Upgrade current PC for Oculus, or New PC, or Wait?

serya · Feb 10, 2019

I have a system that is going on 5 years old, have not touched it in that time. I tend to have one built, don't overclock, and then eventually have another built based on what the sim racing forums suggest for a decent setup, not newest high end cards, ends up under $2,000 (not because of a budget). I use a single screen and would like to try Oculus Rift this year.

Current specs are:

W7 64 Bit
CPU: Intel Core i7- 4790k 4.4 Ghz (LGA 1150)
GPU: GeForce GTX 970 4GB
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-Gaming GT LGA 1150
16 GB RAM DDR3
C Drive: Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD
PSU: 600 Watt

Is there any video card and/or CPU upgrade you would suggest with the MB and setup I already have, or should I go for a new rig? Is this year good timing or wait another year?

Thanks for your input.

mr Sw1tchblade · Feb 10, 2019

I think you can buy 1080ti and then wait till 2021 (ddr5, new socket for amd cpu and so on)

Terry Rock · Feb 10, 2019

mr Sw1tchblade said:
I think you can buy 1080ti and then wait till 2021 (ddr5, new socket for amd cpu and so on)

He won't even have to wait that long.
@serya...That I7-4790k coupled with a GTX1080Ti will serve you well for VR until you can see what AMD does in a few months.
I had the I7-3820 with initially a GTX1070...then switched to a GTX1080 Ti, right up until a few weeks ago.
Both cards ran exceptionally well in VR.
Mine, was a lesser CPU than yours, it was also running lesser clocks at 3.8 GHz.
You should have no issues at all.
My only reason for upgrading was, I'd built the computer since 2012 and just wanted to experiment with Ryzen processors.

Michael Lowe · Feb 10, 2019

I won't list my whole specs, but I'm still rocking an i5 2500k! That combined with a 1080 gives me a very good vr experience. So get that 1080ti, pick up what is a pretty cheap rift, and prepare to enjoy yourself.

David Turnbull · Feb 11, 2019

The 4790k is a beast of a cpu for the age of it, I've just "upgraded" mine to a 9600k and for single core performance theres really not much diffrence, most sim/racing games still rely on the highest single core clock to give performance and the 4790k at 4.4ghz vs the 9600k at 4.6ghz is virtually the same, maybe 5-10% that isnt noticed much in real world terms.

What its shown me is that I sort of made the wrong choice with the 9600k over the 4790k, but as the top end socket 1150 cpu i had nowhere to go and the new platform gives me upgrade options.

So in a nutshell, the cpu you have is fine for a while yet, add a 1080ti or 2080 and the cpu wont bottleneck VR