Best way to improve my hardware for VR - Assetto Corsa, ACC, AMS2 and iRacing

Hello guys,
After couple of years of fun with sim racing and VR Im thinking about upgrading some of my hardware and I would like to ask for your opinions and suggestions for the best and smartest ways to spend my money:

This is what I have at the moment:
- AsRock x570m pro 4
- Ryzen 7 5800x with TUF GAMING LC 120 ARGB
- OS (win 10) on Kingston SKC3000s 1Tb and only assetto corsa on SSD WD Black NVMe 1 TB
- RAM DDR4-3200 XMP HyperX 2 x 16 GB at 1,35V and 3800 cas 21
- From BIOS and according to Ryzen Master im running in Coupled Mode at 1900 / 3800 at 1,35V and CAS 21 and PBO per core at -28
- RTX 3070 Ti FE
- 650W corsair PSU
- Samsung HMD odyssey + which I love and I find it really comfortable for my IPD of 70,5mm
- At the moment I ONLY play assetto corsa, assetto corsa competizione, automobilista 2, iRacing and ONLY on the samsung hmd odyssey + at 90fps

Since budget is the limit, I’m trying to understand whats the upgrade that can guarantee me the best “price to improvement” ratio.
At the moment this is what im evaluating:
- RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB F4-4000C18D-32GTZR memory module 32 GB 2 x 16 GB DDR4 4000 MHz - I know that the HyperX I have now isn’t anything special but my doubt is if the g.skill worths the 150 € in improvement or anyway what kind of impact it can have for VR
- CPU: I could sell my 5800x and go up a bit with the 5800x3rd
- GPU: crazy prices beside im keeping my eyes on the RTX 4070 ti and RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 ti: whats in your opinion the best choice for VR?I have read a lot about the limitations of the new RTX 4070 ti (BUS, low VRAM bandwidth etc) - probably one good pro about the 4070 ti is that I could keep my 650W PSU

Sorry for the long post and Im really looking forward to hear you opinions and suggestions and thanks in advance to anyone who will help and old gamer (im 43) lol
Ciao e grazie,
Mons!

SteamVR will tell you if your CPU or GPU is the bottleneck in your games in its debug mode and ShowFPS app will certainly help as well. I suspect its not a lack of RAM or RAM speed because usually the impact of that is relatively negligible. For Assetto Corsa and iRacing (and Race room racing experience) its possibly a CPU limitation as they don't use many threads and a X3D will help a bit but its not going to be dramatic, these games are largely limited by their design and age.

Everything else is going to be GPU limited and the more you can get the better, ACC is still not running top on a 4090 its really very poorly optimised for VR.

Its going to be different for each game but its usually GPU in VR. But you can actually see that in the Steam VR debug performance stuff it will show you CPU and GPU time for a frame to see where the time is spent so you don't have to take my word for what I experience on a 3080 on a 13700k you can just measure it yourself in the scenarios you have issues.

Get the 5800X3D and keep your RAM, you don't really need a fast ram with a 3D chip.
GPU-wise your options are limited by the PSU. The only upgrade you can do is 4070ti, but it's a bad value, that GPU should be costing $500 max. It doesn't have the specs of a typical xx70 card, let alone a ti variant.
Your 3070ti should be enough for medium-high settings in ACC which is probably the biggest VR hog in your list of sims. Install OpenComposite and OpenXR Toolkit, enable foveated rendering in the latter and you will get a very nice performance boost compared to running it in vanilla Steam VR

Tnx a lot to both of you guys, its really appreciated
Going to download both opencomposite and openXr Tool kit asap and try them out.
Ill also check if im being gpu or cpu bottlenecked , ill let you know!!
Anyway im more than willing to change PSU if i find the right deal for a 3080 or 3080 ti, as i supposed the 4070 ti isnt that big deal nvidia wants us to believe.
tnx again and ooking forward to read even more opinions.

Ciao e grazie,

Mons

Mons79 said:

...
- Samsung HMD odyssey + which I love and I find it really comfortable for my IPD of 70,5mm
- At the moment I ONLY play assetto corsa, assetto corsa competizione, automobilista 2, iRacing and ONLY on the samsung hmd odyssey + at 90fps
...

Click to expand...

I also run all my sims with the Samsung Odyssey + and in the last 3 days I've upgraded my gpu from a 3060 ti to a 4070 ti. So if you want me to test the 4070 ti in ACC & AMS2, with your current 3070 ti settings to give you a comparison, I can do.

Do you own fpsvr?

pattikins said:

I also run all my sims with the Samsung Odyssey + and in the last 3 days I've upgraded my gpu from a 3060 ti to a 4070 ti. So if you want me to test the 4070 ti in ACC & AMS2, with your current 3070 ti settings to give you a comparison, I can do.

Do you own fpsvr?

Click to expand...

