Valve Releases SteamVR Perf Test To Measure Your PC (pcper.com) 97
Vigile writes: Valve took another step to prepare the world for VR gaming by releasing the SteamVR Performance Test today. This application that is free to download through Steam, runs a portion of the Aperture Science Robot Repair demo originally built for the HTC Vive VR headset, and reports back performance metrics and a grade for your PC's hardware. Scores include a Not Ready, Capable and Ready result as well as an "average fidelity" numeric score that is even more interesting. Valve integrated a dynamic fidelity feature "that adjusts image quality of the game in a way to avoid dropped frames and frame rates under 90 FPS" — a target for an acceptable VR experience. Early results put the GeForce GTX 980 Ti at the top of the GPU stack though AMD's Radeon products do very well at every price point below $600. Is your wallet ready?
No Go On GTX 660 SLI. (Score:2)
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This was surprising for me:
http://pasteboard.co/1LEbgwTV.... [pasteboard.co]
Not that it wasn't ok but that it consider the GPU the problem and not the processor. I guess the GPU was so bad for their tasks that the CPU wasn't the one holding it back, I can't imagine the CPU is enough with say a GTX 970 even though that picture would suggest that it was.
(What specs? See the image ;D)
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VR takes some serious muscle. Think more like 980 or higher.
Link to the program (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the link to the application on steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
Min
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I have about $600 into my Gaming PC, which includes a 500GB SSD (could have more now, prices have dipped considerably) and a mid-range video card (still just a 750Ti, look the machine is old now.) This is good enough to play even new titles at decent quality settings at 1920x1200. However, I mostly play older games, because they are cheap. Games of a few years ago run like mad bastards on this rig. And it's also a PC. Sony has put a lot of effort into making you not able to use the PS4 as a PC, even though
Wow, Sony trollmods? (Score:2)
I didn't think anyone still liked Sony after all the ways they've fucked their customers over, and the horribly shit hardware they make now, but I guess some of you are still astoundingly stupid.
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I'd take a 302 pinto over a Bentley every time.
The problem with a Bentley is they are unreasonably, insanely, expensive (especially for Fords). The drivers could make diamonds every time they drive, if they just had the foresight to stuff their butts with coal first.
Besides imagine the look on the rich idiots face when you blow his doors clean off. The fat rear tires (and the V8 lope) should have tipped the Bentley driver off.
About the only thing the Bentley will do consistently better, pull mercenar
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Pintos forever! (Score:1)
My '71 Pinto was the hot rod of my youth. Don't laugh it off so fast. Header and some carb tuning, it was quick. I could stay neck and neck with camaros & firebirds (yes, lower case) until around 60. The V8's would then start to pull away. You had less than a pony car with a V8? Eat my dust. Oh, Roadrunners could outrun me too.
Did it have problems? Yeah. Timing belt would break on a regular basis. Got to the point I could change it w/o tools. Line everything up, slip the new belt on. Being a
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It doesn't matter how fun it is to drive if you can't afford it.
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That is why you are not a geek or a gamer.
If you were a geek you'd already have the computer, if you were a gamer you wouldn't be able to stand week platforms like PS4/Xbone.
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That is why you are not a geek or a gamer.
If you were a geek you'd already have the computer, if you were a gamer you wouldn't be able to stand week platforms like PS4/Xbone.
Likely thought Slashdot was dating site for spectacular nerdy men.
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With his attitude I question whether he's either.
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f you were a geek you'd already have the computer,
I've been a Linux user since 2002, but I don't play many games on Linux, that's what the PS2/PS3/PS4 are for.
if you were a gamer you wouldn't be able to stand week platforms like PS4/Xbone.
The word is weak, and I've probably been playng games longer than you have been alive. Take a look at the STEAM hardware survey sometime, and you'll see that a lot of gaming seems to be done on budget laptops that are weaker than a PS4. Besides, PC gamers and console gamers are often playing the same games these days. Do you really think something like Minecraft, or Rebel Galaxy is that much diffe
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Minecraft is quite different on PC due the massive amount of mods available that expands it quite greatly.
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If you were a geek you'd already have the computer, if you were a gamer you wouldn't be able to stand week platforms like PS4/Xbone.
And if you were a real gamer, you would have all three.
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Being a gamer just means you play games. Being a geek just means you have a love for understanding how something works. The platform you play your games on only defines this status if you're an idiot.
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My build about 1.5 years ago was old drives from old PC, AMD 6 core, and 8GB RAM, plus a decent big PSU and an AMD R& GPU. Total cost ~$600. Since then I have upgraded to a Samsung PRO SSD, and upgraded to a better nvidia GPU. But I was able to do it ON MY TERMS.
Try that with our rootkit pal sony.
