would go with the 1070 minimum. 1080 would probably be able to get up to the 144hz but a 1070 is pretty good at 1440p

Yea, I was thinking of getting a 1070 and hold off until the 1080ti comes out to fully max out the 144hz. Do you think that is a better idea, or would you rather just get a 1080 and only max it out in some games? Again, price doesn't bother me but price to performance does. It looks like the 1070 and 1080ti have the best bang for your buck(assuming 1080ti has titan P performance, with less vram), while the 1080 have had reports of it not being worth the $. However, I would like to hear your opinion on this.

 

[ajpaolello]

That sounds like a good plan.

 

[KalTorak]

If you plan to upgrade fairly soon to a 1080 ti (when released) then get the 1060, not the 1070, you wont take as much of a hit in resale price (if you flog the old card to pay for the new)

If you dont plan to upgrade again in the near future I would go for the 1080, but not a "Founders Edition". If you arent happy dropping that much on a single component, get the 1070, you certainly wont be disappointed in its performance.

 

[ablutophobe]

Both the HTC Vive and Occulus are limited to 90fps and 2160x1200 resolution, so at some point improving your GPU will cease to give you any gains. I am currently running a GTX 1070 (I also have my old GTX 760 installed as a dedicated PhysX processor), and can run every game at maximum quality without a problem, so in my opinion anything above a 1070 is a waste of money if you're just doing VR or 1080p. Even NVIDIA's VR Funhouse, which claims you need a 1070 to run on low, a 1080 to run on medium, and dual 1080s to run at maximum, runs perfect at maximum on the 1070. And since the 1000 series includes a number of features to make VR more efficient, which developers have not started using yet, I think it is unlikely there will be any future games that will benefit from anything more than a 1070.

 

[comanzo]

Both the HTC Vive and Occulus are limited to 90fps and 2160x1200 resolution, so at some point improving your GPU will cease to give you any gains. I am currently running a GTX 1070 (I also have my old GTX 760 installed as a dedicated PhysX processor), and can run every game at maximum quality without a problem, so in my opinion anything above a 1070 is a waste of money if you're just doing VR or 1080p. Even NVIDIA's VR Funhouse, which claims you need a 1070 to run on low, a 1080 to run on medium, and dual 1080s to run at maximum, runs perfect at maximum on the 1070. And since the 1000 series includes a number of features to make VR more efficient, which developers have not started using yet, I think it is unlikely there will be any future games that will benefit from anything more than a 1070.

Ok. Thanks for the helpful information. I was worried that at maximum settings, it wouldn't reach the maximum 90fps. I knew it would still be smooth and responsive to play vr, but I didn't think it would stay at 90fps at max settings. I thought only a 1080 can do that job. Thanks for the info. as there really isn't much benchmarks for vr yet.

 

[JakePC12]

Think about it this way.
GTX 1060 = 0-10 percent better than 980
GTX 1070 = 5-15 percent better than 980 Ti
GTX 1080 = 0-15 percent better than Titan X

By 0 percent I mean it may be same performance or very near.

 

[comanzo]

Think about it this way.
GTX 1060 = 0-10 percent better than 980
GTX 1070 = 5-15 percent better than 980 Ti
GTX 1080 = 0-15 percent better than Titan X

By 0 percent I mean it may be same performance or very near.

The only thing I am confused about is that the 980ti is equal to or slightly worse than Titan X(Maxwell) in terms of performance. So saying that the 1070 is 5-15% better than 980ti means it's also better than the 1080. That isn't true. I think you meant to say the 1080 is 0-15% worse than titan X(Pascal) in vr performance. Please clarify if this is what you meant instead.

 

[rav007]

Both the HTC Vive and Occulus are limited to 90fps and 2160x1200 resolution, so at some point improving your GPU will cease to give you any gains. I am currently running a GTX 1070 (I also have my old GTX 760 installed as a dedicated PhysX processor), and can run every game at maximum quality without a problem, so in my opinion anything above a 1070 is a waste of money if you're just doing VR or 1080p. Even NVIDIA's VR Funhouse, which claims you need a 1070 to run on low, a 1080 to run on medium, and dual 1080s to run at maximum, runs perfect at maximum on the 1070. And since the 1000 series includes a number of features to make VR more efficient, which developers have not started using yet, I think it is unlikely there will be any future games that will benefit from anything more than a 1070.

This is exactly how I saw it too. The VR headsets have a resolution that is fixed and exactly 25% more pixels than 1080p. So if the maths translates correctly, if you find which of the GTX 1060/1070/1080 can give you the desired frame rate (60fps/90fps) at the headset's resolution, its very rough calculation but that would be the way I would choose the GPU. I think I will go for the GTX 1060 in a laptop as I prefer the portability, and I don't care about VR right now, but if I do want it in future I know it should do ok on low to medium settings given they have pitched the 1060 as "VR ready" too. If it wasn't worthy of producing decent VR results, I dont think they would claim it is VR ready as a single card... and of course you can't SLI it either so it must be capable on its own.

 

[ajpaolello]

Sounds like a good plan.

 

[Riza__]

I have GTX 1070, and it runs everything so smooth at 1440p, and also 4k for over 60fps if you turn some settings down. I think if you sacrifice on cheaper motherboard and case instead of high end one, you can get GTX 1080 from my calculation.

 

[Rogerthedev]

Both the HTC Vive and Occulus are limited to 90fps and 2160x1200 resolution, so at some point improving your GPU will cease to give you any gains. I am currently running a GTX 1070 (I also have my old GTX 760 installed as a dedicated PhysX processor), and can run every game at maximum quality without a problem, so in my opinion anything above a 1070 is a waste of money if you're just doing VR or 1080p. Even NVIDIA's VR Funhouse, which claims you need a 1070 to run on low, a 1080 to run on medium, and dual 1080s to run at maximum, runs perfect at maximum on the 1070. And since the 1000 series includes a number of features to make VR more efficient, which developers have not started using yet, I think it is unlikely there will be any future games that will benefit from anything more than a 1070.

