AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance: Island 359

[Unreal123]

Let's first get the ugliness out of the way. AMD and its drivers seem to be broken currently in Island 359 with both the AMD R9 Fury X and RX 480. Given that we saw no scaling at all with the RX 480, no matter what IQ settings we used, the performance just does not seem correct. There is no way we can suggest you buy an AMD GPU to play Island 359 at this time. I would expect to see better performance in this game if, or rather when, AMD gets its driver team paying more attention to VR gaming. There seems to be a huge discrepancy between resources being allocated by AMD and NVIDIA when it comes to actual VR gaming consumption.



Moving to the GTX 1060, we saw better performance, but not enough to give you the gaming experience you will be wanting in a game like this. Yes, the GTX 1060 will get you to solid non-Reprojection play in Island 359, but as I discussed above, "Low" IQ is not likely going to give you the gaming experience you desire. I consider the GTX 1060 truly an entry-point VR product for GPU-intensive titles and it shows to be just that today.



The GTX 1070 is the sweetspot when it comes to Island 359. It will get you to the level of image quality and gameplay I think you would greatly benefit from in this game. It pushes the edge of the Reprojection envelope, but just close enough so as to not be an immersion-killing distraction.



The GTX 1080 and TITAN X Pascal GPUs are more than enough to play at Medium IQ and easily have enough performance to allow you to scale up Island 359's IQ knobs, sliders, and presets as you see fit. To that point, this game gives you a plethora of IQ settings to adjust to your preference as well, which is something I would like to give big kudos to CloudGate Studio for doing. Island 359 is truly being held back by the HMD hardware rather than your video card, and that is something that will surely evolve in the future.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/09/01/amd_nvidia_gpu_vr_performance_island_359/6#.V8hmTq2XolA

 

[Bacon1]

I would expect to see better performance in this game if, or rather when, AMD gets its driver team paying more attention to VR gaming. There seems to be a huge discrepancy between resources being allocated by AMD and NVIDIA when it comes to actual VR gaming consumption.

Neither AMD nor Nvidia have released "Game Ready" drivers for this title, which is based on Unreal Engine 4 (heavy Nvidia bias) and came out 2 weeks ago.

Probably because it only has under 3000 owners, 200+ of which refunded it in the last two days.

http://steamspy.com/app/476700 and
https://steamdb.info/app/476700/graphs/

with a whopping 51 most active players at a time (3 right now, 15 last 24hr), I just can't believe that AMD hasn't spent the resources to develop drivers for this Early Access game.

The GTX 1080 and TITAN X Pascal GPUs are more than enough to play at Medium IQ

Oh goodie, I only need to spend $700-1200 for quality gameplay at medium IQ settings with the ability to turn some settings up.

Maybe, just maybe, [H] should spend their limited time and resources to testing released games or at least popular ones.

Funny how they didn't want to test Ashes of the Singularity because it was an Early Access title and constantly changing (this was 6+ months after first announced), yet they are willing to test these completely fresh of the boat with no optimization EA titles no problem.

Why aren't they blaming developers for not optimizing for both sets of hardware, instead blaming AMD for not providing drivers for a game with a dozen active players?

 

[Alqoxzt]

Is new SMP hardware found in Pascal and Polaris being used in upcoming vr titles or not?

 

[Unreal123]

wrong post.

 

[Unreal123]

Nvidia has a native advantage on engine like Cry Engine, Unreal Engine, Unity Engine and Frost Bite engine due to Nvapi and VR Works.

 

[Unreal123]

Neither AMD nor Nvidia have released "Game Ready" drivers for this title, which is based on Unreal Engine 4 (heavy Nvidia bias) and came out 2 weeks ago.

Probably because it only has under 3000 owners, 200+ of which refunded it in the last two days.

http://steamspy.com/app/476700 and
https://steamdb.info/app/476700/graphs/

with a whopping 51 most active players at a time (3 right now, 15 last 24hr), I just can't believe that AMD hasn't spent the resources to develop drivers for this Early Access game.



Oh goodie, I only need to spend $700-1200 for quality gameplay at medium IQ settings with the ability to turn some settings up.

Maybe, just maybe, [H] should spend their limited time and resources to testing released games or at least popular ones.

Funny how they didn't want to test Ashes of the Singularity because it was an Early Access title and constantly changing (this was 6+ months after first announced), yet they are willing to test these completely fresh of the boat with no optimization EA titles no problem.

Why aren't they blaming developers for not optimizing for both sets of hardware, instead blaming AMD for not providing drivers for a game with a dozen active players?

Did anyone blamed Hitman developer for such bad performance on Nvidia hardware? No some poster directly insulted JHH.
Did anyone blame CA for a terrible performance of Nvidia on Dx12?

 

[tviceman]

No matter what game engine has been used in all of hardocp's VR tests, AMD's equal counter parts have been lagging behind Nvidia's.

AMD has a dx12 advantage, Nvidia has a VR advantage. AMD doesn't have any high end GPUs, so their DX12 advantage is limited to midrange and slower hardware.

 

[Unreal123]

No matter what game engine has been used in all of hardocp's VR tests, AMD's equal counter parts have been lagging behind Nvidia's.

AMD has a dx12 advantage, Nvidia has a VR advantage. AMD doesn't have any high end GPUs, so their DX12 advantage is limited to midrange and slower hardware.

There is really something from AMD side if a GTX 1060 is providing a smoother and better experience then a AMD best card Fury X in VR.

 

[antihelten]

Did anyone blamed Hitman developer for such bad performance on Nvidia hardware? No some poster directly insulted JHH.

That's ironic coming from you, since you were blaming AMD for Nvidia's issues in Hitman.

 

[tviceman]

That's ironic coming from you, since you were blaming AMD for Nvidia's issues in Hitman.

How can I LOL this post?

 

[Krteq]

Nvidia has a native advantage on engine like Cry Engine, Unreal Engine, Unity Engine and Frost Bite engine due to Nvapi and VR Works.

Well, this info is new for me. None of these engines have VRworks implemented and NVAPI is a nvidia own driver middleware.

Can you please explain what exactly do you mean by that claim?

 

[pj-]

Neither AMD nor Nvidia have released "Game Ready" drivers for this title, which is based on Unreal Engine 4 (heavy Nvidia bias) and came out 2 weeks ago.

Probably because it only has under 3000 owners, 200+ of which refunded it in the last two days.

Blah blah blah.

The numbers are pathetic but this game is relevant to the tiny amount of people who care about VR. [H] is catering to a niche that no one else does. If you want coverage of popular games there are dozens of sites that do exactly that. Can't we have one that benchmarks VR? Is it only a problem to you because AMD has performed terribly in every single one of these tests?