Big Navi vs Ampere for VaM

[TToby]

As many of us are desperately looking for an GPU upgrade for VR, but can't get their hands on a RTX 3080, there are two alternatives on the near horizon.
Next week we will learn everything about AMD Big Navi and NVIDIA 3070.
According to Igor from IgorsLab, who has stretched his NDA quite a bit, the Big Navi will become really good for a good price, except the Ray Tracing performance, but with 16GB VRAM.
The "middle" Big Navi will be better in all means as the RTX 3070, for only slightly more money, and is in reach of the RTX 3080 (except RT). The 20GB/16GB versions of Ampere are just canceled...
So we have to make a difficult decission, it all comes to the question AMD or NVIDIA?

Question:
As a NVIDIA user for decades, I know only a little about AMD GPUs. It is said, that NVIDIA has the better driver support, and that there are sometimes really bad issues with AMD drivers. There are other oddities like compatibility issues, CUDA vs OpenCL, for instance. Some gameengines don't like AMD, some does. Playstation and XBox with all its future games and PC ports are both AMD now. There are only a few NVIDIA-only features, that may be become vital for VR IMHO. RT will probably be a thing in VR (but who knows in which extense), DLSS will probably always be too expensive for small developers, Fixed Foveated Rendering is RTX only for now, and so on.

What do you think about this with VR and VaM in mind? The 10GB 3080 will most probably not be available in Germany till February 2021 (for a normal price)!! Letting all the fanboy speech aside, do you think it would be a really bad idea to switch to AMD, as we are not the typical mainstream users and are using quite a bunch of exotic software? What is about Unity? What is about VaM @meshedvr ? Will there be a good support for AMD GPUs, too?

 

[NutellaBrah]

AMD is only for people who play mainstream console style games.

Anyone who dabbles in fringe software from indie developers or mods or other non-mainstream activities should avoid AMD, esspecially the graphics cards.

Some people can make an argument to get CPUs but definately not GPUs. GPU drivers for AMD are a true cluster fuk all over the place.

The driver support for AMD is second rate. A lot of real life scenarios where you will have the short end of the stick in an app or mod.

Examples I have ran across is VAM and other VR apps, emulators, and even some indie games.

So the big lie in the media and the shills is they compare a dollar amount, and a benchmark amount.... but they dont tell you about the often late, 2nd rate afterthought driver support or how 100% of all apps is made for Intel primarily and AMD as an after thought later on. They act like Intel and AMD have identical driver support lol. Thats how the shills sell you on it. By leaving out vital facts.

You dont want to be on that 2nd fiddle side of the drivers for years for some under 100$ dollar amount of savings. Its better to have peace of mind going with the primary supported brand and format. People think once they install their hardware its all the same to windows but its actually not.

AMD isnt for people like us its only viable an option for console style gaming and sticking to mainstream apps.

Then again some people like to be a cuck and actually like something because its worse like WMR or AMD. To express their edginess.

 

[TToby]

Hi, thank you for your answer...
The situations has changed a bit... now it seems like AMD has the much better cards AVAILABLE this generation. The 6800XT seems to be faster than the RTX 3080, is cheaper, has more VRAM and seems to be available at start. It is even said to be a good amount faster in less than 4k gaming. The only thing it is behind NVIDIA is raytraicing, where it performs "only" like a 2080 ti.
NVIDIA has canceled the 20GB 8and 16GB) versions and it is rumored that they have decided to only deliver enough cards to fullfill their contracts... after that, they will do a complete relaunch. The board partners are pissed! It seems that AMD has won the race this time, and there is virtually no chance to get a 3080 for a normal price for months.
I am still on my old 980ti and waiting for this generation a whole year, now. I have asked in an other pro forum and they told me much the same than you, but that this will not be that bad to NOT buy a AMD GPU.
Difficult decision.

 

[NutellaBrah]

Hi, thank you for your answer...
The situations has changed a bit... now it seems like AMD has the much better cards AVAILABLE this generation. The 6800XT seems to be faster than the RTX 3080, is cheaper, has more VRAM and seems to be available at start. It is even said to be a good amount faster in less than 4k gaming. The only thing it is behind NVIDIA is raytraicing, where it performs "only" like a 2080 ti.
NVIDIA has canceled the 20GB 8and 16GB) versions and it is rumored that they have decided to only deliver enough cards to fullfill their contracts... after that, they will do a complete relaunch. The board partners are pissed! It seems that AMD has won the race this time, and there is virtually no chance to get a 3080 for a normal price for months.
I am still on my old 980ti and waiting for this generation a whole year, now. I have asked in an other pro forum and they told me much the same than you, but that this will not be that bad to NOT buy a AMD GPU.
Difficult decision.

If I were you I would wait until you can find a 3070. Thats gonna be the most bang for your buck. Just pretend like they haven't released yet. When they are in stock all over the place at normal prices that's when you can act like they are here. Demand gets more insane as human population grows and tech resources haven't caught up. How can you possibly frame that Nvidia "lost" anything when demand is so high they are flying off the shelves lol. Like I said, it doesn't really matter what graphics card AMD releases because its running on AMD graphic drivers which are fringe and 2nd rate.

If the shills wanted to do proper testing they would do benchmarks at a fixed graphics setting and then scale performance based on how much it can supersample at a fixed FPS rather then measuring FPS growth. And instead of using a few mainstream games as benchmarks they would have games compatability across a wide variety of lists and the chips ability to handle weird or hard obscure tasks well.

