Question New machine. Specifications suitable for VaM?

[Icgi]

Building new machine. Can anyone post opinion on the specs? I cannot find specifics on this topic

CPU: AMD RyZen 5, 6 Core 12 Threads 3.4Ghz
RAM: 34 GB
GPU; Nvidia Titan x, 12GB Ram, 3072 Shaders
2x 1TB NVRam SSD PCI M2 drives
1 1TB SATA dump truck!
OS: Windows 10

 

[Johninvr]

I’m in the same boat, trying to nail down what’s good enough and what I need to beef up for a system tailored to VAM in VR. From the sounds of it an RTX 3060 “should” be good enough of a GPU, not sure about the titan. I’m curious to hear what other users are using and what’s working for them.

 

[TToby]

It strongly depends on the things you want to do.
If you want to use it in VR with a high resolution, you maybe want to have all the power you could get.
If you want to use it in desktop mode it is not that bad.
If you want to use scenes with three persons and lots of lights and stuff in it, you will need a LOT more performance than for simple scenes...

I have used VaM with my old i7 4790k, GTX 980ti and 16GB RAM on a HDD for years in VR on a OG VIVE and Valve Index, with moderat scenes of 1-2 people and one (!) light source.
So your PC "should be" sufficient, depending on your own demands.

Please have in mind that VaM in this current version is not well optimized to get all the power out of your hardware.
You maybe would not even see a big difference if you would buy a much stronger PC.
You will find both, people with a 2060 which will say VaM runs OK, and people with a 3090 which will say VaM runs too slow.

 

[HolySchmidt]

Using an i7-9700K (4.9 GHz single-core, very important for VaM 1.x), a RTX 3080 and an NVMe SSD 2TB.

With two persons, 2-3 lights and pretty high settings you get around 50-70fps, something like that. It's definitely playable. Three persons is about 30-40fps. No special environment, no clothings, no frame-eating hairs. Depends on a lot of variables.

I had a 1080ti before, was good too. 3080 is a difference, but not as big as I wished. CPU still bottlenecks because of the physics.

I wouldn't recommend you a 6-core, 8-core should be minimum from my perspective. 9700K is a very attractive CPU if you ask me. Was around 210€ in my country, is now at 280€ again. 8 cores + very high single speed, better than the Ryzen 5 (6 cores, 4.6GHz single speed) and around the same price + integrated GPU (always a good thing). So, I still don't know why AMD is so hyped. For workstations, yes. For gaming, I would prefer Intel, just sayin'.

By the way: threads (CPU) isn't that important. What Ryzen 5 do you wanna get?

Your decision also has to depend on what you wanna do with your computer besides VaM and in what resolution.

 

[Icgi]

Well thanks. It really does not help with my specific topic however as suggesting things I do not have does not help. LOL I opened with the actual hardware I do have. I have not yet gotten a key but so far what I have is an order of magnitude better than my i7 machine. Seems fast.

That said I am still looking at tutorials prior to spending anything. I want to get a grasp of this first.

 

[Johninvr]

Thanks for the detailed write up and specs guys!! Sorry to the OP if that didn’t help much, but that information is a treasure trove to a new PC buyer getting into vam.

Its insane that I’m investing nearly $2,000 into a system so I can enjoy an $8 game, but it’s well worth it to me.

VAM is literally the benchmark of what I wanted in VR ever since I was a kid. It’s remarkable it even exists.

 

[LooksHunter]

I have been steadily upgrading my rig over past couple of months to max out stuff for my Valve Index, and yesterday I finally topped it off with 3080ti. The difference is huge, being able to max out graphical settings, but it still slutters in Vam. I strongly recommend getting more than 32gb of ram, if you are like me and like to load, edit and cycle through a lot of different clothes and looks. For some reason all the ram used lingers until crash or reset, so now I'm considering saving up for 64gb or more for smoother experience.
It was kinda working decently when I first got into it with my old rig, but those extreme loading times and freezes add up in frustration, and make each session much longer than I wanted. Now it is mostly pain free until I cycle through too much stuff which often means crash every 15 or so minutes. Higher ram is definetly recommended!

So far I spend 3300e on this rig, and it's still not enough, I doubt there exist a rig that can currently run it hassle free in this generation, either prepare to spend a lot now or wait for some new generation of gpu and CPU or hope 2.0 will fix a lot of those issues.

 

[TToby]

The difference is huge, being able to max out graphical settings, but it still slutters in Vam.

This is so true! I had the same experience with my new water cooled 6900xt. That is what I always try to say: with a new monster GPU you can use 200% supersampling aso, but this would not stop VaM from stuttering in VR. Even a new CPU with new board and fast RAM did a somewhat visible difference here and there, but VaM still stutters in VR...
In this regard it was a disappointment (which I had expected, but...)
The biggest difference I have got was when I bought a bigger SSD and moved VaM to this coming from an HDD.
Like you said: if the stuttering and fps drops are your main issue, for instance if you have two persons with high physics hair and clothes with three light sources, or if it is the slow responding time in the user menus or the loading time, I bet this simply can't be helped by buying new and expensive hardware. Maybe wait till VaM 2.x before you do this!

RAM issues: personally, I am still at 16 GB RAM. I know the memory issue when scrolling through many different clothes very well, too. But this has got much (!) better since the last versions. Those crashes to desktop are very rare now. If you speak of 15 minutes, this is maybe the same for me even with only 16 GB. I am not completely sure if 64 GB would do that much difference?
As you may know, there is a button in the person's main tab for clearing the RAM, exactly as a workaround for this issue. Just click on this button every 5-10 minutes, when doing a longer dress-up session, until we will get the new VaM 2.x.

