SkyrimVR + SLI?

[past79]

Hi,

got into VR about 2 weeks ago and curretly building/testing a new modlist for my new playthrough in VR. Struggling a bit performance-wise, especially after installing ENB. Scaled the resolution down a bit, "performance" presets for the ENB, had to reduce distances, and lowered the overall quality. Now it works OKish, but it's not ideal (fine in dungeons and houses, ok in cities, but can get a bit choppy in open world). I know I could always just disable ENB, but who seriously wants to play without it, right? ?

 

So I'm thinking about getting a second GPU and SLI. From what I've read so far, the performance gain in SLI depends heavily on the application. Any first hand experience what to expect in SkyrimVR? Currently running a RTX 2070 Super (bought last year, shortly before the 3000 series was announced ?) and a Valve Index.

[Fyourcouch]

i would guess 2070 super is enough to run about anything if your cpu is good. But i have a super with  original rift, and i run wabbajack UVRE with sexlab installed on top of the wabbajack list, and my game crashes regularly 630mods/232plugins. but if its running, its usually smooth,  My cpu is original ryzen 1700.

 

try wabbajack stock and see if it runs smooth for you, then you know its just your modlist.

[MysticDaedra]

SLi is on its way out. Dual GPU cards and SLi itself generally cause more problems then it's worth... my advice would be to get a decent single-gpu card instead.

[past79]

Thanks for your feedback!

 

10 hours ago, Fyourcouch said:

i would guess 2070 super is enough to run about anything if your cpu is good.

 

CPU is kinda old, running an i7-6700K. Don't really know how it compares to ryzen, AMD just started becoming a thing again back when I built this PC. While normal playing, it usually sits around 50% load, feeling rather bored. But maybe you're on to something here, from what I've read memory bandwidth can get quite important too in Skyrim, and my board/ram is as old as my cpu ?

 

10 hours ago, Fyourcouch said:

try wabbajack stock and see if it runs smooth for you

 

Yeeeah, not sure about wabbajack, I'm not too fond of these "do everything exactly as I did" kind of deals, and a bit reluctant about installing a tool that potentially messes with everything I built up over the past two weeks. Is there a way to just look at the modlist, without installing it?

 

Pretty sure though it's just the ENB that is the culprit- tested outside Whiterun overlooking the tundra (that's usually where I have the most impact, huge open world), with ENB disabled I was able to get a capped 90 fps@150% resolution. When I enable the ENB, it drops down to around 45 fps, which I would be ok with in flatrim, but is terrible in VR. Usually I run the game at 80%, which seems to be a fair compromise and doesn't look too bad (ok, at least not awful) with TAA enabled. But my ultimate goal is of course to get at least back to 100%.

 

Guess I'll just have to give up on my favorite ENB, had a quick look at the ones especially made for VR, but didn't like the overall look. Maybe I can at least find something with less performance impact.

 

 

7 hours ago, MysticDaedra said:

SLi is on its way out. Dual GPU cards and SLi itself generally cause more problems then it's worth... my advice would be to get a decent single-gpu card instead.

 

Yeah, I was afraid of that. Are you speaking from personal experience?

It just doesn't feel right to trash a one year old card, a decent new one would be at least double the price I could get a (used) 2070 super for. That's a lot of money without knowing the effective gain...

[MysticDaedra]

Not personal experience, just a long time building custom PCs and being familiar with the technology. Dual-gpu cards had a lot of problems back in the day (690, original Titan, these were dual-gpu graphics cards for example) due to heat issues, bandwidth issues, and driver issues. Something that many people didn't realize is that dual-gpu cards used SLi to communicate, just all in a single package. As it is now, both Nvidia and AMD have basically stopped advertising Sli and Crossfire as much as they used to, because in modern times these cards cause more problems than they solve. 

 

What HMD are you using? You might not even need an extra GPU. The biggest thing will be VRAM and system RAM, frankly. A 2070 super should be fine for Skyrim VR; you might start to feel a need for a faster card if you get into VR simulators, like flight simulators and the like. M $0.02.

[past79]

@MysticDaedra Thanks again. Yes I did some research in the meantime, and the consensus was that SLI doesn't do much (if anything at all) for VR. Apart from only one or two people saying it helped them especially in SkyrimVR, although they knew it really shoudn't. That's why I was asking if anyone got first hand experience with it.

 

I use a Valve Index on a MSI 2070 Super Gaming X (8 GB GDDR6), running on an i7-6700K with 16 GB RAM (DDR4-2133). I was mentioning it in my previous post,  maybe memory bandwidth is limiting me as well, 2133 is rather on the low end nowadays. With XMP enabled, I should be able to run it at 3000, but things tended to get a bit unstable the last time I tried, and it wasn't really nessessary up until now. I'll give it a try and see if it improves things.

 

Did some more testing and tweaking, what's really killing me is the ENB and especially ambient occlusion. From what I've read it has never been properly implemented in VR (engine limitation?) and that it has some quirks (for example, the lighting changes slightly when I remain stationary and only turn my head...). But overall, it still improves the visuals sooo much, that's why I can't bring myself to just disable it ?

 

I mean currently it's playable- it's just getting a bit choppy while moving outside during daytime. Head tracking still feels very smooth, which is the main thing.

Funny enough, so far the maybe biggest improvement came from installing loads and loads of trees (Whiterun Forest Borealis + The Great Forest of Whiterun Hold). I can only guess what is going on in the background, but I assume the engine now has to calculate/render only smaller distances since most of the view is covered up by trees? Not sure this is how it's supposed to work, but hey, I'm not complaining. And it sure looks nice running through a dense forrest, compared to the rather boring looking tundra.