A lot of software today is popular to be "early access" and community driven and modded. these are the types of things we tend to do more and more and having the primary Intel/Nvidia uniform drivers is more vital than ever.

traditional benchmarks today are essentially bad science and a hold over from a bygone era that has become a logical fallacy.

 

[Guy]

This is all fanboy speculation at this point presented as an informed suggestion. I'm literally watching a video saying that the new AMD 3070 competitor card is expected to crush the 3070. I suggest waiting for them both to be out and available at retail prices.

I suspect until 2.0 VAM will be CPU bound though, so look at the 10900k today or the 5090x coming soon.

 

[TToby]

This is all fanboy speculation at this point presented as an informed suggestion. I'm literally watching a video saying that the new AMD 3070 competitor card is expected to crush the 3070. I suggest waiting for them both to be out and available at retail prices.

I suspect until 2.0 VAM will be CPU bound though, so look at the 10900k today or the 5090x coming soon.

Hi Guy,
Thank you for your answer. I am a member of the Igorslab forum (unfortunately they are no VR fans) and they are saying the same. Igor is a very well informed insider and, while being impressed by the 3080 first, he now has informations that AMD 6800 (XL) with 16GB will be faster (without raytracing) than the 3070 8GB AND the AMD 6800XT 16GB will be even faster than the 3080 10GB (without raytracing). Sure, NVIDIA will sell every single card they might produce, but AMD has the ability to produce even the same ammount (or more due to very clever board design plus more common memory modules) and is maybe a bit cheaper AND somewhat better with higher clock speeds and more VRAM.
My guess is, that they have the chance to do the same thing to the GPU market like they did with the Ryzen 3000 to the CPU market. Therefore they might become somewhat mainstream like NVIDIA, too. If that is the goal of AMD they can not afford bad drivers anymore.

Knowing all this, I still can understand the point of view of NutellaBrah, as I have the same bad stomace feeling about AMD, even if it might be only a feeling. That was the reason for this question.

By the way, if I would decide towards AMD, my new system (should be used for 4-5 years) could be a pure AMD PC for the first time, with a AMD Radeon 6800XT and a AMD Ryzen 5900x.

 

[Luna]

As a hardware and electronics enthousiast, I've had my hands on many different components and tested and played with quite a few different combinations of hardware over the past 10+ years. That being said, I want to note that you should never take a single (or even just a few) opinions and experiences as a whole truth. Even though hardware can be ranked by simple numbers, it always comes down to different experiences, luck and personal preference. For example, some people may find resolution more important than framerate (or vice versa) or may have different opinions about what feels as 'stable gameplay' (e.g. threshhold for annoyance about microstuttering). I will share my experience and knowledge, but you should always look for other opinions and sources for further information. (I will list the components I have worked with below this post)

Raw GPU power
Over the past decade many different generations of gpu's have been released by both companies. It is true that when it comes to raw power and performance, Nvidia always takes the crown. But, that always comes with a premium price. When new generations are released, both companies try to outprice eachother on a lot of different pricelevels. Sometimes AMD is on top. Sometimes Nvidia is. When friends ask my opinion about 'what is the best gpu right now', the first question I ask is, what resolution and framerate do you want to play at and the secondly, what is your budget. These two questions almost always answer the main question. And the cumulative answers have been a 50/50 split as of yet. Highest performance is the same as the best card. There is no best card. There is only the most optimal card for you.

The same is happening as we speak. Nvidia has released a few cards, AMD with announce tomorrow, Nvidia will most certainly answer back next month (the whole 3080 ti / 3070 ti rumors) and AMD will have an answer for that again. The most important thing right now is to think about what YOU want when it comes to specs and see what the most affordable option for that is. That being said, I most definitely recommend waiting for about a month if you think about upgrading your GPU.

GPU VR Support
When VR started its first big main stream community and backing (which in my opinion was around 2015-2016), Nvidia was better prepared than AMD. They already had basic drivers setup for use with the first Oculus editions and were well on their way with integrating with Steam and Valve software. As of now? Its pretty much tied. GPU performance scaling (desktop gaming vs. VR gaming) is pertty much the same for both companies when you compare cards of similar performance. This goes for driver support too. I've played many different VR titles on both Nvidia and AMD cards and apart from a single hickup with steamVR combi with and RX580, they both work perfectly fine.

GPU VAM VR Support
I've played VAM in VR on both a 1660ti and a 5600XT. These cards are very similar in performance and that showed in VAM too. I had zero issues on both cards and FPS were pretty much the same. That is all I can say about performance experience though. I do not know what 3000series performance is and can only specutale on the upcoming 6000 cards from AMD. I do want to say though that I am not worried whatsoever about driver support for VR and also VAM VR for either company. VR has matured well enough to provide proper integration with different headsets aswell as engines (like Unity in VAMs case). Therefor when one would compare upcoming generation cards of similar performance (Speculating e.g.: 3080 vs 6900XT) I would expect very little difference in VAM performance and support.

General driver support
It is true that AMD hasn't got the best reputation when it comes to general driver support. Especially in the 400 and 500 series cards there were many complaints about crashes, bad performance and glitching. I have noticed this myself too when benchmarking different setups. Nvidia has shown to more often work out-of-the-box. Most of the issues have been resolved however. Even though there were more issues at launch for AMD, they were also fixed so in the end it works pretty much the same.

