I’m just getting back into Flight Sim after a three year absence because of Covid and a family bereavement. My VR simming priorities are clarity rather than frame rate, as long as the latter doesn’t get ridiculously slow and unflyable. I currently have a Quest VR headset (Not 2) with the following PC spec:
Intel i7 9700k
32GB RAM
Samsung EVO 860 SSD as FS2020 drive
NVidia GTX 1060-6GB with dual 1080 Iyama’s
I love flying airliners and my current VR experience is nice and immersive but blurred.
So, my dilemma is budget. I currently have the money to upgrade two of the following:
Entire PC minus graphics card. (Potentially 13th gen i7 or i9, larger SSD, more memory)
VR Headset (sub £1,000, possibly HP Reverb G2, although discontinuation rumours are concerning)
Graphics card (£1,400 limit - Must be NVidia)
Not knowing which way to jump and would welcome any thoughts or suggestions.
Many thanks
Luca
Is this reasonable DDR4 RAM you have? If yes, you might consider a 5800X3D, a solid AM4 mainboard and a RTX 4070? I guess it might just fit into this 1400 pound budget, no? Or in other words, for 1400 pounds, you should be able to upgrade both CPU and GPU if not aiming for the most expensive parts.
DDR4 2666Mhz. I’ve never built non Intel PC’s before but will take a look at your suggested spec.
Thanks.
Looking more and more like this is the way I’m going to go. It’s looking around the £1,250 - 1,300 mark.
Great suggestion. Thanks.
My two cents for you buddy.
You can go in 3 steps to not break your budget and keep improving:
- get HP reverb G2. Mine are great flying airliners and in my opinion clarity is ok. Probably not best for night flight as they are LED displays but I have been using them to 70-80% of resolution in a 1080 ti and works fantastic with 20 fps or 15 in busy apt and is ok for me and neat.
- I would add a better gpu, at least an amd 6700 xt or better (or nvidia equivalent, but are more expensive)
- Last thing I would try if not enough would be to add a ryzen 5800x or better a 5800x3d processor or newer 9 or 10th gen intel.
Keep in mind at least a 700 or 750w power supply and an AM4 motherboard for the ryzen
I am slightly biased for amd 
but totally understand the alternatives too.
Thanks for that. I’ll get some benefit from the Reverb while organising the new GPU in the meantime. The last time i built AMD must’ve been about twenty years ago in the days of Athlon. The 5800x3d looks so good on the benchmarks and will be worth it in the end.
Is there any benefit to pairing AMD GPUs with AMD CPUs and motherboards? I’ve always used NVidia up to now.
Appreciate the reply mate. Thanks a lot.
This appears to be something not happening for at least a few years. And they are just rumors right now so take them with a grain of salt. Other than that yeah Reverb G2 is probably your best bet.
For your GPU anything than what you have now would be an upgrade. You can probably find a 3080 for sub $1000 new from a reputable business. If you have a $1400 budget you can probably snag a 4070 or even a 4080 if you are lucky enough.
If you’re willing, could also look at the AMD Radeon 6800XT or even the new 7xxx series as they can go toe to toe with modern Nvidia cards
You’ll get performance benefits with AMD CPU and AMD GPU via SAM buts it’s not a profound difference. I can tell you this I’m getting better performance switching from a 10700k to 5800X3D while keeping my RX6800.
Even a 4070 would be a big jump from a 1060. You get access to Frame Generation which is not available on AMD and last gen Nvidia cards.
The Reverb is already on the way and I’m looking at benchmarks and experiences for the 4070 before telling the wife the bad news.
The price differential for the AMD GPUs means it’s worth spending some time looking into.
Thanks for the reply.
In the end, it’s going to come down to the opinions and experiences of people who have been using them for a while. I know NVidia have the majority usage on the Steam community and this may sway me towards a 4070 but I’ll be looking at AMD alternatives quite hard over the next few weeks.
Cancelled, or rather postponed my Reverb G2 order this morning.
Firstly, I would rather do a bit more looking around and get the G2-V2, rather than the V1 thats mostly being sold in the UK.
Secondly, I’ve been reading on Reddit, a few people who got their G2 without having a decent graphics card to plug it into. If, as seems likely, I’ll be buying mine from Germany or the Netherlands, I don’t want to be in a position where I can’t even plug it in to give it an adequate test on my current hardware. The return windows for suppliers in both of those countries seems to be 14 days.
I’ll ponder for the next 24 hours, I think.
As HP reverb G2 user myself put it on hold until you get a decent gpu.
As you said, you can’t test it properly and won’t be a nice experience on a 1060, at least a 1080 is required in my personal experience.
I got myself a 6800xt to change my current nvidia 1080 because I wanted to keep low budget. Even with that I expect a nice improvement so for you better the experience if you get a 4070 coming from a 1060.
Sometimes waiting and pondering the options well makes the difference and here it seems so.
Who cares about the steam community. Most of them aren’t on MSFS anyway. Those account for your avid budget gamer on a 60series card.
Sounds like you’re pretty bias about AMD and know nothing about their products. You may wanna educate yourself.
At least AMD isn’t skimping VRAM on their cards.
Look at that. Despite my obvious “bias” and thanks to replies such as your previous one and a whole lot of reading, I’ve pretty much decided to upgrade based on the 5800X3D.
I went and got myself educated.