Question PC Upgrade help

[DinaVam]

Hey,

So I finally got my Index around 2 months ago and I've been enjoying VR, especially Virt a Mate. One problem tho ... VaM is HUNGRY, and while my setup has never let me down in 3-4 years, VR games in general and especially VaM are beyond my setup.

Speaking of the setup :
GPU : RTX 2060
CPU : AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (3.6Ghz max, AM4 socket)
RAM : 16go
Motherboard : MSI Bazooka 450M

I can comfortably play any games in 1080p. As for VR, Half-Life Alyx runs buttery smooth but this is a very well optimized game from what I understand. Blade&Sorcery struggles, around 50-70 fps most of the time, so not ideal for VR. I can run VaM in VR with 20-40 fps (thank god I don't get sick in VR) only going above that in very simple scenes (1 model, 1 light, simple hair, no clothing). I have read through the excellent fps guide here on this hub (from ClubJuzle I think ?) and it helps but VaM ends up looking bad with lots of models/scenes. I also know that VaM 2.0 is coming out eventually but we don't know when, it's gonna take some time.
GPUs are crazy expensive these days so I'm gonna wait for that. And I'm mostly CPU bound in VaM, deactivating SoftBody physics gets me to 60fps and sometimes more. So my CPU has to change. I have been looking at the Ryzen 7 3800X ( 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3.9GHz) and the Ryzen 5 5600X ( 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.7GHz). Would I get much better performances with one of these CPUs or should aim higher ? If so, how high ? The goal would be to have around 70-90 fps on some more complex scenes(Like some of those juicy looking Universens's or Damarmau's scenes). Ty for reading, hope to hear from you guys soon !

 

[MacGruber]

I recently released a Benchmark suite for VaM:

Benchmark - Plugins -

Why? What is this? As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but barely anybody...

hub.virtamate.com

Do the following:

1. Download and run the benchmark on your current machine. Make sure to follow instructions to turn off ASW/MS for your headset, otherwise you may not get useful results.
2. Go to the discussion thread and find a system similar to which you want to upgrade to. Ideally one that also runs an Valve Index or at least at similar VR resolution. Maybe that system gives X% more FPS than your current one.
3. Now run the scene you ACTUALLY want to run, check your FPS and apply that same X% value. Obviously not an exact science, but better than guessing. Possibly you many want to weight-in results of certain scenes of the benchmark more than others.

Note that version 1 and 2 of the Benchmark produce comparable results. However, version 3 added scenes and made changes, so don't compare version 1/2 results to version 3. If you don't find matching system specs for version 3, possibly you need to run the old version 2 instead. (You can get old versions via the history tab of the Hub resource)

 

[TToby]

Hi,
as MacGruber said, you may want to run the Benchmsrk Test and compare your results to other hardware.

From my personal experience: I had a PC with more or less similar hardware. I have used it for VaM the last few years. As you allready said, VaM ist brutal in VR. I have bought a brand new PC at the beginning of the year with a Ryzen 5800x, 32GB and a 6900xt.
Yes, it IS faster, but not in the way that one might think. The typical issues VaM had, are still there. Of course not as obvious as before, but still nasty enough. What I can do with my new hardware is for instance: More Super-Sampling, more light sources, aso, but still framedrops with hair and clothes. The reason is that VaM can't make fully use of your hardware. For instance, it uses only 1-2 cores of your CPU for many calculations. A bit disappointing.
A new VaM version is work in progress for more than a year, and it will definitely be more hardware friendly (but has more functions at the same time).
It is up to you how desperately you want a new PC. At the moment it is not a good time to buy hardware.

You can still have fun with your old computer, if you mind some things in VaM:
For instance, delete all light sources except one from slow scenes, lower Super Sampling in SteamVR AND VaM to 1 (100%), edit hair physics to lower values and maybe use only scenes with a single person (and use your imagination for the other ones). This and other tipps you can find in several other threads, will give you a big boost in performance. Maybe this will be enough to help you out till VaM 2.0 is ready ond/or hardware prices are getting normal again.

 

[DinaVam]

Yeah, the hardware prices are ... yeah. For once in my life, I have money, could probably go for a 3000 euros brand new PC and still have money left for IRL stuff, but half of this is gonna pay for the gpu alone (more than half actually) and around a third of the total price is gonna pay for some "top of the line" CPU that VaM can't use to it's full potential. Still, a cpu upgrade would be nice not only for VaM but others games I play, TotalWar Warhammer 3 is coming and I've played enough of TWWH2 to know that my CPU is crying for help whenever I play a campaign, litterally, I can a hear a clicking sound coming from it, same in VaM.
As MacGruber suggested, I ran the benchmark and I'm gonna post the results on the dedicated thread. I'll see if I can get some more info there. But yeah, CPU upgrade is an option. Buying a whole new setup these days, while very tempting, would be stupid. Ty for the quick answers !

 

[HolySchmidt]

The goal for VaM 1.x is "single core performance". So theoretically Intel 12 series should be the best right now. But as already been mentioned, VaM is unpotimized and therefore no benchmark. Of course you can squeeze more out of it, but at what price ... ? And what do you get for your money?

I think no one in here really is using VaM with more than 2 people and 3 lights. This is okay to my system (9700K, RTX 3080) and pretty high settings. But that's it. 3rd person is kind of a no-go with the same settings. Not much clothes if any, simple hairstyles.

Try out all your performance settings in VaM as they can make a huge difference. Avoid as much clothing as possible (should be easy), complex hairstyles (huge perfomance killer) and as many lights as possible.

In Q1/2022 AMD will release their new Zen3D processors. But their will be probably no BIG difference (if any) in single core performance to Intels 12 series, rumours said.
Have you tried MSI Afterburner + Riva Tuner to have a look at where your bottleneck really is? CPU, GPU? It's free, so before buying stuff blindly I would check that out.

 

[TToby]

HolySchmidt has a good point. So you will need high single core speed for VaM 1.x, a slight overclocking of your CPU may have a noticeable effect, almost like buying a new CPU. I don't speak of those mediocre automatic OC buttons in tools or BIOS. You may know, that in the last years, the CPU-performance didn't grow in a way like GPU-performance, and with VaM 1.x it is somewhat unimportant if you have 4 or 16 cores.
If you didn't have done this till now, the moment you are thinking about buying new hardware might be a good time to try this out. Please have a look at all those many Youtube videos and internet tutorials about Overclocking. You most likely will found some for your current CPU ("best OC BIOS settings for Ryzen 5 3600").
Like always: Don't overdo it! Mind to keep an eye on your system-temperatures, and always save your last working BIOS-settings.
With nowerdays hardware it is somewhat unlikely that you will completely destroy your CPU (if you act carefully), but having an unstable system and don't know what to do is no fun, too.