It is important to note however, that drivers are made by an enormous amount of different parties. Its not just Nvidia and AMD themselves. Companies like Microsoft, Unity and EpicGames (unreal engine) (and many many more) need to build drivers too and that is an expensive and time-consuming task. That means that (especially for smaller companies) they will mostly focus on what cards are in use the most. Since AMD hasn't really ever been on top in the GPU market, they get fewer driver support. Thats just how companies work. They gotta think about the money.

We often like to see the underdog win and when it comes to for example the GPU market, more competitiveness is always better for the consumer. I hear a lot about AMD stepping up to the plate this time and as much as like to believe it, they have dissappointed many people before. So for this topic I can only say, wait and see. Always wait for reviews. NEVER EVER PREORDER.

Advanced Computing (AI / machine learning)
This is something that Nvidia just wins in hands down. But also for the same reasons as listed above. Bigger market share = bigger driver support. If AMD takes the performance crown this time around I will bet my life that we will see a massive surge in machine learning related driver support (openCL) for AMD. But right now, AMD is meant for gaming, not for professional and advanced computing. I do want to again note that I think VAM does not fall into this category (as NutellaBrah suggests), so if you do not care about the use of CUDA or OpenCL than this difference is irrelavant for you.

Personal feeling
I am running two systems right now, one with a 1660ti for gaming and one with a 2080ti for computing. I would like to upgrade the 1660ti system with a next-gen card and I'm waiting for tomorrows announcement by AMD. I was kind of dissappointed by the fact that the 3080 had only 10gb vram. I do not think that that is going to be enough future proof for upcoming 4k gaming. If a 3080ti was released with more vram (at least 14gb) and was priced competitively against a similar AMD product, I will probably go for the 3080ti mostly because of CUDA support. I'm afraid however that Nvidia has gotten too cocky and will not be lowering their prices. If so, I'm probably gonna go for the high-end AMD card (6900xtx?) because it priced better, has more vram and will probably be of similar performance to a 3080.

I hope this information will help you in making a decision. I myself will be waiting for at least another month to check on more benchmarks and driver support stuff. I would suggest you do the same.

Good day and happy VAMming!

Luna


**List of CPU & GPU hardware I have experience with**
CPU

• AMD
  • Athlon II X4 640
  • FX-4100
  • Ryzen 1600
  • Ryzen 2700X
  • Ryzen 3700X
• Intel
  • Pentium G4400
  • Pentium E5400
  • Core2 duo E7400
  • Core i3-3110
  • Core i7-6700k
  • Core i5-9600k
  • Core i5-9900k

GPU

• AMD
  • HD 3410
  • HD 5870
  • HD 8670
  • R9 380
  • RX 460
  • RX 570
  • RX 580
  • Vega 64
  • 5600XT
  • 5700XT
• Nvidia
  • 7800 GT
  • 8800 GTS
  • GT 210
  • GT 260
  • GTX 560
  • GTX 780
  • GTX 980Ti
  • GTX 1070Ti
  • GTX 1660Ti
  • RTX 2070 Super
  • RTX 2080Ti

 

[TToby]

Thank you Luna for your very kind and elaborated answer! I will try to honor it by answering in the same detailed way.
I am an (very) old PC Nerd, too, but never had an AMD gaming GPU (Maybe ATI, I can't remember).
In the last 5 GPU generations or more, it was very obvious which card was the best coice for gaming (and VR). Not much of a doubt which card to buy, if you would like the best performance. This has changed a lot for this (upcomming) generation. For the first time in many many years, it is a tough question what to buy. I am a member of a few good informed technical communities in Germany and the AMD presentation yesterday didn't revealed much news for me, that weren't allready leaked. BUT !!! those guys have almost no clue about VR and zero about VaM, so I have made this posting here, to get VR-related infos like yours and others.

To answer your question: I want the new GPU (aka new complete system) almost completely for VR (aka small indy projects) and, for a high percentage of this, for VaM, and I want to use it for at least 4 years, plusI want performance higher than 2080ti.
I am still on a very old system (DDR3/i7 4790k/GTX 980ti (~2060)) and was desperately waiting for this generation for more than a year. But like most of us, I could not get my hands on a reasonable priced 3080.
I don't expect the "3080 ti" to come in time. I am expecting a full rebuild like a "Super" produced by TSMC in 7nm, instead of only doubling the VRAM. It was already announced, that those doubled memory cards are being canceled... which makes completely sense if you take in account, that a 16GB 6900 is "only 999USD" and said to be on pair with the 3090. Add at least plus 100USD for the doubled special memory of an 3080, and you are almost in the same price region. Not said that the cheaper but equally performant 6800xt already has 16GB. IMHO I would expect the Ampere relaunch maybe in 6 month from now, maybe in 4 at best, availability not taken into account. This time AMD has made NV sweat a lot.

Unfortunately both product lines, NVIDIA Ampere and the AMD 6000 series, are so close together performance wise and feature wise, that it is a very hard task to make a decision. Both have strong pros and cons (would go to far to list them all), so in the end they erase each other and you are not completely satisfied with eighter of the cards. But on the other hand they both deliver a very good performance boost compared with older generations for a reasonable price. In the end it is all about availability. It is a great thing to finally have the coice as a customer, but... ;-)

"Never ever preorder": This is a very good advice. I would say this myself, If anyone is asking me... On the other hand, I had the chance to buy an ASUS 3080 TUF in the very first hour after sales opened for the original price, and I decided to wait for the benchmarks and tests... a big mistake from todays point of view. Less than a hour later it was sold out. I also preordered the OG Vive and the Valve Index on the very first minutes, and I am still very happy with this decision... It is said, that the 6800XT has more stock than NV, but I bet it will be sold out in the very first day, too. Most likely not for month like the 3080, but certainly for some weeks, with the risk of much higher prices. I guess the 6900 will be maybe as rare as the 3090, because it is the chip's highest binning. To buy at once or possibly wait for months is a though decision, too.

