So, Let's Talk About Those Spec Requirements

For those unaware, here are the specs as released by Oculus themselves a few months ago:

• Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater
• Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• Memory: 8GB+ RAM
• Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• Input: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
• OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer

So, obviously, those requirements are a little crazy; and I know many members of the GB community are rocking 980s in SLI and going, "What's the big deal, bro?" but for an average person with a decent modern PC, those specs are in the high-end of things.

What do you guys think will be the final case? Is it one of those deals where the publisher lists a 980 as a recommended spec, but people find that they can easily run it at 60fps with their 760 if they just turn the Hairworks option off?

Of course, Oculus Rift is a different beast in that it is rendering two screen, at a higher resolution and a higher frame-rate, and we cannot be sure until the device is in our hands and people start playing around with it, but I am curious to see what you guys think about this.

Yeah I just upgraded my PC a few months ago and I went with a 960 so I'm out. I'm not bummed though I don't think I would get into VR and if I really did than I can always check out the PlayStation one.

In my eyes these specs are so you can play the supplied games well without hitches (because frame rate issues will be a bigger deal than normal due to sickness and what not) but I reckon there will be software that'll run on lower spec gear but whose to say until the damn thing comes out.

It's not un-reasonable if you have a loose understanding of what your asking the machine to do. High"ish" resolution images rendered stereoscopically with modern graphical features simply require a base level of horse power to run fixed at 90 frames per second which is the minimum bar for VR in order to maintain presence and avoid motion sickness for the larger part of their audience. I fully expect the refresh rate on future units to head up to 120hz or higher as screen and controller technology at that scale/form factor improves.

My computer is nowhere near those specs (i7-940/GTX 570 SLI/24GB DDR3) in terms of processing power. Seeing as I would need nearly $800 to overhaul my computer on top of the $600 of the rift, I think I'll wait until gen 2 or 3 of the rift.

Can someone explain how the specs will come down over time? I know nothing about the technical side of VR, but I would assume that the system limitations would also be tied to the games being developed for VR. It's like saying that 60 FPS would have been the norm for this generation of consoles...except that people keep pushing the boundaries of what the systems are capable of. Sure the price of a 970 will go down whenever the new video cards come out, but wouldn't newer cards also mean higher fidelity graphics that need to be pushed to 90 FPS?

Its whats required to run it. With vr you have to maintain a certain resolution and framerate to stop people from throwing up. Its different than being able to run a game capped at 30 and running like 900p and still having a good experience. The good news is they stated this will allways be the minimum so when the cards get cheaper and the vr sets get cheaper people can still jump on board.

Well technically the spec comes down if you for instance stayed 2 years behind on the software as well. What pushes the limits of what the 970 can do will be a push over for an whatever the mid tier "X60" card that Nvidia has on the market 2 years from now. However both the HMD and the games themselves will up their game as they iterate (base refresh rate and resolution in the HMD's case and eye candy for the software side of things).

The advantage at least with the PC side of things is that you'll be able to take future software and scale things down on the effects side through the options in order to get a smoother experience that doesn't look too different from what the current high water mark currently is.

Well I'm beyond set for CPU and RAM, but I'm still using my 770. I guess I'll have to upgrade eventually.

Yeah I don't think I could run it. I have an 8350 and a 380X. I mean the Oculus costs almost as much as my whole PC did.

I think even a single 970 is going to be on the low side of things. 1080x1200 per eye at 90hz is no joke.

I feel pretty good all things considered...

I ought to be able to push my i5-2500K enough to match the 4590 (or be right in the ballpark) and it's 5 years old.

Got a 970 for last Christmas, and gave one to my wife -- we seem to know exactly what to get each other :-)

Upgraded to 16gig and SSDs this year...

But I will need to get a USB 3.0 card (I've only got one port and it might not be a compatable USB 3 port as some of the early implementations had some... oddities)... so... I'm lucky, I only need to spend about $30 in order to spend $630 (once I determine if VR will work with my bad eyes - gonna have to put one of these on my head to find out)...

The requirements are quite disingenuous, if you take the Witcher 3 as a mark for what is to come in the next two years. You need at minimum Dual SLI GTX980's for stable 90fps average for presence even at just medium, most likely a Triple SLI setup. So in reality you actually have to wait for next gen cards to be released with VR in mind.

I posted this in the pre-order thread;

High end PC's would struggle to run current good looking games at 2040×2400 at 60fps average, at 90fps average on high settings you're talking triple and quad SLI if the game even supports it well. You need next gen architecture built with VR optimization tricks in mind.