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I'd rather spend money on games not upgrades...
Steam sales are so good, that you might save money on games in the long run. I usually get my games for 50% or more off and I can't remember the last time I paid full price.
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PS4 has something along the lines of AMD 7870 and has the luxury of being the main testing target for many games, which your faster than that PC cannot boast.
Games might SEEM more expensive on Consoles, but once you take into account the fact that you can BUY USED and RE-SELL console games, that most of them play just fine offline, it ain't such a PC advantage any more, if at all. (bar No-DRM games from gog.com, god bless it's creator)
PS
I never got why it has to be either or anyhow.
I can't imagine Starcraft
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You can build a decent budget gaming rig for 400 to 800.
Even a low range gaming GPU alone is going to cost about $150. No way are you going to build anything resembling a "gaming" system for $400.
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You can build a piece of underperforming shit for $400 that you will spend the majority of your time swearing at. You can build an "ok" gaming machine (read: spend all your time at low to mid detail settings) for $800, but it won't be much better than a console.
In reality, unless you're willing to commit about $1000 to your gaming PC, you're better off sticking with a console. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. If someone is having fun on their console, mission accomplished. That's the
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$180 - Second-hand GTX 780ti (from a buddy that just upgraded to the 980ti)
$46 - Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01 RED LED Black ATX Mid Tower ($10 rebate)
$75 - CORSAIR CX series CX750M 750W ($20 rebate)
$120 - GIGABYTE GA-Z170-HD3P (rev. 1.0) ($10 rebate)
$220 - Intel Core i5-6600 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.3
$70 - CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
$120 - ADATA Premier SP550 2.5" 480GB SATA III
$831 before / 791 after rebates. I don't include monitor
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It's cool that you got a box together but...
No display, no mouse, no keyboard. Re-evaluate. These are all necessary components, and should be included in any quoted price.
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A lot cheaper? In many cases you can find them upwards of 25% off before they hit release day. They'll be waiting a year or so before their console games drop $20.
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The ONLY reason they drop so fast on PC is because:
1. PC Gamers, who after spending so much money on their rigs, are less willing to spend money on games. Which is why the most popular games being played on STEAM are F2P titles.
2. In the second/third world, PC gamers are pirates, the prices drop so quickly to try to get "some" of the guys in Russia, Romania, Poland, Brazil, etc etc to pay.
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Oh look, console talking points.
1) You mean, the price drops so quickly because they've realized that a lower price means more sales, which means more money. Gee, who'd have thought that. It's like people have realized that you can make more money with honey instead of sawdust.
2) In 2nd and 3rd world, console gamers are incredible pirates. You can walk down just about any street and buy the latest titles for consoles at half of what it costs for a PC copy. Including paying for someone to jail break your
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You mean, the price drops so quickly because they've realized that a lower price means more sales, which means more money.
Well it can lead to more money it depends on the product, and the price. In some cases you can lose money by dropping the price.
But in PC gamers case, it does mean PC gamers are cheap bastards. Why else is the PC version an afterthought? HUGE games like Fallout or Divinity or Dragon Age aren't worth $59 to PC gamers? Do you think that Bethesda considers some guy who buys skyrim for $5 on a steam sale in 2016 a "real" customer compared to those who bought the thing in November of 2011? Whose feedback ar
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Well it can lead to more money it depends on the product, and the price. In some cases you can lose money by dropping the price.
But in PC gamers case, it does mean PC gamers are cheap bastards. Why else is the PC version an afterthought? HUGE games like Fallout or Divinity or Dragon Age aren't worth $59 to PC gamers? Do you think that Bethesda considers some guy who buys skyrim for $5 on a steam sale in 2016 a "real" customer compared to those who bought the thing in November of 2011? Whose feedback are they going to be more interested in?
Never heard the saying "it's easier to make a fast nickle instead of a slow quarter?"
No, it means nothing of the sort except what you believe. The PC version isn't an afterthought, huge games like FO, Divinity and Dragon Age weren't afterthoughts. All three of those games were PC only titles to start with. FO4 if you're talking about a specific case, was so dumbed down that people on both sides are complaining about the lack of RPG elements. And according to Bethesda, yes they're a customer still.
I'm old enough to remember the 80's and the prices then, considering inflation and how much game you get for your money, games cost LESS than what they did then. Go on, check the Sears Wishbook in 81 or 83 if you don't believe me.
Funny,
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then enjoy buying a new console in 3-5 years and an entirely new set of games.
3 - 5?, more like 5 to 7.
2600: 1977
5200: 1982
7800: 1986
NES: 1985
SNES 1991
N64: 1996
Gamecube 2001
Wii: 2006
Wii U: 2012
PSone: 1995
PS2: 2000
PS3 2006
PS4 2013
Besides, there are OTHER PC guys who claim that console generations are too LONG.
