Building your own PC gaming rig is pretty awesome. If you’re interested in VR headsets like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, you might need something powerful. Here’s what you’ll need to consider.
PC building site Logical Increments has a detailed guide explaining exactly what you need to run a VR headset without grinding your machine to a halt. The specs you’ll need aren’t going to be for the faint of heart. VR headsets are directly in front of your eyes, so they need a lot more pixels per inch to look good. If you can’t already run games at least at 4K, you might not be prepared for VR:
Another simple comparison: VR gaming has roughly 90 per cent the pixel demand of gaming at 4K resolution (3840×2160) at 60Hz. If you’re familiar with gaming benchmarks, you’ll know that achieving 60 FPS at 4K resolution is no simple feat. Very few gamers have PCs that can play something like Fallout 4, Star Wars Battlefront, or the Witcher 3 at 4K/60 FPS.
VR headsets are still relatively new, and there aren’t a ton of major games that are designed for them. So, you don’t need to worry about upgrading any time soon if you don’t feel the need to. However, if you want to be one of the first on your block to try it out, check out the full guide below to see what you’ll need.
Building a PC for Virtual Reality: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and VR Gaming [Logical Increment]
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13 responses to “Learn How To Build A VR-Ready PC With This Guide”
funny that a titan X and 5960x 8 core 16/t computer is not enough to run VR DK2
CV1 is greater than DK2 so alot of people are gonna be pissed
try get better, I dare you
id say thats to do with the amd cpu.
my dk 2 was running stuff fine on basically ultra 570 + gtx 970
now runs great on gtx980 +4790k
5960x is an 8 core intel buddy
edit: sorry to swat you down like that fellow gamer ozzie
That is very curious indeed. The recommended specs come from results of the dk2 which you have more than enough juice to run it but have problem. Unsupported hardware combination?
Could be lack of RAM or just unoptimized code back then? Lots of cores means nothing if the main code isn’t taking advantage of them, and most stuff in games won’t. Additionally having lots of cores isn’t going to help much for 3D gaming. GPU is the important part. A Titan X should still be able to push enough pixels though so I suspect that something else must have been bottlenecking it.
32gb ram x99 ddr4
it just gets judder
when your framerate dips, as it does in games on the odd occasion when its crunching numbers
the VR judders and its horrid…. it doesnt do it in simple games but games that take alot of processing…. todays technology is not enough to keep it at 75 or 90 hz…. its just imposible… even on games like elite (when planet landing)
even if you set graphics options and adaptive v-synch (the new tech for filling in frames)
still has alot of work to do and wont be ready for a year
so i definitely can vouch that a top of the line intel and nvidia can NOT run the best situations in VR at the moment,
it does it but not in peak situations
I feel like a solid framerate at all times is better than a variable one for VR. Like if my machine could push 60fps constantly that’d be better than 75-90 max with 5-10 fps variability. Different to gaming on a screen where 90fps dipping to 75fps sometimes isn’t much of a problem.
like,negativezero posts
thing is in heavy situation ( i mean pretty dam heavy) the framrrate dips and you get EYE nerv damage from the juddering frames
it really is hell your eyes picking up a horrid framerate under 50,,,,
worse than nearly everything when it gives a slideshow to your retinas
@bluxy: yeah, I guess when you think about what it’s got to do for each frame it’s a ton of processing. The comparison to 4K gaming here in this article is kind of wrong – rendering a big frame from one perspective isn’t anywhere near as intensive as rendering the same frame twice from slightly different points in space, which is what VR has to do. You’re rendering the frame for the left eye, then rendering it again for the right. To get 60fps per eye you need to render 120fps.
I bet there will turn out to be some clever optimization tricks that end up mitigating it a fair bit, but for a game that was doing a ton of post-processing passes that’s heavily optimized for a single screen and single viewpoint I’m not surprised that it’ll choke a titan.
I wonder if you could set up a pair of GPUs and dedicate one to each eye?
you could and it would be good
that comes with all the problems of Sli
and some more
What are you talking about?
Man, the thumbnail for this article… does ANYONE manage to find a way to look good while wearing one of these things?
Wait till you click the link and see the kid on the cover on TIME magazine.
That linked article by Logical Increment is a mandatory read for anyone considering buying a new rig for the CV1/Vive…or anyone wanting to understand the gpu power actually required to run these things at >90fps.
TL;DR, a 970 won’t cut it. Buy a 980ti or wait for Pascal.