To read your experiences is highly valuable for me. There are many AMD or NVIDIA fans out there, but only a few who have experiences with both. If I read your posting or try to read between the lines from other people, i came to the same decision as you. If not for raytracing or professional rendering or AI (where NV still holds the crown due to its different architecture), both manufacturers will deliver the same performance for VR, with a slight "relability bonus" for NVIDIA. In the end it all comes to the fact that the 3080 is not available /too expensive and only has so critical few VRAM. As I like giving underdogs a chance and maybe have the chance to find a secret treasure, I was almost certain to go for a 6800XT.

If not... yesterday MeshedVR told me that he is planning to optimize VaM for both, NV and AMD, but that he has slightly doubts about AMD maybe delivering slightly(?) less performance with the (newly planned) VaM Unity features for shaders and physics. Full stop, all doubts back to the start and decision process starting again.

 

[NutellaBrah]

what you guys arent realizing is that every year AMD "wasnt good enough" it entrenched even more so the dominance of the primary companies and therefore always have 2nd priority when it comes to any development and drivers and any legacy software made during those years. So its not enough for AMD to be equal. To be purchasable, they have to be better for many years in a row to the point develpers start making them a priority over the entrenched uniformity of Intel and Nvidia.

Lets not act like once you plug in the hardware its all the same to windows. Its not. It honestly barely even matters what the benchmarks are. As a consumer the priority is driver compatability and scope of experience being on the primary supported platform.

That way anywhere you explore in the software world, you know youre covered.

it could be as simple as a youtube video showing a tutorial on the Nvidia side and skipping over how to do it on AMD. Little stuff like that makes the FPS to $$$ ratio not matter in the purchase decision.

 

[TToby]

You are absolutely right... if it wasn't for the driver compatibility, buying the new Big Navi would be a no-brainer. As you may have seen, the prices of the Ampere cards are out of control atm. Even many of the starting prices in the manufacturers own shops have been liftet up with a plus of aprox 50€ and more. Not to say, one could be glad to even get one of those cards for a starting price like this. If AMD can deliver and can keep the prices down, they have the chance to take the top of the GPU market. Maybe that will make them hire more people for their driver department, maybe not. It is a kind of lottery.
Best thing would be to wait half a year... but then the next generation is in line of sight, then the next one after that and so on. You could wait forever like that. If you want to buy a GPU before christmas, there is almost no way NOT to think about Big Navi. Though, those "maybe" driver issue leaves a bad taste in the mouth. But to have only 10GB/8GB of memory on a NVIDIA 4k card (plus the exploded prices) leaves this taste, too.

 

[TToby]

Question-Solved!?! My personal answer!

In the last month, I did a LOT of research on what GPU to buy for VR.
Especially AMD Radeon RX 6800XT vs. RTX 3080. It was a race head to head.
- Bad driver support on AMD? No, in the last years not more than NVIDIA. It is a myth. Not a myth is, NVIDIA was a bit faster in resolving problems. I have spoken to fanboys of both companies, and the AMD fans swear they never had serious problems in the last years, that weren't solved.
- Price: Both cards are similar priced. AMD is a bit cheaper, but if you buy a 700€ card, the difference is near to nothing. Atm, the prices on the market are absolutely crazy. This will be better in some weeks/months. If you are able to wait, wait!
- Performance: The AMD 6800 (no xt) is much faster than the 3070, except of raytracing. The 6900 is not out now, but will be in the 1000€ PLUS range. It will most likely perform next to a 3090. The 6800xt and the 3080 are performing quite similar, and are the price/performance sweet-spot for VR at the moment. In one game, the AMD GPU is better, in an other one, the NVIDIA card rules. By the way, if you plan to play much raytracing games: No question, the NVIDIA GPUs are much better for you. If you own a new Zen3 CPU and a Radeon 6xxx, you will get a bonus, called SAM. This will bring you an additional performance boost of 0-10%. Be aware, that NVIDIA plans to developing something similar. There is one tendency to see: The 6800xt performs very good in games with resolutions sub 4k. Above 4k, the 3080 can show its true power. With this high resolutions, the fast GDDR6+ RAM and the broader memory interface can show its potential above the much higher clock speed of the 6800xt.
- Question: What resolution is VR? In theory, even a Vive Pro and a Valve Index are 4k, counting both eyes. If you do some supersampling, or if you have a Pimax or a Reverb G2, you are on your way to 8k. BUT, those numbers are difficult to compare to flatgame-benchmaks, because most of the time, VR games are much less demanding than "normal" games, with rendering tricks, smaller textures, a.s.o.
What we really need is a good VR-Review of those two cards, with only VR games...
Now, here it is:

VR Wars: The RX 6800 XT vs. the RTX 3080 – 15 VR Games Performance benchmarked

VR Wars: The RX 6800 XT vs. the RTX 3080 – 15 Games Performance benchmarked using the Vive Pro This review presents a fifteen-game VR ... Read more

babeltechreviews.com

What we see is, that a 3080 is a bit more stable and a little bit faster than a 6800xt. Over all those games together, it is a plus of 9%. That is not a big difference, and it still gives no definite answer to the question "what to buy". Unfortunately they did no tests with an Index and 120hz, nor with a Reverb and a higher resolution.