As for buying a new set of games, thats true, but the old machine doesn't stop working.
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Or spend $6499 on a RealDoll2 and really dick around.
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Either I can spend north of $1000, and countless hours dicking around with a "gaming computer", or I can spend $400 and get a PS4. Hmmm... tough decision...
Yeah, if you want to do that whole VR thing that is .. Or at-least with the fidelity they want, I guess I'm not convinced something with say Mario 64 lookalike graphics (but higher resolution) wouldn't be enjoyable in VR, doesn't have to look realistic.
Anyway, the PS4 can't do what the .. let's be realistic here - a 980Ti PC is more likely $1500, computer can do.
As of right now we're not even sure if the PS4 can do it alone or whatever it will use some sort of external device which bring more power to it.
If
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a dual core and 250GB drive? Make it a quad core and that's more like it, but still that drive would be too small considering PS4's come with 500GB by default (and 1GB soon).
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I know, but it doesn't matter how fast the drive is when you run out of space after 4 "full-size" games + OS.
Sure maybe you don't care about space if all you're playing is TF2, CS, LOL, or DOTA to the exclusion of anything else...but to a generalist gamer...space matters.
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I do, but the OP used an SSD in his example for performance reasons in a "we can put our games on fast SSD" kind of way.
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No, no need for a quad-core.
The i3 6100 beats the FX-6300 which is six-core 3.5 GHz.
The CPU in the PS4 is eight-core 1.6 GHz, it's complete garbage.
Maybe even an Athlon X4 860K (quad-core 3.7 GHz) would beat the PS4 processor, that's a processor for $75.
The i3 6100 is DEFINITELY better than the PS4. The GTX 950 is also better graphics than what the APU in the PS4 has.
And Intel quad-core like the i5 4460 would beat an FX-8350 for gaming and the FX-8350 is eight core 4.0 GHz. You're totally exaggerating the s
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Dude, PC gamers need to figure out which matters more, speed or cores, because back in the PS3 days with the PS3's fast hyperthreaded PPC core, PC gamers tended to say that # of cores mattered, not clock speed and hyperthreading.
And really, are you going to be twitch streaming on a dual-core? Multi-core is mattering more and more.
So forgive me for assuming that PC Gamers in general, especially Europeans, are PCMR hypocrites making shit up to make themselves feel better about spending so much money on their
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You need to figure out shit at all.
There's no benefit in the PS4 having eight weak-ass cores. If the complete package was powerful because of it then fine but it's not, it's a weak CPU. Even the AMD pieces at ~4 GHz with 8 cores can't keep up with 4 core Intel ones for gaming.
The i3 6100 as said beat the FX-6300 in many games regardless of the later having three times the more cores and it's clocked twice as high as the PS4!
The AMD CPUs perform like shit and AMD knows it.
Here you have the weak-ass Athlon X4
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Here you've got Nvidia ShadowPlay shown:
https://youtu.be/Nq8n7-vDTv8?t... [youtu.be]
I don't know what PS4 do inregard of streaming.
Seem like it can do 720p 30 FPS 2.5 mbps at-least.
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Just in case you don't trust me when I say the i3 6100 beats the FX-6300:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/C... [userbenchmark.com]
Advantage i3 6100:
Single-core speed: +58%
Quad-core speed: +24%
Advantage FX-6300:
Multi-core speed: +8%
But games and DX11 aren't really good in taking care of many cores, and that's still a six core 3.5 GHz chip vs the PS4 eight core 1.6 GHz one.
This person compare a G3258 (dual-core without hyper-threading) with a GTX 750Ti vs Playstation 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
i3 4130 + GTX 750Ti in Witcher
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Bearing in mind that my "gaming computer" is able to run three 4K displays simultaneously at 60FPS, rip DVDs at 16x real time, process image stacks into ultraHD videos in less than a week and compile a linux kernel in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee, I know which of us is reading the wrong website.
Windows only? (Score:4, Insightful)
You had to ask, didn't you? (Score:3)
Windows only means VR games will only be available on Windows? Seeing as how Valves own OS is Ubuntu based, one would think they'd support that as well.
Steam Hardware & Software Survey: January 2016 [steampowered.com]
Windows --- All Flavors 95.4% [No change]
Win 7 64 bit 34.3%
Win 10 64 bit 32.8% [Up 1.5%]
Win 8.1 64 bit 14.0%
OSX --- All Flavors 3.55% [No change]
Linux --- All Flavors 0.95% [No change]
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS 64 bit 0.2%
Ubuntu 15.10 64 bit 0.2%
Linux 64 bit 0.1%
Linux Mint 17.3 Rosa 64 bit 0.1%
It would be mean to remind folks here how often Linux Mint has been suggested as a plausible migration path away from Windows.
