What will I gain with a GPU upgrade?

lovemesomespeed · Dec 17, 2020

As the title says, I’m wondering what I will gain when I upgrade my 1080Ti to one of the 3000 series cards (either 3080 or 3090). I race 100% in VR. I’ve got the Reverb G2. I mostly race iRacing and PCars 2.

Obviously, better graphics. But - in what way? Will my HMD look less pixelated? (I would think not if I’m running at full resolution). Will my draw distance improve? (Every now and then I see a distant building, trees, fence, etc just “pop” into existence). Or will it strictly be an increase in FPS?

This is my first gaming PC so I’ve never experienced a GPU upgrade before.

Des Pearce · Dec 17, 2020

Are you running 100% in steam vr? 50% will not give you full resolution in the headset, I'm running a 3080 and both iRacing and PC2 run comfortably at 90hz with graphics settings turned up a decent amount and the resolution set at 80%. The only title I'm still disappointed in is ACC which I can't get to look how I'd like without tanking the frame rate.

lovemesomespeed · Dec 17, 2020

Des Pearce said:
Are you running 100% in steam vr? 50% will not give you full resolution in the headset, I'm running a 3080 and both iRacing and PC2 run comfortably at 90hz with graphics settings turned up a decent amount and the resolution set at 80%. The only title I'm still disappointed in is ACC which I can't get to look how I'd like without tanking the frame rate.

Actually... that is a good question that I will look into when I get home... I assumed I was running full resolution because I didn’t mess with anything when I first installed and set it all up. I was thinking the default would be full res and I’d have to turn it down if my 1080Ti wasn’t up to snuff.

Des Pearce · Dec 17, 2020

It caused a bit of confusion a couple of weeks ago. The default 100% steam resolution is over 3000 pixels by 3000 per eye, it seems excessive but the explanation about pincushion and barrel distortion made sense. I suspect Steam may decrease 100% to less than the current figure.

From memory my original reverb was around 2420 x 2360 pixels at 100% in steam which made it easier to run with the 2070 super i had. If I turn the G2 down to the same resolution then the 3080 is around 40-50% better in vr than the 2070 super (which had similar performance to your current card i think).

lovemesomespeed · Dec 19, 2020

Just checked - I have been running the G2 with 100% resolution in Steam VR.

2stains · Dec 19, 2020

Are you running a old Intel 2700k or a modern AMD 5800x or any of the many many CPU's inbetween? This is really needed to know if we are to really evaluate your gains moving GPU tier

lovemesomespeed · Dec 20, 2020

2stains said:
Are you running a old Intel 2700k or a modern AMD 5800x or any of the many many CPU's inbetween? This is really needed to know if we are to really evaluate your gains moving GPU tier

I’m running an i9 10900K.

RasmusP · Dec 21, 2020

lovemesomespeed said:
I’m running an i9 10900K.

So that's not a limiting factor then!

So know what you'd gain from upgrading you should do two things (not sure if that's so easy for vr though):

1. Simulate the quality upgrade.
Just put everything a good step higher. Put the hmd to 100% resolution (or maybe 120), put every setting one or two clicks higher.
This will probably stutter but you'll see the image quality when standing still.
Worth an upgrade?

2. Simulate fps gain.
Do the opposite of 1. and put everything lower. Is the gain in fluidity worth an upgrade?

A new gpu will give you both!

But first note down your current settings and if you can see the fps, note them down too.
Then look at a benchmark from a good tech magazine (Gamersnexus, pcgameshardware, guru3d) and note down the difference from 1080ti to your upgrade-gpu.

If the difference is for example 1.7x, then you can increase the settings in step 1. until your fps are your current fps divided by 1.7 and for step 2. you can lower your settings until you have 1.7x your current fps.

As far as I know though, in VR you can't just disable fps limiters and vsync and see your not - limited fps...
So if you wanna be "accurate", you'd need something like the oculus tray tool to see the "headroom". But I have no idea how to find out the needed data with a G2.

The "2 clicks up and down" rule will give you a little idea though.
And the resolution setting ofc too.