For this question, you maybe want to take a look at the OpenVR benchmark somewhere at the very end of the main table. Here you will see a very remarkable difference of more than 30% pro 3080!
Why? The developer of OpenVR says:
"Most likely because OpenVR Benchmark internally uses a high supersampling resolution to really put maximum load on the GPUs. The new AMD GPUs have fast cache, but slow memory compared to Nvidia, so the higher the rendering resolution gets, the slower the AMD GPUs become compared to Nvidia. Many flat-gaming benchmarks have shown that the AMD GPUs are very competitive at 1080p, but less so at 4K. And OpenVR Benchmark ends up rendering significantly more than 4K internally, as even an Index at only 100% SS is already more than 4K."

Finally, based only on those single test, we can say: If you are a big VR fan and maybe want to upgrade to a higher resolution (like a Reverb G2) in the future, the answer is a 3080 (or 3090 if you have deep pockets).

Though, to make it a little more complicated, the 6800xt might be a bit cheaper, maybe a bit more available and has 16GB VRAM vs only 10GB of the 3080, which is a shame. But, if I had to choose between maybe a bit stuttering when the video memory might be full, or stuttering while the GPU is slower, I would choose the first. But mountains and trees popping in as you move in an open world game, is not very immersive, too. It is not foreseeable now, if the 10GB will be enough for VR-Games in the future, or not. For now, it most likely will be. There most likely will be a 3080ti, but it won't be cheap. So, if you have the time to wait, wait for maybe the next generation, and/or for better prices... like always. And don't expect a very big boost to VaM in the current version, as there are several bottlenecks to remove in the future VaM 2.x

 

[NutellaBrah]

How is it a myth? lol

Question-Solved!?! My personal answer!

In the last month, I did a LOT of research on what GPU to buy for VR.
Especially AMD Radeon RX 6800XT vs. RTX 3080. It was a race head to head.
- Bad driver support on AMD? No, in the last years not more than NVIDIA. It is a myth. Not a myth is, NVIDIA was a bit faster in resolving problems. I have spoken to fanboys of both companies, and the AMD fans swear they never had serious problems in the last years, that weren't solved.
- Price: Both cards are similar priced. AMD is a bit cheaper, but if you buy a 700€ card, the difference is near to nothing. Atm, the prices on the market are absolutely crazy. This will be better in some weeks/months. If you are able to wait, wait!
- Performance: The AMD 6800 (no xt) is much faster than the 3070, except of raytracing. The 6900 is not out now, but will be in the 1000€ PLUS range. It will most likely perform next to a 3090. The 6800xt and the 3080 are performing quite similar, and are the price/performance sweet-spot for VR at the moment. In one game, the AMD GPU is better, in an other one, the NVIDIA card rules. By the way, if you plan to play much raytracing games: No question, the NVIDIA GPUs are much better for you. If you own a new Zen3 CPU and a Radeon 6xxx, you will get a bonus, called SAM. This will bring you an additional performance boost of 0-10%. Be aware, that NVIDIA plans to developing something similar. There is one tendency to see: The 6800xt performs very good in games with resolutions sub 4k. Above 4k, the 3080 can show its true power. With this high resolutions, the fast GDDR6+ RAM and the broader memory interface can show its potential above the much higher clock speed of the 6800xt.
- Question: What resolution is VR? In theory, even a Vive Pro and a Valve Index are 4k, counting both eyes. If you do some supersampling, or if you have a Pimax or a Reverb G2, you are on your way to 8k. BUT, those numbers are difficult to compare to flatgame-benchmaks, because most of the time, VR games are much less demanding than "normal" games, with rendering tricks, smaller textures, a.s.o.
What we really need is a good VR-Review of those two cards, with only VR games...
Now, here it is:

VR Wars: The RX 6800 XT vs. the RTX 3080 – 15 VR Games Performance benchmarked

VR Wars: The RX 6800 XT vs. the RTX 3080 – 15 Games Performance benchmarked using the Vive Pro This review presents a fifteen-game VR ... Read more

babeltechreviews.com

What we see is, that a 3080 is a bit more stable and a little bit faster than a 6800xt. Over all those games together, it is a plus of 9%. That is not a big difference, and it still gives no definite answer to the question "what to buy". Unfortunately they did no tests with an Index and 120hz, nor with a Reverb and a higher resolution.

For this question, you maybe want to take a look at the OpenVR benchmark somewhere at the very end of the main table. Here you will see a very remarkable difference of more than 30% pro 3080!
Why? The developer of OpenVR says:
"Most likely because OpenVR Benchmark internally uses a high supersampling resolution to really put maximum load on the GPUs. The new AMD GPUs have fast cache, but slow memory compared to Nvidia, so the higher the rendering resolution gets, the slower the AMD GPUs become compared to Nvidia. Many flat-gaming benchmarks have shown that the AMD GPUs are very competitive at 1080p, but less so at 4K. And OpenVR Benchmark ends up rendering significantly more than 4K internally, as even an Index at only 100% SS is already more than 4K."

Finally, based only on those single test, we can say: If you are a big VR fan and maybe want to upgrade to a higher resolution (like a Reverb G2) in the future, the answer is a 3080 (or 3090 if you have deep pockets).