What I find more interesting and unexpec
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What I find more interesting and unexpected are the stats for Language. The US has 41 million native Spanish speakers and only Mexico has more.
English 46%
Russian 18%
Simplified Chinese 6%
Spanish 5%
While quite a few speak Spanish more people speak English.
I think one can run Steam in Swedish but I don't run either that or Windows or my browser (and gimp and so on) in Swedish I run them all in English because trying to find out what Swedish word they have used as a replacement for the English one is just disturbing and I guess I can read the English text at-least as well.
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You'll be better off with 2X Crossfire/SLI from the current generation than a single next-gen card.
SLI is currently a no go for VR.
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Why is that? The instinctive (and therefore probably wrong) first thought that pops into my head is 'two displays, two GPUs, seems perfect.'
I'm no expert and there is certainly ongoing work to fix this. What engines are doing for VR is taking advantage of similarities in the scene to save redundant work when rendering for perspective of both cameras. What actually goes on does not so much resemble duplicating rendering job between GPUs. You could simplify and do that of course but the problem you are left with is that simply copying result across GPUs for display on the GPU VR headset is plugged into itself takes several ms you just don't ha
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The guy above didn't say what GPU he had, it was likely an R9 290 or R9 290X (more likely the later maybe?)
Your R9 270 would most often be slower than the GTX 950 I think but maybe better than the GTX 750Ti over in the Nvidia camp but the requirements is higher for what they intend (high quality graphics in a high resolution at very high frame-rates.)
Your processor isn't the problem and you two just happen to have different graphics cards.
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No you wouldn't.
I don't know what GPU you have but the R9 290 if that's what you have stop may do better than the GTX 970 and even more so in higher resolutions, the GTX 970 over-clocks better and I don't know what win then. But sure, I'd let you have that R9 290 on occasion has been cheaper.
As for the processor though nowadays the FX-8350 and the i5 4460 would cost about the same and the i5 4460 would be the better gaming CPU.
I don't know what we'd compare at the time of when you purchased your machine, wh
I'll be very _very_ interested in DX12/Vulkan perf (Score:2)
Apparently AMD's hardware absolutely rocks on the next-gen architectures like those two, and Vulkan being directly based on Mantle can't hurt even a teensy bit.
AMD being the king-of-the-hill for VR would make a world my ooooh-goody-competition-means-good-prices little heart is just piiiiining for.
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No Mac support is stupid (Score:1)
Since Mac users are willing to pay more for quality hardware, it would seem smart to support them at least at the same time as a PC, if not even first to work out kinks and go for a user base with better economic status...
Wake me in twenty years when VR is back again for another try and willing to consider economics of the gaming world properly, instead of targeting the PC gamer who is among the cheapest bastard on the planet.
I'm still puzzled that the Oculus does not support the Mac when the dev kits do. I
Good question (Score:2)
Why do you care how much the Morpheus dev kits will be? You're willing to spend more for a quality product.
That is actually an excellent question, and indeed it may not matter because after more thought I realize all of the other hardware makers are just messing around and only Sony is serious about mainstream adoption, so if I want to build something that would have a market I have to go with Sony.
However I am an indie developer and that means if the dev kit costs too much there's just no way I can afford
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Unfortunately Macs are all wrong, both from a hardware perspective and a software perspective.
The killer issue is that no Mac ships with a GPU fast enough to meet the Vive or Rift recommended specs. The fastest Mac Pro GPU is essentially a Radeon R9 280X, but the recommended spec is an R9
Wrong way to look at at (Score:2)
The killer issue is that no Mac ships with a GPU fast enough
Neither does the PS4. Neither to MOST PCs.
That's why Sony has a co-processor box, AS I MENTIONED.
Only Apple distributes GPU driver updates these days
Which is irrelevant with CO-PROCESSOR BOX. On a system where every laptop for years has Thunderbolt...
Mac users do tend to be upscale buyers with more money to spend, but the technical issues
Which Sony has resolved and will thus capture the entire market because they aren't targeting cheap bastards o
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Since Mac users are willing to pay more for quality hardware
More willing to pay a lot for Apple hardware. I can go as far as grant you "custom built computers" rather than standard off the shelves cases and components, also I'd accept that they may have had better screens because Apple had made that decision for the consumer.
As for everything else you said .. mac users has been so very clear telling me over and over again that you shouldn't get a mac for gaming and that macs are for professional/serious work (sound like PC guy with his spread-sheets) and not for gam
I just tested my VR-targetted rig (Score:2)
Fortunately, after downloading the Steam test app and running it, my new machin [cldup.com]