Is a 1070Ti a practical addition to my existing computer?

[Luagha]

After having been told by a salesman that SLI does not play nicely with VR, a "Galax GeForce GTX 1070 TI EX Sniper White 8GB" has been purchased for me by family even less tech-savvy than I am. We're not sure how to figure out if this was a proportionate and sensible upgrade before taking it out of the box and making an exchange with the vendor impossible.

 

My 1920x1080 monitor and other peripherals are all fine, I've no particular interest in a bigger monitor and doubt that matters for the Vive anyway.

 

The aim is to satisfactorily run the HTC Vive that we will be getting over the Christmas period without overcomplicating the process of upgrading since I've only ever gotten pre-built PCs before.

 

If replacing only the SLI-650Tis with the 1070Ti should the system run graphically intensive VR applications optimally without incompatibilities?

Is the 1070Ti going to be bottlenecked by something else and thus a waste of money/require further upgrades?

(Did I use the term bottlenecked properly? Am I overthinking a simple plug and play operation? :p)

 

The invoice from the prebuilt computer I am currently using says it contains:

Intel Core i5 3570K

Corsair Hydro Series H60 SE CPU Liquid Cooling System

MSI Z77A-G45 Gaming Motherboard

Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3

2x MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Twin Frozr 2GB

Seagate Barracuda 4TB ST4000DX001

ST400 Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD

Pioneer DVR-220LBKS Black 24x DVD Drive

Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Black Case

Silverstone Strider Plus 750W
The basic Windows 10.

 

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, Luagha said:

After having been told by a salesman that SLI does not play nicely with VR, a "Galax GeForce GTX 1070 TI EX Sniper White 8GB" has been purchased for me by family even less tech-savvy than I am. We're not sure how to figure out if this was a proportionate and sensible upgrade before taking it out of the box and making an exchange with the vendor impossible.

 

My 1920x1080 monitor and other peripherals are all fine, I've no particular interest in a bigger monitor and doubt that matters for the Vive anyway.

 

The aim is to satisfactorily run the HTC Vive that we will be getting over the Christmas period without overcomplicating the process of upgrading since I've only ever gotten pre-built PCs before.

 

If replacing only the SLI-650Tis with the 1070Ti should the system run graphically intensive VR applications optimally without incompatibilities?

Is the 1070Ti going to be bottlenecked by something else and thus a waste of money/require further upgrades?

(Did I use the term bottlenecked properly? Am I overthinking a simple plug and play operation? :p)

 

The invoice from the prebuilt computer I am currently using says it contains:

Intel Core i5 3570K

Corsair Hydro Series H60 SE CPU Liquid Cooling System

MSI Z77A-G45 Gaming Motherboard

Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3

2x MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost Twin Frozr 2GB

Seagate Barracuda 4TB ST4000DX001

ST400 Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD

Pioneer DVR-220LBKS Black 24x DVD Drive

Nanoxia Deep Silence One Dark Black Case

Silverstone Strider Plus 750W
The basic Windows 10.

 

 

The i5 CPU likely will bottleneck it. If you could find a 3770K used off ebay that would give you a somewhat better framerate although really even with that you won't be taking 100% advantage of it.

[NotTristan]

From what I have seen (having never personally owned a VR set) sli can be funky in general with some games. single card is always better than two cards (if they are at equal performance) I mean if you've already bought it I would take the 1070ti, and try to sell the 650's on craigslist or something. Or put those in another system. I also agree with AluminiumTech that you should try and find a 3770k to throw in there just for the heck of it, although no needed at all.

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

The i5 CPU likely will bottleneck it. If you could find a 3770K used off ebay that would give you a somewhat better framerate although really even with that you won't be taking 100% advantage of it.

 

Nothing a little overclocking won't be able to sort out. Hyperthreading doesn't have nearly the level of impact on workloads like gaming that people pretend it does. The performance difference between a 4ghz 3570K and a 4ghz kaby lake i5 is going to be around 10% *tops*.

 

A 1070Ti and your machine are pretty well paired OP, but you're really going to be wanting to overclock at least a little on that cpu. It's a shame to have a k-series cpu and overclocking capable motherboard and then not utilise them. Keep an eye on your temps though, since a K60 is hardly a beefy cooler; you should try to get at least 4ghz on your cpu to get the best experience from your current hardware.

[JesseLingard]

I have never personally owned a VR set to be funky in general with some games.
But I think The i7 CPU is likely to bottleneck it.

[Zyndo]

28 minutes ago, Luagha said:

Snip

Don't worry about "bottlenecking". your CPU and 1070ti would be an excellent pairing. a 1070ti would out perform your current GPU's by a pretty significant margin as well. several times faster I believe. tis a good upgrade if you can afford it. doubling your RAM to 16GB would also be advisable if you can afford it, but that would be less important than a GPU upgrade and hardly a requirement.

[Luagha]

There appears to be a consensus that the simple swap will be a good one and that it is being held back a fraction, but by a small enough amount that it's more an opportunity for tweaking or bargain hunting than regret.

I shall use it instead of fretting over waste or exchanges and will bear in mind the overclock/upgrade options for the CPU.

Thank you all for the valuable information, it is appreciated.

[cfrozer]

6 minutes ago, Luagha said:

There appears to be a consensus that the simple swap will be a good one and that it is being held back a fraction, but by a small enough amount that it's more an opportunity for tweaking or bargain hunting than regret.

I shall use it instead of fretting over waste or exchanges and will bear in mind the overclock/upgrade options for the CPU.

Thank you all for the valuable information, it is appreciated.

SLI in VR games are disabled unless enabled my the dev so it can be rare to find one, best go with a 1070TI or a 1070

[Hugs12343]

looks like you have got 3 16x slots on your mobo. You could keep all the gpu's. Using 1070ti for vive and 650ti's for desktop. But then you run into some serious pci e bandwidth limitations. Personally, I would sell the 650ti's and buy another 1070ti

[Zyndo]

6 minutes ago, Luagha said:

There appears to be a consensus that the simple swap will be a good one and that it is being held back a fraction

How much it is or isn't held back will depend largely on what games you're playing with it, what settings you're playing them on, and what resolution you're playing at. In most instances your GPU will be able to be fully utilized when paired with that CPU.

[Zyndo]

Just now, Hugs12343 said:

looks like you have got 3 16x slots on your mobo. You could keep all the gpu's. Using 1070ti for vive and 650ti's for desktop.

he should definitely not do this.

[Hugs12343]

Just now, Zyndo said:

he should definitely not do this.

but it would look cool. Im wondering about the psu tho

[cfrozer]

1 minute ago, Hugs12343 said:

but it would look cool. Im wondering about the psu tho

he should NOT do that...... 

[Luagha]

haha I have a feeling trying to mess around with three cards like that would add cooling issues that I haven't the knowledge to manage, without benefits that justify that risk. (and sorry for using the word 'consensus' instead of something a little less strong, Zyndo)

 

This is a nice prompt to finally getting around to reading up on overclocking, anyway.

[Guest]

The cpu is bad for VR, i had some tracking issues even with i5 6600( cpu does your tracking computations), But with the ryzen 7 1700  my VR performs better. I have 1070 graphics card and almost every VR application works good at ultra.

[Luagha]

This was kept and turns out to have been without drawbacks, it's merrily running the most intensive things I could find on Steam/Revive~