Thinking about new VR system, suggestions?

[lakedude]

Cheap way:

Stick a new video card in a I7-3770S Ivy Bridge system and call it good.

I see both Best Buy and NewEgg have GTX 1080 cards for around $600. The Best Buy deal is for the founder's edition. It must be purchased in store and the closest store with one in stock is a hours away. The NewEgg one is the small form factor card which at first glance I like a lot. No worrying about fitting it in the case.

If I do get a new system I'm looking at the i7 8700 at around $300 ( I see a 65 watt and a 95 watt version). I'm open to motherboard suggestions here. Normally I'd cheap out on the maid board but I seem to recall an article explaining quite a difference in features between variants. The AMD chips were more attractive when they first came out but now the 8700 looks very nice with 6 cores and high clocks as well.

As far as the VR headset goes I'm completely open to suggestions. I like the Vive but I'd prefer something with higher resolution. The Vive Pro seems very expensive. I'm seeing Pimax VR with single or even dual 3840*2160 resolution. While I enjoyed the Vive, the screen door effect was off putting, especially at first. StarVR also seems to have a high res headset.

Pimax is suggesting a 1080 Ti or even SLI for their 8K headset because that is a lot of pixels... I was thinking maybe their 4K headset might be nice.

I could even be talked into getting a PS4 and Sony VR.

 

[lakedude]

No one has any opinions about a 3770 vs 8700 vs 8700K?

About a mother board or at least class of motherboard for a 8700?

About a Vive/Vive Pro vs Rift vs Pimax vs PS4?

About purchasing a 1080 now or waiting for the Bit Coin crash?

Maybe one of those all in one $300 headsets like the TiYiViRi Virtual Reality VR Headset 2560p Resolution HD Screen 360° Panorama Support TF Card And HDMI Input For PS4 Xbox?


https://www.amazon.com/TiYiViRi-Virtual-Reality-Resolution-Panorama/dp/B0797PT8MZ

 

[fastamdman]

I would go with the 8700k for VR all day. It's a great cpu, extremely powerful, has high clocks / IPC which is great for gaming and it's a great overclocking chip. The majority of them can be pushed to 5ghz without any issues.

As far as purchasing now or waiting for bitcoin to crash, I would purchase now. Bitcoin has stabilized and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The market will fluctuate slightly, but we aren't going to be seeing big swings (in my opinion) anytime soon. It's going to fluctuate between 8k and 9k for awhile (months).

I can't recommend anything VR related as I don't have a lot of experience with it. Hardware wise I can tell you that my gtx 1080 and my 8700k run it without an issue. My buddy has a Vive and we both had a lot of fun with it, but for me personally, I'm not gonna drop the money on it.

Also, it helps to know your budget, as things can get pretty expensive pretty quick. Especially if you are building an entire machine from scratch.

Oh and for motherboards, there are a ton of good brands out there. As long as it's a z370 board from either asus, msi or gigabyte you are good to go. Personally, I really like the asus line of Hero and strix, but that is my personal preference.

I do know newegg was just running a sale on 1080s a few days ago for like 560 dollars or so. Might go back on sale next weekend, might wanna look out for that

 

[lakedude]

I've decided to keep the old i7-3770S rig and put in a GTX1070. I love the i7-8700k but a whole new rig would be getting a bit expensive. My laptop just bit the dust so some money went that way. It is going to be the GTX 1070 for $420.

Newegg had a i7-8700 (not the K) rig with a GTX 1080 on sale for $1500, if it was the 8700K I might have jumped on it before the laptop died.

My budget is flexible. There is enough money to buy any computer hardware but I'm about value (which is why there is enough money).

I really like the Vive but that is the only headset I've tried. I didn't care for the "screen-door" or the tether but I enjoyed the experience. The "pro" is just so darn expensive. I might drop $300 to make it the headset wireless but that can wait.

 

[fastamdman]

I think you will get acceptable frame rates with that setup. If you don't need multiple machines, the best route would to be to sell your current rig and to grab used hardware on the forums. This would allow you to recover a lot of your costs.

Really, all you need is a motherboard, 120 bucks, cpu 350 bucks, and video card 600 bucks. So for under a grand you have a top of the line gaming system that will last for YEARS. Sell off the old hardware and you recoup even more.

When it comes to VR there is nothing worse than a choppy and laggy experience. It can make you sick, literally and it ruins the experience.

 

[lakedude]

I've been comparing GPUs for grins. That 7850 was not a bad card for the money ($247.32 six years ago). The GTX-1070 might be what twice as fast? But it costs nearly twice as much...

The really interesting comparison is between the new laptop which is going to have a GTX 1050 Ti mobile and the old HD 7850 desktop. It looks like this comes out about even (or maybe in favor of the 1050 Ti) which is remarkable. A light portable $650 laptop is going to be as good as the desktop (with the original 7850 card) and far better than the old $1300 laptop. I'm as excited about the laptop as the new GPU and VR stuff.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-Mobile-vs-AMD-HD-7850/m223242vs2182

 

[lakedude]

Darn glad I didn't end up with that 1070 from Walmart. The 1080 is now at a similar price. Wimped out and have a GearVR coming, after getting an S8. Might go room scale someday but for now the phone will do the trick.

 

[HeXen]

Some of the upcoming VR gear will require a minimum of 1080 but probably a Ti would be preferred. Most notably the Pimax 8k and StarVR One.
I have a regular 1080 GTX with my 8700 i7 CPU and using the Rift, it's honestly not enough so I'm skeptical the Ti will be all that great for the Pimax 8k. Framerate's for some of the more graphical intensive games suck and give me a headache within an hour of playing. Just today I was playing Robinson Journey and sure enough it started making my head hurt and had to quit. Without getting a true 90fps or higher, it's just no good for me personally.