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The consumer version of the Oculus Rift is on its way at the start of next year but Virtual Reality is going to be quite hard to drive. As a result, like with most games these days, the rift comes with a set of recommended PC specifications in order for you to get the “full Rift experience”.
Those looking to game on an Oculus Rift should have an Nvidia GTX 970 or an AMD R9 290 GPU to power graphics, an Intel Core i5 4690 or greater and at least 8GB of RAM. You'll need two USB ports to hook the headset up and you will want to be running Windows 7 or later.
According to the Oculus blog post, all applications are going to be optimized for this level of hardware to ensure a good experience: “The goal is for all Rift games and applications to deliver a great experience on this configuration. Ultimately, we believe this will be fundamental to VR's success, as developers can optimise and tune their game for a known specification, consistently achieving presence and simplifying development.”
The final version of the Oculus Rift will run a 2160×1200 display at 90Hz, the blog post goes in to a bit more detail, stating that in order to optimally drive the Rift, you will need three times the GPU power used for 1080p gaming. Since today's laptops can't really do that, the Oculus Rift will not support them.
Mac and Linux users are being put on hold for now while Oculus focuses on bringing VR to Windows. So far, a price for the Rift has not been announced but we are expecting the first game reveals to take place at E3 this year.
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KitGuru Says: The Oculus Rift needs high resolutions for pixel density and a high refresh rate to offer a good virtual reality experience, so it isn't surprising that a fairly strong PC is required to make the most of it. Are any of you looking forward to the Oculus Rift? Is your rig VR ready?
so basically only those with high end pc’s will get to enjoy it, shame really
Why would you expect to be able to run it on a cheap system? They have said for a while now you will want AT LEAST 90fps at 1080p. My R9 290 can’t even do this on most new games when set above high settings. I fully expect to need to sell my cards and get a $500+ one for this.
I expected oculus to have high recommended settings but being forced to get at least SLI or crossfire to enjoy it is a bit of an overkill.
did you not read the post? it said 970 or r9 290, not sli 970 or crossfire r9 290.
Makes me wonder if even my 980 SLi/4.7Ghz Haswell system will be capable!!!!
Something to bare in mind is that a lot of the games we have coming out right now aren’t developed specifically with VR in mind. If you take a look at many VR demo’s they have simpler graphics which help achieve the higher frame rate. We are still years away from having the VR that we all dream of, but this truly is an amazing first few steps.
Well from experience i know that if they say u need 970 to enjoy, you will really need something more powerfull. But nevermind no point arguing about it as consumer version hasnt even been released yet.
It’s a high end technology, not for the casual gamer anyway.
I have a 980 Classified and an FX-8320 @4.5GHz. I plan to upgrade to Skylake 6700k.
From what ive seen on youtube from people with OculusDK2, a 980 was enough for them to have a proper experience, but that saying a lot since thats a more expensive GPU, and most had the i7 4790k or 5820k, which is on a higher budget that the i5. Overall the DK2 needs more resources, but we have yet to see this under more minimum builds. For now, either the 980 or 295×2/TitanX are perfect candidates for VR.
I honestly don’t see you needing a i7-4790k when Hyperthreading likely won’t help much , better to go with the I5-4690k and overclock , or even save the money you would have spent on the Higher end processor and go with a better cooler to push it further.
That or wait for Skylake I5’s and or Zen
nah, my Thinkpad can handle this shiet
I doubt that DX12 will be able to utilize Hyperthreading , the only thing to Utilize those extra threads will be Productivity apps , Games using Intels cores will likely top out at 4 cores for now on DX12 ( 6 cores for AMD )
also most of those buy kits are already pricy things or have already slightly overpriced stuff on them, how else do you think they make money ?
I’m disappointed CV1’s resolution is less than 1440p.
I’m with you on that. I think dual-cards (one GPU to render each screen) will be better. 970, being the recommended spec, I feel is more like minimum requirement for immersion. While less powerful GPUs can power the Rift, low framerates will be nauseating and disorienting.