Witcher 3 on Medium with a GTX980;

• 2560x1440 is ~60fps average
• 3840x2160 is ~30fps average

Witcher 3 on High with a GTX980;

• 2560x1440 is ~45fps average
• 3840x2160 is ~24fps average

Witcher 3 on Ultra with a GTX980;

• 2560x1440 is ~40fps average
• 3840x2160 is ~22fps average

Average stable 90fps for authentic "Presence" on even a GTX 980 at 2040×2400 with modern games is a fucking pipe dream with current gen on a single card. Occulus Marketing - 1 Consumers - 0

There are certain types of games you without a doubt aren't going to be playing at a high level of fidelity right away, a big scale game like GTA or The Witcher is right out of the question. Something with a smaller more linear environment however could be done, akin to a Call of Duty or Halo like scenario. Still sacrifices will still probably need to be made.

@korwin: I don't disagree, I'm simply saying that the requirements are only truthfully if you're talking about these smalls scale experiences. When you start diving into the the bulk of what are the biggest sellers in today's market, large open world games, then those requirements crumble.

I just built a PC (GTX 980, 4690K, 16GB RAM).

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL, BROOOOO?

But no, I'm good, I'll get into VR when I can use it while my car drives me to work.

If I could just be the idiot in the thread for a second. I built my first PC last year. I ran the diagnostic from the Oculus site that let's you know if your PC is up to snuff and to no surprise it isn't. I'll need a new graphics card.

On the other hand, I initially thought I would be good on the processor front. I have an intel i7 and I thought "OH! 7 is bigger than 5. By 2 even. Clearly I'll be in the clear!" Nope. That's not how it works.

Can anyone help explain what's lacking in the i7 that the Occulus needs? Keep in mind you'd be explaining it to someone with the PC brain of a child.

I'd think 980 would be minimum spec for your average person. I expect a dev/company/etc to list specs that are more on the "Minimum" end of things, but nobody wants to settle for an amazing game turned down to not-as-amazing. That being said, I've got a single 980 and I doubt Id step up to anything more at the moment. I've done SLI before and its a hot mess so I try to stick to single cards at this point and I don't think a "ti" is a worthy upgrade or whatever. It is what it is. I don't view my 980 as the end-all-be-all card either. It seems to run stuff at 1080p fairly well and maaaaybe higher stuff? Depends on the type of game or style etc. Some games I turn stuff down just to get a higher frame rate because that feels better. Others it feels like it runs well enough on max settings so I leave it.

With the hardware in this, I expect the fancier lookin stuff to require something pretty beefy.

Things that I'm wondering about are all the USB ports, as I have a bunch but most are being used I think? And just why? I guess I just assumed there was the HDMI and never really thought about power.

Also, I failed the CPU test with my trusty ol "Sandy Bridge" i7 2600k but mine has been OC'd since I assembled the thing years ago so I believe it hits 4.4ghz at full tilt. I don't know if the program factored that in or what.

After some thought on this, and one reaction post I deleted I've come to a more stable conclusion.

If what you are expecting the Rift and other such VR devices to be is a mass-consumer ready device, comparable to the sorts of other entertainment items you find in most homes..your doing it wrong.

If you compare it instead to say..the very tip-top of the scale. People who swear by 4k tvs, and dual titans(or whatever the best option in graphics cards are) or who regularly spend 1500$ every other year upgrading, retooling and etc their PCs..ok now you've got it about right.

What the specs, and the price, and the 'we make no money on this' tells me is, this isn't prime-time yet. People have gotten all excited, and I don't blame them. Tech gets cheaper. In 5-10 years, the parts that make up the Oculus and are needed to run it won't be super expensive, and then everyone and their friends can enjoy the tech too. Right now? its a novelty that's going about as far as that 2000$ tv they sell in stores does. It'll sell..but its not meant for the average joe.

So yah, this is the start of the VR revolutions...first baby steps. Give it 5-10 years.

which sucks. But hey, that's the truth of it.

Which CPU do you have? If it's any modern i7 it should be far higher than the minimum spec CPU. i7 CPUs feature HyperThreading and typically outperform i5s in specialized applications and games that support it.

Why do you think i7 is lacking or a problem for Oculus Rift?

I knew my GPUs would need upgrading (currently dual 580s), but after the shock of the price it was further disheartening to see even my USB ports don't make the cut.

My CPU (i5 2500k) is below spec too, but it's clocked to 4.5Ghz and still performs great so I'm not sure what to think.

Put me firmly in the naïve camp, but I'd budgeted for Oculus + a new GPU and the real cost has crushed that hope.

I knew my CPU was not going to be strong enough to run the rift (AMD FX 8120. Going to upgrade eventually), but I apparently don't have enough USB 3.0 slots (2 instead of 3) either that or it's telling me my USB 3.0 slots aren't good enough or something. I honestly don't feel like doing anything to my PC at the moment for the Oculus Rift, so I'll just wait. I mean, I just got a GTX 980 a month and a half ago.

