I finally have the answer!

I finally have the answer to the "age old" question of: Why do you need more than 4 cores for your CPU if you are just going to game?

Virtual Reality.

Running the same game in VR versus non-VR causes my CPU utilization to go up by an additional 12% to 25%...depending on the game.


Oh - VR also solves the "Why do I need more than 16 GB of RAM?" question too. The Oculus run time uses between 2 and 4 GB...depending on the game.

Good to know other reasons!!! Four cores/threads many would consider to be a minimum for gaming these days in the first place. A 2c/4t CPU just places a low glass ceiling on too many titles it seems to be considered (IMO).

Thank you, sir! This is excellent! Probably due to small offset of both eyes, addition nal processing is necessary

Yeah.

But every time someone comes to this forum and asks if they should go xx or yy core processor...the question always comes up as to what you are going to do with it.

Blah...blah...blah...

I just figured I would add a new wrinkle!

(VR is wayyyy cool...the technology is about 80% "there". It will be successful and be at 100% soon. My theory on emerging technologies is simple: if it can be used for pron then it will be successful - hehe)

Interesting observations there. I'm not sure we're needing more than 16GB ram yet, but 8GB is insufficient for higher end gaming.

On the CPU cores, I wonder if there is much of a difference between made for VR content, as opposed to monitor display content that also supports VR? As a further thought, it is generally considered you need more CPU at higher frame rates. PC VR currently has a target minimum of 90 fps, so if the monitor version isn't already doing that, could that be a factor too?

mackerel said:

Interesting observations there. I'm not sure we're needing more than 16GB ram yet, but 8GB is insufficient for higher end gaming.

Click to expand...

Folks are successful running VR with 8 GB and 16 GB of RAM...however, you will be playing the "Windows Swap File" game. Standard Windows 10 uses 3.5 GB-ish...Oculus 2 to 4 GB...the game 2 to 4 GB...your GPU needs a chunk (depending on the GPU VRAM)...

mackerel said:

On the CPU cores, I wonder if there is much of a difference between made for VR content, as opposed to monitor display content that also supports VR? As a further thought, it is generally considered you need more CPU at higher frame rates. PC VR currently has a target minimum of 90 fps, so if the monitor version isn't already doing that, could that be a factor too?

Click to expand...

Yes - VR targets 90 FPS for 2 "monitors".

You have additional CPU processing demand for:

- the "second" monitor (it's displaying an entirely different image...not like running across spanned/surround displays)
- Oculus uses ASW (Asynchronous Time Warp) technology to "boost" the FPS to 90 even if your PC can't render both displays at 90 FPS
--- If your PC can't keep up, the ASW technology caps the frame rate at 45 FPS and "interpolates" the other frames
--- This interpolation must use CPU cycles
- it has to process input from the position tracking sensors for the head positioning
- it has to process input from both hand sensors

I'm not sure how it works with HTC Vive though...

I haven't checked, but my gut feeling is if you're hitting swap with 16GB of ram while gaming, you're doing something wrong. Maybe close the 40 Chrome tabs in the background? 8GB is kinda borderline for modern high end titles, actually worse if you have a low end GPU which will texture swap into ram. A higher end system as might be used with VR, I'm assuming this is not the case.

While displaying the two eyes, yes, there are two viewpoints, but a lot of the data will be common between them. The 3D world only needs to exist once, the variation due only to the viewpoint. I don't know how much more that might take.

On Rift, if you're hitting ASW big time, you probably have an inadequate system as a whole. It's an interesting trick to allow VR to run on lower end hardware, but it has its problems and I don't consider it something to rely on if you want a great experience.

Not an expert on the technical side, but isn't Rift mostly camera tracking? I wonder if that is higher or lower computational cost than the Vive system. Does it work like PSVR looking for lights? In astrophotography, it is used for tracking refinement and it doesn't seem to take much compute power. I'd guess in the bigger picture, the tracking side is relatively insignificant compared to the 3D rendering side.

JrClocker said:

Yeah.

But every time someone comes to this forum and asks if they should go xx or yy core processor...the question always comes up as to what you are going to do with it.

Blah...blah...blah...

I just figured I would add a new wrinkle!

(VR is wayyyy cool...the technology is about 80% "there". It will be successful and be at 100% soon. My theory on emerging technologies is simple: if it can be used for pron then it will be successful - hehe)

Click to expand...

Believe it or not, that's how VHS beat out Sony Betamax. That particular industry decided to go with VHS and that closed the debate. That's why Sony went full court press with Blu Ray over HD DVD instead of letting the market sort it out. They threw huge dollars at it until they came out on top.

4c/8t gives a very nice boost to minimum FPS over 4c/4t as well (not mentioning the games that use more then 4 threads)