This is exactly how I saw it too. The VR headsets have a resolution that is fixed and exactly 25% more pixels than 1080p. So if the maths translates correctly, if you find which of the GTX 1060/1070/1080 can give you the desired frame rate (60fps/90fps) at the headset's resolution, its very rough calculation but that would be the way I would choose the GPU. I think I will go for the GTX 1060 in a laptop as I prefer the portability, and I don't care about VR right now, but if I do want it in future I know it should do ok on low to medium settings given they have pitched the 1060 as "VR ready" too. If it wasn't worthy of producing decent VR results, I dont think they would claim it is VR ready as a single card... and of course you can't SLI it either so it must be capable on its own.

I asked the VR guru at a very well know specialist retailer this question, and his answer was basically this: In order to avoid the serve nausea problems that would kill off a VR system, the Vive spec enforced that all Vivd software must run at 90fps on all hardware that meets their minimum spec. Although with non-VR games the software usualy has configurable quality options to utilise faster hardware, they won't do this in VR as you will get people trying to run with higher quality settings than their hardware will properly support, causeing nausea inducing lag and getting the game a bad reputation, and possibly causing legal hassles. His advice was that the 1060 was more than enough, which makes sense as it is the Vive RECOMMENDED spec - the minimum, which will still run all software perfectly, is the 970. The only reason he recommended the 1060 to me was that as I might be doing some dev on the system, the 1060 would give me leeway to run dev tools and screen recorders at the same time as the software. Considering the high cost of Vive kit, and the fact that sales if it are only just starting to lift off, I would be pretty confident that the current Vive headset will be around for a good few years yet, and so the PC hardware requirements will not increase. For the same reason, there seems little point in paying a lot more to 'future proof' - by the time that future arrives, you will probably be able to buy a card thats more than twice as fast for less than the difference in price between a 1060 and 1080.

Roger

 

[Frankmathis]

I just took my 1070 1TB Alienware back to exchange for the 1080 2Tb for200.00 more. I think it was definitely worth the extra 200 bucks, I've noticed this newer unit is stomping on the performance of the previous one. For 200 bucks just having the knowledge that you've got the top dog is a good sense of good feelings. I noticed some cheapness of the 1070 I really did, yes it ran stuff, and it was not to bad, but there were problems over and over with it dropping and freezing here and there. This newer system feels like an old broke in shoe, it's comfortable with everything and you'll definitely notice what. I'm talking about if you compared the 2 like I've done. They aren't putting the 1080 out to us for nothing, it's like an old familiar soul with this new stuff. The 1070 is almost there but feels not as polished. I like polished, I think the oculus is getting more polished especially with the touch controllers, but I happen to have the bucks to make the leap. The 1070 isn't bad, I feel like it's just not as polished, there is a comfort in knowing you've got the best out of the heap. True story

 

[larsv8]

You don't have the best, you need a Titan for that =P

 

[bit_user]

if you lag behind you can always plop another in and run in VR SLI (one card per eye)

Edit: I haven't found up-to-date information on this, but it appears SLI support for VR is possible & might work in some titles.

 

[Sakkura]

if you lag behind you can always plop another in and run in VR SLI (one card per eye)

Wrong.

Last I checked, no VR HMD supported SLI. It seems to make sense: one GPU per eye. So logical, but the latency of having to send duplicate data to a second GPU probably kills the benefit. At least, that's the best explanation I can imagine. Maybe it'll eventually happen...

And then there's the point that 1060 can't do SLI anyway, while 1070 surely doesn't need it (for current VR).

Both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support VR SLI (which is completely different from regular SLI). However, very little content supports it so far.

 

[bit_user]

Both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support VR SLI (which is completely different from regular SLI). However, very little content supports it so far.

VR SLI provides increased performance for virtual reality apps where multiple GPUs can be assigned a specific eye to dramatically accelerate stereo rendering. With the GPU affinity API, VR SLI allows scaling for systems with more than 2 GPUs.

Source: https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks

AMD also allegedly has support for Crossfire, in VR. I'm not sure how broadly it's supported, or whether it affects latency.

I'm not having an easy time finding information about either.

 

[Sakkura]

AMD also allegedly has support for Crossfire, in VR. I'm not sure how broadly it's supported, or whether it affects latency.

I'm not having an easy time finding information about either.

Yes, AMD has multi-GPU in their LiquidVR SDK. They just aren't calling it Crossfire, because it is completely different. Nvidia is potentially confusing some people with the VR SLI name, despite it being completely different from SLI.

Neither VR SLI nor AMD's LiquidVR multi-GPU is supported by many games so far. In fact I haven't heard of any. The Unreal engine did add support recently, but then games need to be built on top of that.

 

[ryudoadema]

For the original question, and to refute several answers that said performance gains stop at the resolution of the headset- this is not true. SuperSampling really increases the perceived clarity/resolution of the headsets and right now the ceiling for this cannot be met by any current graphics card. I can set SS to 1.3 or 1.4 in most games with a gtx 1070. Setting it higher I can see how better everything looks, but the framerate drops to crap. I've read that 1.5-1.7 is about what the 1080 can normally hit. So there is definitely increases in performance (well really just graphical fidelity) with the 1080 or above. It's really just a matter of how much these increases are worth it to you. I can say I've gotten stuck chasing the next best, and have been considering a 1080 or 1080ti when it comes out for a while now, lol.