Wednesday, May 11th 2016
No Takers for VR: TechPowerUp New GPU Survey
The latest TechPowerUp front-page survey springs up some interesting findings on what our readers are most looking forward to, with the upcoming GPUs. Timed ahead of market availability of new GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD, this poll gains relevance. At the time of writing of this article, we had received 4,650 votes over a week-long period, which amounts to a reasonable sample size. Some of the findings were surprising.
An overwhelming 60 percent of the respondents find price/performance most important. Interestingly, only 7 percent find efficiency/noise important. The second most popular choice, at 14 percent, was "4K Playability" (the ability for the GPU to play games at 4K Ultra HD resolution, at playable frame-rates). Our readers are seven times more likely to invest on 4K Ultra HD monitors (which start at $300 if you look in the right places), than picking up a VR (virtual reality) headset. A negligible 2 percent of our readers find VR most important.
The battle for next-gen APIs seems to be going Microsoft's way, as DirectX 12 excites 7 percent of our readers, compared to 3 percent for Vulkan. More people seem to be looking forward to Vulkan than VR. A sizable 5 percent of the respondents are cynical and are just happy to have more games to play with on their existing hardware.
An overwhelming 60 percent of the respondents find price/performance most important. Interestingly, only 7 percent find efficiency/noise important. The second most popular choice, at 14 percent, was "4K Playability" (the ability for the GPU to play games at 4K Ultra HD resolution, at playable frame-rates). Our readers are seven times more likely to invest on 4K Ultra HD monitors (which start at $300 if you look in the right places), than picking up a VR (virtual reality) headset. A negligible 2 percent of our readers find VR most important.
97 Comments on No Takers for VR: TechPowerUp New GPU Survey
Just use some cardboard attach it to your monitor all the way to your head, bam, you've now lost your peripheral vision. You can now feel like you have tunnel vision.
Reaction time will be slower in high paced games and will be more likely to get fatigued.
No I haven't tried VR, but if I get the chance I will, just sounds boring, and one more thing that can go wrong with compatability.
First person it's not as much but it can have it's advantages, i have been using one since IL-2 and it's a must.
Here's a TrackIR, vid, although this guy is a beginner which it shows a lot. all so works much better in a fighter than that slow ass ship he's using.
Given time VR will grow or die, most want to see what happens before wasting money and get some thing that's not so buggy or prone too.
As the guy said in the video 3 screens or even 6 screens large screens help with trackIR and is well known for making people sick as if it was happening. I know even today if mine died i would get another some how.
Just not worth the risk with VR to me, i want some thing that's fully working without problems and until they fix VR so you don't need a more powereful system due to using it and all the other issue's along with price i am not that bothered.
As a matter of fact multiple Universities' Biotechnology labs are working on VR assisted genome editing. (hint part of my project as well)
VR is big, it's coming. Refuse it all you can but it WILL take over everything.
Its more of a gimmick from what I've seen so far.
I tried Gear VR which is pretty much a fancy cardboard, which I have at home 3d printed :).
I tried also the Oculus, a pre-release version though, but even that one was still a joke, compared to what I expected. Very poor quality, bulky, I don't see very good applicability yet.
It was nice for site viewing though :)
On the other hand, I have 4k monitor and I know the level of detail is considerably higher compared to 1080p. That said, I would love to get a GPU that can max out games at 4k without spending outrageous amounts of money on it... but with the state of the GPU market currently I suspect this will be way down the line.
Now smartphone manufacturers are aiming at 2K, which means it starts off just as expensive high-end only feature (a 5.5" 1440p screen assembly goes for ~$150-200 w/ MIPI-DSI driver board just like 1080p was 2 years ago), but by 2018-2019 will be in every mid-to-high price range smartphone/tablet/VR headset.
Being Rich means having wealth to dispose of ie disposable income
thats like 1% of the planets population
when all the necessities of life are paid for
like
BUYING FOOD
Paying RENT/MORGAGES
RAISING kids ( NOT CHEAP ).
there may be a little money left over
To invest that money in Virtual reality Tech that may go the same way as 3d TV is a step to far at the moment
Cost is my main concern about VR as well. Otherwise, I don't think it is inherently a bad tech.
$600+...nah. Tech has been around a long time. Besides, first gens almost always have issues or quirks that don't get resolved till gen 3 or 4.
VR as a thing is not something people buy GPU for... but more like another threshold to consider, when buying a new GPU - a bit more than good enough for 1080p and considerably lower than 4k. It's more like... I don't go to buy a barely VR capable GPU... I go buy best price/performance GPU that is also capable for good VR experience (and not the minimum one).... but the emphasis is still on price/performance, not the VR (yet, it also has to be able to do VR! ... and possibly also freesync ... and fit into my mITX case).
Another example and maybe better explanation. If you did similar survey for new display and options are - price/performance; display size; 16:9; 21:9; freesync; g-sync; HDR; curved; HDMI; VGA; DP.
and the result comes back with 2% for DP only and you come out with article, that nobody cares about DP connectivity :D NOBODY buys a display because it can get picture over DP... but it has to have it among other things. Same thing with VR capability... if you buy a GPU today, it HAS to be good enough for VR also. ALSO if you go for 4k playability, the GPU is automatically very capable for VR ...
So whining here about VR being a 600/800$ toy is seriously weird. Even weirder for me is that you use computer with 3x GPU and ... find VR useless toy? Do you use your GPU's for compute and not for visuals?