Tnx a lot pattikins, it would be great to have a real opinion about how the 4070 ti really performs with the odyssey +.
I dont use fpsvr (but if course i can install it), but today in lunch break i started to thinker with openxr toolkit and opencomposite (i have a 3 yo daughter so time is the hardest thing to get lol) and i saw they have a pretty extensive fps counter for both gpu and cpu.
Im in touch with a guy for a used 3090 which would come around 200$ cheaper than the 4070 ti (only 100$ if i consider the new 850 watt PSU) so im really tempted....what do you guys think, used 3090 or new 4070 ti?
Anyway hopefully i will let you know how it goes tonight with openxr toolkit and opencomposite
Thanks again,

Mons

Go with the 3090 if it's been well looked after and hasn't been mined with, it willl have more memory bandwidth, and physically more memory. 4070ti is really hampered by the 192 bit bus on it. I recently built a system for someone with an i5 10600k (oc'ed) and a 3060ti and they run a rift s and get consistent 80fps in ACC (which is badly optimised for VR from the get go). You just need to manage expectations a little bit on the visual side.

Out of these two, I'd get the 3090 if it's not an ex-mining card. Twice the VRAM, almost twice the bandwidth. In fact, the 4070ti has lower bandwidth than your current 3070ti. nVidia pulled a fast one on us, offering a what should've been a 60 card disguised as the 4070ti

Tnx a lot to all of you guys!!!Yesterday night i had couple of hours to thinker with openxr and opencomposite and damn if there is a difference compared to vanilla steamVr!!I only tried with assetto corsa tho, im not expecting to have the same huge impact on Ams2 or ACC since my hardware!Anyway openxr confirmed im GPU bound!
Ok now another question since the performance boost i had for free with openxr: if you had my hardware and a budget of around 800 euros, would you upgrade first the GPU (the 3090 i mentioned earlier) or my thrustmaster t300 with a simucube alpha mini?Pedals are fine already since i have (and love) the fanatec clubsport V3 - im really curious to know what you guys would put first, a gpu or a really good dd wheel!!!
Ciao e grazie,
Mons!

Mons79 said:

Tnx a lot to all of you guys!!!Yesterday night i had couple of hours to thinker with openxr and opencomposite and damn if there is a difference compared to vanilla steamVr!!I only tried with assetto corsa tho, im not expecting to have the same huge impact on Ams2 or ACC since my hardware!Anyway openxr confirmed im GPU bound!
Ok now another question since the performance boost i had for free with openxr: if you had my hardware and a budget of around 800 euros, would you upgrade first the GPU (the 3090 i mentioned earlier) or my thrustmaster t300 with a simucube alpha mini?Pedals are fine already since i have (and love) the fanatec clubsport V3 - im really curious to know what you guys would put first, a gpu or a really good dd wheel!!!
Ciao e grazie,
Mons!

Click to expand...

Depends what you think is most important to you, the look of the sim or how it feels to you? If I’m honest I’d say a decent direct drive wheel, loadcell brake combo will improve your performance on track more than graphical fidelity from a new GPU. However, there’s always a “but” if you do more than just sim racing, like gaming in general or a bit of productivity with the PC….a graphics card will be a better use of the cash. You need to think about your use case outside of thrashing a McLaren around brands hatch etc and decide on where you next upgrade.

Is there any real source for VR testing 4070 ti vs 3090?

Looking at Monitor benchmarks the 4070ti is the best price to performance wise right now in Germany.
I only remember the 3440x1440 benchmarks from the top of my head though. Might be different for the Samsung hmd resolution.

Used 3090's might be just as good, while using twice the power though.

Here's an overview with the "current" prices and what a "fair" price would be (same price/per):


Otherwise:
Faster RAM won't improve things much compared to the costs.
You could look into tuned timings though. You don't mention that you tuned them.
They can make a big difference on AMD CPUs!
3600 CL14 tuned might give significantly higher fps than your 3800 xmp profile right now.

You could sell the 5800X and get the 3D one, but it won't give you much more fps in iRacing and rF2 since they don't scale with memory that much from my knowledge.
AC and ACC would see a big improvement though, from what I know.

But you already said you're apparently graphics card limited.
So see my table above

Mons79 said:

my thrustmaster t300 with a simucube alpha mini

Click to expand...

If you can recover from most slides using the T300 (I could not with my G29),
then better VR may yield more immediate gratification.

FWIW, I suppose you intended Simagic, instead of Simucube..
If I did not already have a SimXperience wheelbase,
the SIMAGIC ALPHA MINI FORMULA BUNDLE would be tempting.

Mons79 said:

Tnx a lot pattikins, it would be great to have a real opinion about how the 4070 ti really performs with the odyssey +.
I dont use fpsvr (but if course i can install it), but today in lunch break i started to thinker with openxr toolkit and opencomposite (i have a 3 yo daughter so time is the hardest thing to get lol) and i saw they have a pretty extensive fps counter for both gpu and cpu.
Im in touch with a guy for a used 3090 which would come around 200$ cheaper than the 4070 ti (only 100$ if i consider the new 850 watt PSU) so im really tempted....what do you guys think, used 3090 or new 4070 ti?
Anyway hopefully i will let you know how it goes tonight with openxr toolkit and opencomposite
Thanks again,

Mons

Click to expand...

This is the result that I got with ACC, using Epic VR settings (steamvr):

29 cars @ Brands Hatch + clear weather.