Though, to make it a little more complicated, the 6800xt might be a bit cheaper, maybe a bit more available and has 16GB VRAM vs only 10GB of the 3080, which is a shame. But, if I had to choose between maybe a bit stuttering when the video memory might be full, or stuttering while the GPU is slower, I would choose the first. But mountains and trees popping in as you move in an open world game, is not very immersive, too. It is not foreseeable now, if the 10GB will be enough for VR-Games in the future, or not. For now, it most likely will be. There most likely will be a 3080ti, but it won't be cheap. So, if you have the time to wait, wait for maybe the next generation, and/or for better prices... like always. And don't expect a very big boost to VaM in the current version, as there are several bottlenecks to remove in the future VaM 2.x

A myth?

Boy you really are an "underdog fanboy" arent you.

Ok explain this recent post i saw:

"AMD encoding issue with Oculus Link
Hi, I noticed an issue with Oculus Link. It seems like I have a really bad encoding even with a 500 Mpbs bitrate. Tbh I tried everything, and I still see squares of pixels like you could see on a bad quality image, especially in the different shades of dark colors. I can even see horizontal lines.
I don't know if it's an AMD issue (I have a RX 5700 xt Nitro+ and a Ryzen 5 3600, 16gb ram) because I tried on another computer with a GTX 970 and I had no issue at all, everything was really sharp and clear.
Thanks for the help."

And then the response:


"use vd, oculus have not so great amd support, in VD set 265 on 150mbps and will have way better quality vs link on 500mbps"


So its a common issue the AMD cards suck at running PCVR via Link cable compression lmao.

Every week I notice something that AMD sucks at compared to the established brands.

 

[NutellaBrah]

Was browsing iRacing and saw this post today:

and comments about it:

"Just pretend you’re racing in the Land of Oz.


Mine just green screens randomly lol


I thought I saw that this was more of an issue due to iracing themselves not amd?

Could be both. I've heard stories of AMD correctly implementing features "to spec" to find that they don't work properly becuase nVidia implemented it wrong and developers used it in such a way that the "wrong" implementation didn't have the issue.


That’s when a bug gets a feature and you can’t fix it anymore without breaking a lot of programs. Just the windows os certainly has a lot of these by keeping back compatibility over decades."

 

[TToby]

Hmm... I don't like to be called a Fanboy, as much as you, and this has got me a little bit angry. Especially because I am 50 years old and "boy" sounds a bit ridiculous. ;-) There are many people who mistake bad programming with driver issues. So most of the time it is not easy to judge, wether it is one or not by only reading some Reddit rants. Software developers have to write their stuff around the hardware specs, apis and development packages, not the other way around (or should do). Sometimes Hardware manufacturers do changing their drivers, because a single game reveals some issues, but that is not the usual way (or should not). I am not very interested in the Quest and that flimsy cable, that is IMHO only a fallback solution for a HMD originally meant as a standalone device, so I am not into that problem you mentioned. Yes, AMD does not support some encoding/decoding codices, that are supported by NVIDIA, but most of that was known long before by developers like Oculus (or should be). Some games run well on AMD, some not. It is the same for NVIDIA. If a wireless addon does not work very well because of issues with encoding/decoding/packing/unpacking/transfer rate and so on, one would blame the manufacturer of the wireless device first, not the GPU or CPU manufacturer (or should be). As I googled it correctly, Occulus is about to fix that issue by fixing its own software. Maybe the word "Myth" was a little bit provocative, too, but that is what many people told me who are a little bit more into this topic as like some loud Reddit guys. But you are right. there are some things that are definitely better with a AMD GPU and others with a NVIDIA GPU, like AMD can not handle CUDA, or has maybe performance Issue with a certain game engine aso. In a perfect world every software should run perfectly on every hardware, but...
I am not prefering any of those GPUs 100%. I wish the Radeon 6000 would have a wider memory interface AND I wish a RTX 3000 would have more VRAM. It is up to you which one your choose, Skylla or Charybdis

 

[NutellaBrah]

Hmm... I don't like to be called a Fanboy, as much as you, and this has got me a little bit angry. Especially because I am 50 years old and "boy" sounds a bit ridiculous. ;-) There are many people who mistake bad programming with driver issues. So most of the time it is not easy to judge, wether it is one or not by only reading some Reddit rants. Software developers have to write their stuff around the hardware specs, apis and development packages, not the other way around (or should do). Sometimes Hardware manufacturers do changing their drivers, because a single game reveals some issues, but that is not the usual way (or should not). I am not very interested in the Quest and that flimsy cable, that is IMHO only a fallback solution for a HMD originally meant as a standalone device, so I am not into that problem you mentioned. Yes, AMD does not support some encoding/decoding codices, that are supported by NVIDIA, but most of that was known long before by developers like Oculus (or should be). Some games run well on AMD, some not. It is the same for NVIDIA. If a wireless addon does not work very well because of issues with encoding/decoding/packing/unpacking/transfer rate and so on, one would blame the manufacturer of the wireless device first, not the GPU or CPU manufacturer (or should be). As I googled it correctly, Occulus is about to fix that issue by fixing its own software. Maybe the word "Myth" was a little bit provocative, too, but that is what many people told me who are a little bit more into this topic as like some loud Reddit guys. But you are right. there are some things that are definitely better with a AMD GPU and others with a NVIDIA GPU, like AMD can not handle CUDA, or has maybe performance Issue with a certain game engine aso. In a perfect world every software should run perfectly on every hardware, but...
I am not prefering any of those GPUs 100%. I wish the Radeon 6000 would have a wider memory interface AND I wish a RTX 3000 would have more VRAM. It is up to you which one your choose, Skylla or Charybdis

Nothing personal lol. Fanboy is just a slang in the context of CPU wars and console wars and stuff meant in jest. we are all just tech nerds who enjoy this stuff.