 

[HolySchmidt]

Same, HDD to SSD was the biggest jump in terms of speed, loading times are a lot faster which makes it much more enjoyable.

I have 32GB of RAM and don't have any issues with that. No more needed I would say. Crashes are practically gone with the updates. Few months ago it crashed on a regular basis, now I can't even remember when it crashed the last time.

@topic
I would makes this conclusion of recommendations for VaM (and in general for pc-building):

SSD - Yes, 100% (no matter what you gonna do with it in the future, makes a huge speed difference in everything)
CPU - High single speed (8 cores for me)
GPU - Buy whatever you can and are willing to afford (faster=better, of course)
RAM - 32GB for me, 16GB should do the job as well (64GB right now is for workstations, my opinion, of course more=better)

TItanX is in the 1080ti category so yes, that will do a good job, it's still a good card. CPU with 6 cores still not my way to go. That's like investing in the past instead of buying the present. If this ain't helping then I don't know what your question is anyway.

 

[LooksHunter]

Even a new CPU with new board and fast RAM did a somewhat visible difference here and there, but VaM still stutters in VR...

Yeah haha a hard pill to swallow, it amuses me how it still freezes for a couple of seconds every time a new download gets integrated. It is my second day with finished rig so I'm coming to terms with this, and I will be making a research on how to optimise it properly, as clearly throwing more money is not a solution to this. I like how everything in Vam is a learning curve.

As you may know, there is a button in the person's main tab for clearing the RAM, exactly as a workaround for this issue. Just click on this button every 5-10 minutes, when doing a longer dress-up session, until we will get the new VaM 2.x.

Wait what? We are supposed to actually purge this cache? I though this buffer is necessary to speed things up. And here I'm sitting with 110gb of cache, larger than my add-on packages folder.

Can you guys point me in the right direction in regards of optimising the performance, settings wise? I also heard of some session add-ons that help increase FPS further, but I have no idea about those yet, so help would be really appreciated. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong.

edit: so my specs are x570 Aorus Elite mobo, AMD ryzen 9 5950x CPU, 32gb of 3600mgz ram, Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1tb m2 ssd and 3080 Ti from MSI.

 

[teabreak]

My set up: Just in case everyone thinks you need a PC that requires a 2nd mortgage to buy.

AMD Ryzen 3600
GTX 1660 Super
16BG RAM
480 GB SSD

It works (just). And I'm hoping VAM 2.0 will run even better on it.

 

[TToby]

Crashes are practically gone with the updates. Few months ago it crashed on a regular basis, now I can't even remember when it crashed the last time.

Yes, the same for me, BUT some days ago, I had again some crashes to desktop while loading many clothes in a row (dress-up doll style). It was again like in the past after approx 15 min and was fitting the old pattern. Well, might be my own fault by impatiently loading new clothes while the textures of the old ones are not ready loaded. I guess this would kill many other programs too.

Wait what? We are supposed to actually purge this cache? I though this buffer is necessary to speed things up. And here I'm sitting with 110gb of cache, larger than my add-on packages folder.

I don't know much about caching in VaM, there obviously might be different caches for different purposes. You have a big fat button to empty the main cache, too, but those issue with loading many clothes were AFAIK mainly a memory oveflow error because of textures. As you may know, you can alter all those clothes by selecting different textures, colors and settings. If you don't save those changes as preset, they will be gone after restarting VaM. Maybe the default values are being recognized, too, because the issue was even without custom edited clothes. AFAIK this will fill up your memory more and more... might be RAM or VRAM idk. As a hint to this, read the menu description of that button I was speaking of. It reads something like "you will lose all changes made to clothes not actually loaded".

Some versions ago, this memory error was a huge problem like HolySchmidt said. Not compareable to like it is now IMHO. But in the same time we have got that desperately user-demanded "clear memory button", MeshedVR has patched away most of the error, too. So this button is more like a redundant safety procedure. If you still have issues in that regard, you maybe want to clear your memory from time to time and see if this might help you until VaM 2.x will be ready.

 

[LooksHunter]

I have made a lot of research on optimisation, and also started clearing that cache, I didn't notice much difference in load speeds, but my game runs better and crashes less.
A bit weird how those clothes settings persist in cache untill purged, since access to those specifics changes is lost unless saved anyway. No wonder that cache got so huge so fast, I spend most of my time in Vam fine-tuning clothing presets.

I have also only now realised that I actually have to enable XMP profile since now my ram is running at 2100 instead of advertised 3600 speed, this should also help a ton. Things are looking up!

 

[Williamwow123]

Well thanks. It really does not help with my specific topic however as suggesting things I do not have does not help. LOL I opened with the actual hardware I do have. I have not yet gotten a key but so far what I have is an order of magnitude better than my i7 machine. Seems fast.

That said I am still looking at tutorials prior to spending anything. I want to get a grasp of this first.

The topic of VAM hardware comes up very often, the answer boils down to NOTHING you can afford will make it run "good" VAM runs like crap even on 10 core 20 thread and a 3080. Use the PC you have if you can and just wait for VAM 2 to drop with actual hardware utilization. Then worry about PC parts.

Edit: Wtf you haven't bought VAM yet it's $2 lmao

 

[greenkeepr]

I rock a gaming laptop and things for the most part run pretty good, albeit at 30fps +-5fps.

System specs:
I7 7700k 2.8Ghz turbo to 3.2Ghz
Nvidia GTX 1060 with max Q 6Gb VRAM
16Gb system ram
1x120Gb nvme
1x1Tb SSD

Just repasted my GPU and CPU and things are running VERY smoothly ?.... Though VR is kinda sketch ?