Why 12GB of RAM? Do VR games significantly consumes more RAM than other games? Doesn't make sense so far.

sverek:

Why 12GB of RAM? Do VR games significantly consumes more RAM than other games? Doesn't make sense so far.

Hopefully because valve only develop for PC. Other companies make games for consoles too so they need to make sure games can be ported, just developing for PC means they can push the boundaries without being held back. Like back in the late 1990s PC games always pushed what actual hardware people had. I hope it's that... Hopefully it's not just because it's poorly optimised 🙄

no_1_dave:

Hopefully because valve only develop for PC. Other companies make games for consoles too so they need to make sure games can be ported, just developing for PC means they can push the boundaries without being held back. Like back in the late 1990s PC games always pushed what actual hardware people had. I hope it's that... Hopefully it's not just because it's poorly optimised 🙄

And let us hope that the new iteration of consoles will allow for some seriously crazy programming for developers to stretch their power hungry finger tips. Should have at least twelve to sixteen gigabytes of RAM in each system.... Should being the main caveat....

thats not too bad, but the usual weirdness in minimum cpu even from valve is kinda baffling, a plain quad in 2019 is quite the stuttery mess even if it holds 10fps higher averages than a ryzen 5, and this should be specially obvious at +90hz on a vr game of all things

Bring it on!..(goes off to double check how much memeory i installed all those years ago, phew 16 gig)....bring it on. lol

EspHack:

thats not too bad, but the usual weirdness in minimum cpu even from valve is kinda baffling, a plain quad in 2019 is quite the stuttery mess even if it holds 10fps higher averages than a ryzen 5, and this should be specially obvious at +90hz on a vr game of all things

Well, quad cores with HT/SMT are still quad cores, but the extra logical threads makes a big difference. Regardless, I'm not sure what engine this is based on, but if this is using the aging Source engine, then that wasn't really optimized for more threads anyway.

schmidtbag:

Well, quad cores with HT/SMT are still quad cores, but the extra logical threads makes a big difference. Regardless, I'm not sure what engine this is based on, but if this is using the aging Source engine, then that wasn't really optimized for more threads anyway.

If it's based off of the Source engine, I'm sure it will run on just about any PC that can do VR. And you're right about the quad cores. I'm still using an i7-4770k with a GTX 1080 on 144hz/1440p monitor. I know I'm due for a CPU upgrade, but I never notice the stuttering they mentioned.

Yes VR games use more system memory, cpu/gpu cycles. Imagine every game you play on one screen, then double it. If your PC can run said Game on 1 on a 1080p monitor at 60fps then expect 30fps when playing same game in VR mode. I don't think its completely double the gpu memory or system memory, but u can slash your FPS in half.

Rrekt:

Yes VR games use more system memory, cpu/gpu cycles. Imagine every game you play on one screen, then double it. If your PC can run said Game on 1 on a 1080p monitor at 60fps then expect 30fps when playing same game in VR mode. I don't think its completely double the gpu memory or system memory, but u can slash your FPS in half.

Doubling-up the display causes a very minimal increase in RAM, VRAM, and CPU usage. It's not like you're rendering 2 completely different games simultaneously; most of what you're doing is the same scene rendered from 2 different perspectives. Meanwhile, you're halving the total scene resolution, which greatly minimizes the amount of load on the GPU (but, it isn't half the load). This is why consoles as old as the original Xbox or Gamecube could handle 4-player split-screen without a performance penalty, despite their very limited resources. Of course at that point, each player was getting 320x240 pixels (technically less, if you count the black border many games would use to divide each player's screen). Really the only difference with VR is there's some post-processing involved, to compensate for the lens distortion. So, I think it's fair to question the high RAM usage, but there's a lot we don't yet know that might really crank it up. Generally, the more RAM you have, the less stuttering your system will have, and stuttering is worse in VR than it is on a conventional display, so perhaps Valve is like "get yourself at least 16GB if you want this to be a smooth experience".

I'm just glad a major title finally decided to make a VR game. I would love something like Splinter Cell to be VR. That would be EPIC! Maybe more mainstream developers will start to jump in soon (fingers crossed). That would be great.