You think i dont get triggered (within contextual reason) at AMD bias too? lol i do.

in response to

"Some games run well on AMD, some not. It is the same for NVIDIA" thats conveniently vague. In the sense that all the "good" stuff and important stuff runs better on Nvidia and only some specific title or two that is specially propped up (paid for by AMD to be optimized) to be a title that runs as good or slighlty better on AMD so generalizing it like that is unfair. say it how it is. 99% of everything you want to do works better on nVidia and theres maybe one or two outliers. And nothing thats not mainstream. Phrasing it the way you did is loaded imo.

The other aspect is that it doesnt matter whos fault it is, as a consumer, we spend our money based on the end result. Its not our problem why these problems exist. we just dont want to have problems. So if its a devs fault for not "programming it right" or AMDs fault for having buggy drivers it doesnt matter to the consumer when weighing pros and cons for purchase choices.

And the Oculus Link isnt flimsy its actually perfect now out of beta just last week. Its no different than Rift S or any other cabled headset.

Again, almost everything is made with the main brands in mind including VAM and you never know when you will want to do something and hit a roadblock because you chose to support the underdog AMD.

As a consumer I see a huge difference between the two and one is way more of a solid long term peace of mind purchase compared to the other.

We all need 3090s and beyond with 24 gigs of RAM anyway.

 

[keycode]

After a first step with a new i7 10700 and 32GB 3600Mhz RAM (VAM performance seems now rocket-like with just a gtx1070) I pre-ordered MSI 3080 trio and reverb 2 ... all because of that banal sentence "we live just one time [probably]". Maybe I should get immedately a nice gun if something goes wrong when I will try to play VAM with those two nice toys. But if I survive and if those two damned things they arrive before I become too old for fapping, I will keep you informed on results. ??

ps: I was playing with some fucking tragic ATI and AMD processors systems .... lot of years ago, Mr TToby and since then .... nevermind... you know the following [answer]

 

[ThatDemonBoy]

I have RTX 2080 Ti, personally I had many issues with nVidia drivers over the years, from not working fans (yikes!) to currently black screens problems which official nVidia forums are flooded with, so I'm not alone, also some games were crashing like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Detroit Become Human, which they finally fixed, after almost a year of reporting the issue (so much of nVidia fixing issues fast lol)

Also their ''known issues'' section grows faster every month than ''fixed issues'' in drivers release notes.

On my second PC I put RX 6900 XT, and guess what, not a single problem so far, go figure...

 

[keycode]

I have RTX 2080 Ti, personally I had many issues with nVidia drivers over the years, from not working fans (yikes!) to currently black screens problems which official nVidia forums are flooded with, so I'm not alone, also some games were crashing like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Detroit Become Human, which they finally fixed, after almost a year of reporting the issue (so much of nVidia fixing issues fast lol)

Also their ''known issues'' section grows faster every month than ''fixed issues'' in drivers release notes.

On my second PC I put RX 6900 XT, and guess what, not a single problem so far, go figure...

Congrats! Probably I was always very lucky with my hardware and I'm sure I am not a nvidia fan-guy. You can say it's superstition, but after we got burned expectations ... (speaking about a lot of stuff installed around more or less 20 years ago). I don't play games (besides some well known 3d apps) and the only thing I don't like with nvidia is their GeForceExperience (ge-forced) registration rule. Absolutely never got system crashes or drivers issues nvidia-gpu related. I am for sure a lucky bastard.

 

[Motoyo]

AMD is only for people who play mainstream console style games.
....
Then again some people like to be a cuck and actually like something because it's worse like WMR or AMD. To express their edginess.

...uh what?
Just....what?

All this talk of people being fanboys. I feel there is a pot and kettle here that should meet.

Again, almost everything is made with the main brands in mind including VAM and you never know when you will want to do something and hit a roadblock because you chose to support the underdog AMD.

As a consumer I see a huge difference between the two and one is way more of a solid long term peace of mind purchase compared to the other.

Again...what?
I will 100% guarantee you no 3d driven game/program for general consumers and not of a commercial nature (solid works/auto cad/quatro centric based apps) are made with the intent to work on one, while "if it just happens to work on the other brand well good for them". And bet you my next 5 paychecks VAM is not made "With nvidia in mind"..its made in unity...unity is not 'brand centric' your statement is so wrong, I'm not even sure the best starting point to address how wrong it is.

I myself have Nvidia, and have for the last few generations of cards because nvidia always eeks out the 'top of the top' place with the highest end card (they are neck and neck for last handful of gens on every other tier other than highest end card of each) .
Literally every bit of what you said makes zero sense. From a tech standpoint, a builders standpoint, or even reality standpoint.

Nvidia has won the battle for the fastest flagship card within a series for a while, yes (but only the flagship of that series).
And AMD 10+ years ago had annoying drivers yes.
But the rest. Pure fanboiism in denial because you can point to those who counter point and proclaim THEY are the fanbois.

I feel the Dunning-Kruger Effect is strong in you

 

[TToby]

OK, I now have got my hands on a brand new RX 6900 xt. I was trying to get a 3080 because of all the driver-issue rumors that goes round and round in my head, and because of AMD is not as good in old DirectX 11 games and OpenGL, plus no CUDA support....
But as you know, it is barely not possible to buy a reasonable priced GPU today (Feb-Mar 2021), and so I have got the chance to get a 6900xt for 1000€ UVP, I bought it with a little bad taste in my mouth. I think: Better a 1000€ Card for 1000€ than a 700€ card for >1300€.

