topic Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station in VRED Forum

Looking for the best Vr configuration station

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 12:08:27 GMT

Hello All, I'm currently looking for the best Vr configuration using HTC Vive with complex Vred scenes.

Our Vred Scene contains complex automotive files with many variants... and we actually work with this configuration:

Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5645 @2.40GHz (2 processors)

RAM: 24.0 Go OS: 64 Bits

Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

This configuration works pretty well for running Native Vive App and Unity Builds, but we have many little latency with Vred.

I'm aware that we have to optimise our scene graph / textures and many little things, but visualization is quite hopeful...However, we would like to improve the framerate for a better comfort and to avoid the sickness effect.

By browsing the forum, i came across several posts about SLI graphic cards configuration that could improve quite a lot VR performance, so I would like to take advantage of your good advices and expertise to estimate the very best station configuration, knowing that this station will be provided to test it before any final purchase 🙂

Thank you all for your advice, allowing me to order this war / test machine.

Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station

michael_nikelsky — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:07:06 GMT

Hi,

it is difficult to give a general advice but assuming you are only using OpenGL and not raytracing you should prefer a processer with higher clock speed instead of many cores. Multithreading in OpenGL is very limited so a higher clock will increase the performance. On the Xeon lineup I would probably choose an E5-1650v4 (3.7Ghz, 6 Cores).

On the GPU side, two GTX 1080 are probably a good choice if you don´t want to spend the money on two P6000. Don´t use a founders edition card though since their cooling solution is not good for most systems with decent airflow and most third party manufacturers (ASUS, MSI, Gainward, Gigabyte, EVGA...) ship their cards with a higher clock speed and better cooling. You should be aware however that we don´t officially support gaming hardware although I personally have not encountered any issues with it so far.

However, it looks like there are some general issues with some hardware configurations and the Pascal based GPUs, so having a system you can test before buying is a very good thing.

Kind regards

Michael

Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:40:17 GMT

Hi Michael,

Thank your for this very quick answer.

We are used to work with recommended graphics cards for Real-Time Software such as Vred, 3DExcite (Deltagen) or Lumiscaphe Patchwork 3D... those are Quadro Models (K5000 / K5200)

The use of the GTX 1070 seemed mandatory, because the Steam Compatibility tool told us that the K5000 was not compatible for VR.

Considering your answer, and the fact that you do not officialy support gaming hardware, I wonder what would be the best SLI configuration, officialy supported? Is an SLI configuration with QUADRO is possible? And if So, wich ones would you advise?

In the same way, if we wish to be able to process trough the Vive, both OpenGL and Raytrace visualisation, what type of CPU configuration mixed with SLI cards would you advise?

Thank you very much for your time.

Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station

michael_nikelsky — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 14:33:04 GMT

Yes, SLI configurations with Quadro cards are possible and supported. Two P6000 work great...if they work. That´s the issue at the moment, it looks like the P6000 in SLI does not work on every SLI certified mainboard. Nvidia is already looking into that but I have not got any feedback about it. So for now it is a bit of a gamble, some systems work, others don´t. Therefore it is good if you can get a system with two P6000 for testing before you buy.

For Dual CPU setups I still recommend to get the fastest clock speed you can afford. The E5-2687WV4 looks to be a good option (12Cores@3GHz base). One important thing to check is that both GPUs are attached to the same CPU in a multicpu system, otherwise the performance will be catastrophic.

However, I doubt you will be able to use raytracing with the Vive without having a cluster. The vive fades to the waiting area if 4 frames in a row and anything below 45fps is terrible anyways. You won´t be able to achieve this on anything but the most simplistic scenes on a single workstation.

Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station

michael_nikelsky — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 14:59:15 GMT

One remark though: Ignore the steamVR tool, it mostlikely only checks gaming GPUs. The quadro GPUs work fine nonetheless.

Re: Looking for the best Vr configuration station

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 16:13:33 GMT

Hi Michael,

Many Thanks for your time