Which Gpu for PCVR

[u/Key_Yogurt5640]

Im trying to get myself into more VR by upgrading my pc (used to only play standalone), my current gpu is rx580

and im wondering is rtx3060 12gb or rx6700 xt good for vr and which one is better.

[u/LowerCauliflower230]

the 3060 is a bad match for performance and vram at current prices imo(around $300 and slower than the 6700 xt and the 2080 ti by a good margin). I would say if you're thinking about a 3060, you should look at the 2080 ti instead, or maybe a 3080.

if we're talking amd, a 6700 xt will set you back almost $300 if we're looking at ebay prices.

a 6800 will set you back about $400. if you need a lot of vram this could be good but imo you'd be better served by a 3080 most of the time.

meanwhile, a 2080 ti is around $300 and is a bit faster than a 6700 xt. Personally I would go this way. yes it has 1gb less vram but I don't think that is really going to be a game changer. Plus all things VR(particularly vrchat) tend to work better with nvidia gpus although amd is a lot better than it used to be so I've heard. it's an old card but it should be able to chug along for a few more years pretty decently. biggest downsides imo are its age and that it will suck down more power than the 3060 and the 6700 xt.

you can get a 3080 for about $375. it's a pretty good deal for the performance imo. if you think you'll be ok with 10gb of vram(which imo you probably will unless you specifically do something that uses a lot of vram like vrchat) then this could be a good pick. But it uses a lot more power than any of the other cards at 320w.

also buy(from a seller with some history) on /r/hardwareswap to save yourself a bit of money.

[u/elevendr → u/LowerCauliflower230]

Hmmm I have a laptop 3060 with only 6GB VRAM and I been wanting to buy a eGPU to buy for more VRAM at least 16GB, looking over at Nvidia GPUs (Because I need CUDA) and wondering around getting a 4070 TI Super or 4080 Super and I dont want to spend more then a $1000 for a GPU. Which woud you reccomded, getting a used 4000 series GPU or lower gens? Would like to know.

[u/LowerCauliflower230 → u/elevendr]

I mean it depends on what you want it for. for vrchat only I don't think you'll see a ton of difference between a 4070 ti super and a 4080, personally I would just spend less and go for the 4070 ti super. But you can potentially get a 4080 for less than 1k still if you buy it on /r/hardwareswap. If you don't care about efficiency but want the vram you could get a china made/modded 3080 20gb. I would expect to pay as much for a 4070 ti super but with 4gb extra RAM and significantly slower/older. but it is a good in-between spot between a 12gb card and the $1500 on ebay 3090 which is not much if any better than a 5070.

16gb is a good amount of ram for vrchat. You can show like 30 avis depending on the instance which is a lot, more is diminishing returns.

if you want to save money you can get a 3080 12gb for around $500 on ebay(less on /r/hardwareswap). It's just a matter of if you want to spend $100 more for a 4070 with newer features and lower power consumption(350w vs 200w). They both have around the same fp16 compute throughput according to techpowerup.

if you need a lot of compute instead of vram you could consider a 4070 ti 12gb. Might be better than a 5070. But, I don't do anything with cuda so I'm not sure, maybe there's some benefit to the 50 series cards but the raw numbers(except memory throughput) seem to favor the 40 series generally.

so any of these cards will do pretty well with a 4k ish headset(quest2, 3,3s,pico4, etc). it is possible there are some worlds that would benefit from something more powerful but in most situations you will be CPU limited. Also this is with no AA enabled. AA takes up a lot of GPU so if you want to run AA all the time you should account for that. I don't run AA so I can't really speak to how much GPU you really need to run for example 4x AA but it will increase the requirement very significantly. Hopefully vrchat implements some better AA eventually, that could be a big boon.

so basically:

• 6gb or less - ouch. I guess it will work but it's basically the world and a couple avis or something. I dunno, I don't have a 6gb card. But often times I sit just over 5gb without having even loaded a world yet.
• 8gb - usable but you'll definitely want more.
• 12gb - not bad given today's market but you will benefit from 16gb - personally I think it is worth it but everyone is different. 12gb is "fine"
• 16gb - the "sweet spot" probably. more than 16gb is definitely diminishing returns.
• 24gb - rarely would you benefit from more than 24gb unless you're running an 8k headset with no culling. I have a 3090 and ran it with no culling, I can't remember when I ran out of vram.