As for now: No problems at all with several games and tools.
6900xt and VaM: Alive and kicking! But... it is so fast, that it stutters a bit as long as you dial in the highest quality settings at 120Hz and 200% SS (so that I am ending with stable and very smooth 60Hz). But more likely it is the well known current Steam driver issue with the latest GPU generations for both (!) NVIDIA and AMD, or so I hope. At worst, it is the old Unity version or better the old physics, that are beeing used in VaM.

 

[NutellaBrah]

...uh what?
Just....what?

All this talk of people being fanboys. I feel there is a pot and kettle here that should meet.

Again...what?
I will 100% guarantee you no 3d driven game/program for general consumers and not of a commercial nature (solid works/auto cad/quatro centric based apps) are made with the intent to work on one, while "if it just happens to work on the other brand well good for them". And bet you my next 5 paychecks VAM is not made "With nvidia in mind"..its made in unity...unity is not 'brand centric' your statement is so wrong, I'm not even sure the best starting point to address how wrong it is.

I myself have Nvidia, and have for the last few generations of cards because nvidia always eeks out the 'top of the top' place with the highest end card (they are neck and neck for last handful of gens on every other tier other than highest end card of each) .
Literally every bit of what you said makes zero sense. From a tech standpoint, a builders standpoint, or even reality standpoint.

Nvidia has won the battle for the fastest flagship card within a series for a while, yes (but only the flagship of that series).
And AMD 10+ years ago had annoying drivers yes.
But the rest. Pure fanboiism in denial because you can point to those who counter point and proclaim THEY are the fanbois.

I feel the Dunning-Kruger Effect is strong in you

For example I was using a WiiU emulator and all the plugins and mods all had an Intel and AMD version and the Intel ones were able to run stuff smoothly in both Vulkan and Dx11 while the AMD one didn't even have both options and was literally not able to run the game smoothly because it was AMD. So everyone on Ryzen just couldn't play Breath of the Wild for one year lol

stuff like that.

You can say "what???" all you want like a buffoon but there are real life examples where having AMD means you lose out on something or another.

I have posted lots of examples in various places not gonna repost them all again.

research it yourself but youre obviously a fan boy

 

[ThatDemonBoy]

Never had problem with Vulkan or emulators with AMD hardware lol
My only wish it's for better performance for OpenGL apps.

And just because one game had problems with multicore CPU does not mean anything, game developers should have patch it to support newer hardware.

Now with my 6900 XT I'm very happy, much better than my 2080 Ti was. Not a single problems with drivers. Even more, I don't have crashes with DX12 games like I had sometimes with NVidia's 2080 Ti...

Sorry but you're accusing everyone of being a fan boy, but you sound like a total fan boy and a troll yourself lol

 

[NutellaBrah]

Never had problem with Vulkan or emulators with AMD hardware lol
My only wish it's for better performance for OpenGL apps.

And just because one game had problems with multicore CPU does not mean anything, game developers should have patch it to support newer hardware.

Now with my 6900 XT I'm very happy, much better than my 2080 Ti was. Not a single problems with drivers. Even more, I don't have crashes with DX12 games like I had sometimes with NVidia's 2080 Ti...

Sorry but you're accusing everyone of being a fan boy, but you sound like a total fan boy and a troll yourself lol

ah and see thats where the gambit lies my friend.

You just said it... you trapped your self haha.

"game developers should have patch it to support newer hardware."

thats where the boon lies

thats where the onus is if you know what I mean.

the fact is they don't, they really don't, and if you get AMD, theres certain things you can't do, legacy apps or otherwise.

So you can "claim" all you want about not having problems, but the fact is that other people do. And there are things I do on my Intel CPU that wouldn't be or have been the same on AMD. That fact right there makes one a much "smarter" purchase than the other.

Sorry but you can say you have no problems all you want, but there are many other who do. And had their day ruined wanting to use an app that has shoddy support for AMD somehow and they suffer for it.

As a consumer when you are looking at the proverbial shelf, all things considered, you'd be a fool to purchase AMD over Intel. its just not an informed consumer choice.

You have probably been brainwashed by YouTube shills to lean otherwise.

 

[ThatDemonBoy]

Never said I have AMD CPU, only GPU lol

Still that would not change much, I actually wanted Ryzen 5800x but could not get one in my country for normal price, so I went with Intel 10850K and it's 250w TDP and 90+ degrees on forever young 14nn++++++ LMAO
Btw since I changed my GPU from NVidia to AMD, DX12 games no longer crash, not a single crash for hours of gameplay. Overhyped, overpriced gimmicks with worse image quality due to heavy compressions techniques on Pascal, Turing and Ampere.

But go ahead and tell me more, this is so much fun

 

[NutellaBrah]

Never said I have AMD CPU, only GPU lol

Still that would not change much, I actually wanted Ryzen 5800x but could not get one in my country for normal price, so I went with Intel 10850K and it's 250w TDP and 90+ degrees on forever young 14nn++++++ LMAO
Btw since I changed my GPU from NVidia to AMD, DX12 games no longer crash, not a single crash for hours of gameplay. Overhyped, overpriced gimmicks with worse image quality due to heavy compressions techniques on Pascal, Turing and Ampere.

But go ahead and tell me more, this is so much fun

oh if you got a GPU thats even more dramatically bad.

Weird. I have had many Nvidia cards never had issues here.

Meanwhile AMD GPUs don't even work with Oculus Link cable lmao...

Keep putting your head in the sand acting oblivious its funny