SOLVED Budget VR Rig. Overclocked FX-4350?

[illinar]

Hi! I'm starting this build to replace my current ancient PC and to be able to play and develop for VR in the near future. I don't have a big budget right now, so my first step is to purchase everything except GPU and the headset itself.

I need to MATCH the minimum requirements for a VR ready rig. I don't want better, nor do I have money for it. And I want to save money, and yet get a decent reliable PC. So I found a local store with the best prices and pretty good catalog and chose some parts. First, here are a few important questions I have:

1) Why HTC are suggesting FX-8350 as an AMD equivalent of i5-4590? Why not FX-4350 which outperforms i5-4590 in benchmarks like futuremark, and especially since 8 cores shouldn't have any noticeable advantage over 4 cores on FX-4350. One is twice as cheap as the other $150 vs $80, and i5 is $200. So do you think FX-4350 would match i5-4590?

2) If FX-4350 is slower than i5-4590 then what would it take to match it's performance? (Not much I assume..) And since I've never done overclocking, can you tell me what kind of heat sink would I need to overclock it, considering there can also be good air circulation in the case? How much extra heat will CPU produce?

If you'll help me to figure out those things, I'll be able to get into build details, I need some advice there as well.

Thank you!

 

[bob4933]

I'll be honest, this REALLY feels like a troll post. You might wanna reconsider your positions, do some research, and re-evaluate this "budget VR" thing. It's frankly a preposterous notion. The headset itself is 800$ for crying out loud.

To directly answer your questions

1) because the 8350 is vastly superior to the 4350. And I would love to see these benchmarks where a 4350 is "outperforming" a 4590...
2) you assume wrong. I dont know what kind of overclock that would be required to get a 4350 to 4590 level performance lol.
3) The kind of heat sink required is based on your budget and how far of an overclock you're looking for. How much extra heat? How far are we over volting and overclocking???


edit: seriously, where in gods name are you seeing a 4350 beating a 4590? I went through some 3dmark benchmarks, and the 3570 and 4440 absolutely slaughter the 4350 lol

 

[illinar]

I'll be honest, this REALLY feels like a troll post. You might wanna reconsider your positions, do some research, and re-evaluate this "budget VR" thing. It's frankly a preposterous notion. The headset itself is 800$ for crying out loud.

To directly answer your questions

1) because the 8350 is vastly superior to the 4350. And I would love to see these benchmarks where a 4350 is "outperforming" a 4590...
2) you assume wrong. I dont know what kind of overclock that would be required to get a 4350 to 4590 level performance lol.
3) The kind of heat sink required is based on your budget and how far of an overclock you're looking for. How much extra heat? How far are we over volting and overclocking???


edit: seriously, where in gods name are you seeing a 4350 beating a 4590? I went through some 3dmark benchmarks, and the 3570 and 4440 absolutely slaughter the 4350 lol

That's rather emotional response. You made me question if I'm really that crazy there for a sec.

1) http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/cpu FX-4350 is 39th and i5-4590 is 53rd. Lol, and 8350 is between them
- I saw multiple articles where people say they are surprised that 4350 is not considered VR Ready.
- I saw people saying that they've passed the Steam VR benchmarks with 4350 as VR Ready.
- I saw articles listing 4350 as a part of a VR ready build.
- I saw benchmarks (versus.com) where 8350 had almost identical single core performance. Single core performance really matters the most for VR gaming according to Oculus.
- I heard people saying that you should definitely go for 4 cores cpu since more would be less cost effective. (If there is a 4 core AMD CPU that can be performant enough, and not just intel)
- Most VR games (all Unity Engine games and probably other) barely do any multithreading, especially not on 8 cores. And I'm working in Unity engine too.

2) Um.. Okay..

3) That was supposed to depend on the answer to the second question. So I'm looking to overclock you don't know how much. That's what I'm asking, if overclocking FX-4350 cant bring it to a level of i5-4590 (not to 8350 multithreading performance level) then **** overclocking really. And the budget is as much as is cost effective.


I can by this PC right now and use it for work and gaming. And I might get a headset later, and possibly even for free. I can by the 8350, but I though it was unnecessary.

If I'm wrong, please give some numbers, some data. How much can you get from FX-4350?

 

[mackerel]

My suggestion: don't bother with current PC VR if all you can aim for is a rock bottom spec. While the requirement for Rift was dropped recently, I have concerns spec requirements can and will go up. If you go Vive for example, on Viveport there are already titles stating a minimum spec above a 970 which was considered minimum.

On the other hand, MS did announce its partners will be producing VR headsets for Win10 "from $299" although there was zero detail beyond that. Will be interesting to see where that goes.

 

[illinar]

My suggestion: don't bother with current PC VR if all you can aim for is a rock bottom spec. While the requirement for Rift was dropped recently, I have concerns spec requirements can and will go up. If you go Vive for example, on Viveport there are already titles stating a minimum spec above a 970 which was considered minimum.

On the other hand, MS did announce its partners will be producing VR headsets for Win10 "from $299" although there was zero detail beyond that. Will be interesting to see where that goes.

Thank you for suggestion.

I would say though that having the minimum spec PC can be a good thing for a developer, because if I make my game run on this, I can be sure it will run on everybody's "VR Ready" PC's, and I don't want or need to develop for higher specs, I want the widest possible audience, and rarely making your game too demanding is justified for an Indie dev. I'm not necessarily concerned about not being able to play some games. Development is a priority. And VR keeps getting more and more optimized on software and drivers level.

So I definitely want to get this Build, and the only question is am I getting 4350 and overclocking it or am I getting 8350.

The MS announcement is AWESOME. VR will be going mainstream much faster with $300 headsets.

 

[illinar]

Okay.. After looked up benchmarks on few other websites, and it seems indeed that 4350 is rated much lower than 8350 or 4590. Then I guess I'm getting 8350 or even the i5. I'm still confused by the conflicting info though..

Still curious, how much boost can you get from 4350 OC on a budget that's worth it?

 

[Soulcatcher668]

There is no justification going with a AMD build for what you want to do. Even our long time AMD guys are switching. Maybe things will change with ZEN, but we do not know.

If you were building an APU based system, then maybe we have a conversation, but for development work..... Go Intel.

 

[illinar]

There is no justification going with a AMD build for what you want to do. Even our long time AMD guys are switching. Maybe things will change with ZEN, but we do not know.

If you were building an APU based system, then maybe we have a conversation, but for development work..... Go Intel.

Thanks for advice. I've decided to go for Intel Skylake. Probably i5 6500.

 

[bob4933]

Sorry for the curt response earlier, but you were on the wrong page completely.

Getting the bare minimum is fine... for RIGHT NOW. Games don't really go down in requirements, and starting off at the bottom of the barrel leaves much to be desired. Since you're looking at investing into VR, I would find it would be a waste of your time to even consider AMD at this time. As mentioned, hold off till Zen, or simply jump ship to intel.

 

[illinar]

Sorry for the curt response earlier, but you were on the wrong page completely.

Getting the bare minimum is fine... for RIGHT NOW. Games don't really go down in requirements, and starting off at the bottom of the barrel leaves much to be desired. Since you're looking at investing into VR, I would find it would be a waste of your time to even consider AMD at this time. As mentioned, hold off till Zen, or simply jump ship to intel.

No problem. Thanks. Yes, I'm going for Intel (Skylake), no overclocking.

So I no longer have questions regarding cooling and overclocking that I was going to ask Initially. The topic is solved. Cheers.