Brad Chacos: 6 Core Piledriver offers great VR experience

superstition

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Surprised to see this, since it doesn't even have the full four FPU units of the 8 core FX chips.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3117782/computers/tested-this-all-amd-650-pc-proves-vr-ready-rigs-dont-have-to-be-expensive.html

PC World said:
This affordable VR PC is powered by AMD's FX-6350 and Radeon RX 480. I often hear people say you’ll need to spend about $1,000 on a PC for VR. Nothing could be further from the truth—and it’s all thanks to AMD.

FX chips aren’t even mentioned in Oculus Rift’s PC requirements, but many of them indeed power VR experiences, and for far less cost than the Intel Core i5-4590 ($195 on Amazon) Oculus recommends.
PC World said:
Neither Oculus nor HTC officially support the FX-6350 and I feared I'd be transported into a juddering digital world of dropped frames that would instantly spur Exorcist-style vomiting.

I had nothing to worry about. Through it all, AMD’s DIY rig delivered a rock-solid virtual reality experience free of jarring frames drops and stuttering, no matter how quickly I whirled my head around or how hot and heavy the onscreen action became.
PC World said:
If there’s a weak spot in this build, it’s that affordable but years-old FX-6350 chip. So I leaned on it. To do so I created some truly fantastic contraptions in Fantastic Contraption. The game’s indeed fantastic—wondrous, even—but more importantly for our purposes, it’s a game rife with physics-based interactions that need to be handled by the processor. To test the FX-6350’s limits, I spawned a slew of wheels and sticks and balloons and more, cobbled them together like some sort of cartoonish Frankenstein, and set the monstrosity in motion while I whipped my head around. It didn’t deliver the game’s floating jelly ball to its pink goal. But it ran flawlessly. Like I said: Experiencing virtual reality with AMD’s $650 PC feels great.
PC World said:
If you find a $200 Radeon RX 480 and follow the tweaks above you could conceivably drive the final cost of the PC down to $550 or so before a Windows license. That’s almost half the cost of the $1,000 many people cite for a VR-ready PC. Hot damn.

AMD powers about a quarter of all PCs connected to Steam, and chips like the FX-6350 and FX-8350 are beloved by PC gamers on a budget. This system proves not only that VR-ready PCs can be built for significantly less than most people think, but that a horde of FX-packing PC gamers are just a $200 Radeon RX 480 graphics card upgrade away from being able to experience virtual reality. That’s eye-opening. Then again, the sky-high cost of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are just as eye-opening—but that’s a whole other article.
This article makes it sound like getting the 8320E + UD3P Micro Center bundle and overclocking somewhere around 4.2 to 4.4 is the way to go for a budget VR build. You get all four FP units that way.
 
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I can't imagine buying into a Piledriver today. Go Intel, or if you really need to have AMD, wait for Zen.
 

superstition

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I can't imagine buying into a Piledriver today.
Budget. Given how well the 3 FPU unit 6 core FX chip performs in VR an 8320E Micro Center combo is likely to be unbeatable for a budget VR box.

Since the GPU is clearly the major factor it seems unnecessary to spend additional money beyond a CPU that costs basically $50 (plus tax) with the bundle pricing factored in. If one doesn't have a Micro Center near then I don't know how great the deal is. The high cost of a headset makes keeping the cost of the PC down helpful.

I just checked and saw that the UD3P is on rebate now, too. So, it's $90 for the CPU and $30 for the board (after rebate), with the bundle, or $50 and $70 if you prefer to think of the bundle as saving on the CPU.

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$149.78 with tax before $20 rebate. Roughly $130 after.

Adding a 140mm tower cooler adds a bit to the cost but investing in CPU cooling is an investment that can easily carry over to the next build.
 
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Keeping the CPU at stock speeds and lowering voltage may be the way to go if you don't want to purchase another cooler. I've been running my FX-8350 at 3.7Ghz @ 1.175V all summer due to living in a vintage apartment with no AC. The CPU keeps so cool (30-43C) under a cheap $17 TX3.
 

DrMrLordX

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Getting chip + board in that combo for $150 is about as cheap as it needs to be to be compelling. If you can drive VR with that . . . go for it.
 

superstition

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With the rebate it's around $130 with tax included, not counting the Deux Ex code if you care about that.

