GTX 1060 vs RX 480 – Oculus Rift Games

With those details and explanations in tow, let’s look at an early round of direct GPU comparison. For VR testing, the most relevant story surrounds the GeForce GTX 1060 and the Radeon RX 480 graphics cards. When AMD launched the RX 480 (8GB variant) it was pitched as the lowest priced card to offer a solid VR experience. The GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB variant in these tests) is slightly more expensive ($220 vs $240) but falls in the same competitive category.

  PC Perspective GPU Testbed
Processor Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E
Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme X99
Memory G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB DDR4-3200
Storage OCZ Agility 4 256GB (OS)
Adata SP610 500GB (games)
Power Supply Corsair AX1500i 1500 watt
OS Windows 10 x64
Drivers AMD: 17.2.1
NVIDIA: 378.78

A couple of notes before we get into the comparisons. For the Oculus Rift based testing (Chronos, Dirt Rally, Edge of Nowhere, Obduction) all settings were left at default. The HTC Vive testing through SteamVR had a slight modification. As of this writing, AMD GPUs do not support asynchronous reprojection in SteamVR while NVIDIA’s do support it. Asynchronous reprojection will allow SteamVR to handle missed frames and late frames much more efficiently. In order to maintain the most accurate comparisons of performance, asynchronous reprojection was disabled on both platforms. (Interleaved reprojection is supported on both platforms and remained enabled.)

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Chronos on the Oculus Rift running at the High preset runs noticeably faster on the GTX 1060 than the RX 480. Our interval plots show near perfection when it comes to 90 FPS consistency but the Radeon card finds itself in the 45 FPS ASW state a few times as the frametimes spike above the 11ms mark. The GTX 1060 provided an unconstrained FPS of 112 FPS, 49% higher than the 75 FPS provided by the Radeon RX 480.

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Even though Dirt Rally continue to make me uncomfortable while playing it, it was a highly-requested game we included it here in our initial batch of results. Again, the GTX 1060 has the clear edge, able to maintain the 90 FPS mark for smooth and consistent VR gaming, while the RX 480 at the same High quality preset was in the 45 FPS / ASW state the clear majority of our testing time. In one of those odd results, the unconstrained FPS is slightly lower than the delivered FPS on the GTX 1060, but higher on the RX 480. The net result comparing unconstrained results though shows the GTX 1060 being 31% faster than the Radeon card.

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The Edge of Nowhere is an interesting VR title but doesn’t offer any quality settings at all (or at least isn’t exposing them), giving us one testing environment. Both the GTX 1060 and the RX 480 perform very similarly with the slight edge going to the GeForce card. Both deliver a solid 90 FPS to the headset but the unconstrained FPS of the GTX 1060 is 4-5% faster.

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Our Obduction testing is a bit more variable, with the RX 480 operating at lower frametimes in some locations but the GTX 1060 running faster in others. Both video cards run a significant portion of their time at 45 FPS with ASW in action when running at the High preset. The unconstrained FPS is higher on the GTX 1060, 73 FPS vs 61 FPS, but because both average frame times are well over the 11ms mark, the experiences they provide the gamer are similar.

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Our final Oculus Rift test is probably the most popular current game on the platform. Robo Recall takes the engine and design language of Epic Train demo that circulated since the early days of modern VR and turns it into arguably the best shooter we have seen utilizing room scale technology. With the High preset, both the GTX 1060 and RX 480 have a decent run at it, but the RX 480 does have a few windows where "real" frames drops to 45 FPS and Oculus is forced to enable asynchronous space warp. Not so on the GeForce GTX 1060 that holds steady. Based on the unconstrained FPS numbers, the GTX 1060 has an 18% edge in performance.

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