Scholzpdx said:
Keeping the CPU at stock speeds and lowering voltage may be the way to go if you don't want to purchase another cooler. I've been running my FX-8350 at 3.7Ghz @ 1.175V all summer due to living in a vintage apartment with no AC. The CPU keeps so cool (30-43C) under a cheap $17 TX3.
The stock fan on the 8320E is teeny tiny, half as thick as on the 8370E. It's not going to work at all for overclocking.
 

superstition

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Getting chip + board in that combo for $150 is about as cheap as it needs to be to be compelling. If you can drive VR with that . . . go for it.
Anandtech didn't think of the FX chips in its article when talking about building a VR system:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9793/best-cpus

I don't remember if it was Mr. Cutress or Mr. Smith but one of them claimed, in the comments section of an article about eight months ago, that Anandtech readers don't care about the FX processors. The question was raised why CPU reviews only have the weaker APUs in them to compare with Intel's parts. I guess they care more about something like this (from the linked article above):

Cutress said:
I’m going to put an honourable mention here to a Xeon part because the fact that it exists: the E7-8893 v4. This is a highly focused and optimised part for eight socket servers, and chances are you can only buy it from select Intel partners (Supermicro, Dell, HPE, Tyan) anyway, but it gets around the quad core plus eDRAM by just having a large L3 cache. This part uses the high-end desktop silicon die design, and Intel has opened it up to have a full 60MB of L3 cache for only four cores, and these cores run at 3.2-3.5 GHz. Sounds fancy, especially when you can have eight in one system. The only drawback is the price: $6841 each at tray (1k unit) price. If you believe the Amazon reseller actually has them, they’re currently available for $7785.

That definitely seems more relevant to the average Anandtech reader than the apparent fact that a cheap FX bundle can power a good VR experience.
 
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TheELF

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That definitely seems more relevant to the average Anandtech reader than the apparent fact that a cheap FX bundle can power a good VR experience.
Take a second look at what the article is testing...
SteamVR will pass any CPU because it's ridiculous and resembles games from 1998 and the rest of what he tests is about the same level,very basic simple games.
Any CPU would give you a good experience if those are your criteria.
Sadly most people want to play games like project cars, fallout and AAA titles in general and if you don't want to drop below 60 on these kind of games you will need a lot more money.
 
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Would anybody really spend $800 on a cutting edge VR headset only to pair it with a system powered by a Piledriver CPU or even a system that costs less than the VR headset?
 
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superstition

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Would anybody really spend $800 on a cutting edge VR headset only to pair it with a system powered by a Piledriver CPU or even a system that costs less than the VR headset?
Schools, for one thing.

That's why they buy Dell systems with the worst-quality optical mice ever made — mice that cause immediate carpal tunnel pain in one's wrist because they are so non-ergonomic. These systems are made to be as cheap to build as possible but they get the job done. In fact, the Dells our university's IT managers decided were good enough to be the standard for bulk purchases shipped with only VGA cables to use to connect them to monitors with DVI — resulting in noticeably inferior visual quality.

If an IT manager is too cheap to get a DVI cable and a mouse that doesn't cause carpal tunnel in short order then paying more than twice the price for an Intel CPU can be a problem.

Saving money on one part of a system means more money for other things. If the FX setup offers a good VR experience then that's saving that can go to another purchase.

Plus, that article praised APUs for being inexpensive. So, why is it that an inexpensive APU that offers worse CPU performance in comparison with an inexpensive mildly overclocked FX such a great deal? Power consumption? Big deal. If we're talking about 9000 series FX chips maybe that's a fair point. If we're talking about an 8320E at 4.2 GHz it's really not.

And, as for the interesting claim that Anandtech's readers don't care about FX chips, let them see the data in the charts and decide for themselves when doing a comprehensive CPU report (like Broadwell C and Skylake). Put one 8 core FX at 4.5 GHz as a data point. It's not that hard to do.
 
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superstition

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Schools can use their money for better things than VR.
Let them eat cake.

Fact is that VR is more important for education than for any other thing.

Virtual chemistry labs with dangerous ingredients.

Virtual surgery.

Immersive foreign language-learning settings.

etc.

I know enthusiasts tend to think of little besides gaming, stability testing, and benchmarks — but there is a lot of opportunity in VR for more important things.
 
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