Looking forward to getting in on VR in 5-7 years.

Doesn't Oculus have to render images twice? Yeah, that was always going to have a hell of a requirement.

This has been my single biggest annoyance with Intel's branding strategy ever since they first adopted the i3/5/7 back in 2008. It causes a massive amount of confusion for people who don't make a point of keeping up with the finer details. Back in the Pentium days people would be able to to say "Oh I have a Pentium III" and people would be able to assess the capabilities of that system, however simply saying "oh I have an i7" is insane because that at this point covers in 5 generations of architecture across 10 different desktop platforms and something like 6 different Laptop platforms.

An i7 920 Nehalem core on a 1366 socket (first gen) is both well behind in raw horse power from the current i7 6700K Skylake core on an 1151 socket (although a more apt comparison would be the i7 870 Westmere on socket 1156 since that was the mainstream dual channel version of Nehalem). Couple with that the older generation of i7 misses out on things like newer instructions that have been added to the x86 platform over the past 7 years since they started using the branding (things like AVX and AVX2 for example, which are great for physics processing and are being put to use in the new consoles).

Now that being said there haven't been any significant changes in CPU capabilities from a functional perspective since Ivy bridge in 2012 when they updated the instruction set to include AVX2. Provided in your case your i7 is Ivy Bridge (2012) forward I wouldn't put too much stock in what the Oculus is telling you on their site.

The problem though is that the way Oculus has talked about VR in interviews is that anything below 90hz is sub-par, and maybe even unpleasant. So its not like current gaming where playing at 30fps, 45fps, or 60fps on different rigs is all acceptable. You have to hit this hard target of 90fps stable average, FPS dips in current games are annoying at best. In the rift a drop from 90fps to 30fps over a graphics heavy section could be extremely unpleasant.

@korwin: @gutterkisser: @papercut:

Someone in another thread suggested downloading 3DMark Basic to benchmark your Oculus compatibility. My i7-2600K/GTX780 failed Oculus' diagnostic, but according to 3DMark I'm slightly above the Oculus recommended spec:

EDIT: Forgot to mention my CPU is overclocked

That's high. I had assumed Facebook bought them to sell VR to your average consumer. They would have to be working on another headset for that purpose. What percentage of the gaming population has all the requirements?

@mike: i7 3770Kon an GTX 760. I only say the processor is a problem because the Oculus Compatibility Check said it was...but looking up my i7's specs says it's a quad core so i don't know what the problem is.

@korwin: Thanks for breaking it down like that. makes more sense why this is a problem now.

@superjoe: Definitely going to have to try that out.

It seems that VR is really designed for the next generation of graphics chips, "Pascal" and so forth. Those are promising to be multiple times more capable than even something like a 980.

@papercut: There is not much difference between a 3770k and a 4770k. I'm talking a difference that would probably only be noticeable in synthetic benchmarks and nothing you would notice while playing a game, and even in benches it would only be a few percentage points. I think it's most likely just a problem with the way the Compatibility Check reads your system information. A 3770k is still one of the top CPUs for gaming.

Yeah it's practically nothing, simplest rule of thumb is that from a raw non specialised workload performance stand point there has only been a "clock rate like" increase of about 100mhz maybe 200mhz per cpu release since Sandy Bridge (e.g a Haswell at 4.4ghz is roughly the same performance wise as an Ivy Bridge at 4.5-6ghz).

I would need a graphics and a power supply which would cost me at least £310 and i need to check on the USB ports. Why do you need that many?, 1 for the Rift, 1 for touch device and controller. I think ill wait about 6 to 8 months and see what happens in the VR space.

@korwin: @mike:Thanks for the info guys. It's really been a ton of help.

Should be an interesting time in March when people start getting them to see what works and what doesn't. This is really some new territory as far as specs go. Having a PC that can modestly run Elite: Dangerous now means you might have some issues that lead to a sub par playing experience, but you can still have fun. Having a sub par Oculus set up could create a lot of literal headaches and unplayable games.

I think I'll wait until people get their hands on them and The Oculus becomes less of a mystery. Also when I can buy one and not have to wait 6 months.

I'm pretty sure the specs posted by Oculus are very much recommended specs, as in you could in theory run VR with a lower end PC, but they're not gonna let the early adopters do that.

The worst thing that could happen to Oculus as a brand (and VR in general) is people trying it for the first time connected to 5 year old PCs and having it run at low FPS or making them feel sick. It's a new technology, so they want to make sure that everyone has a good first time experience. If people have a bad first impression, they'll think Oculus (and by extension VR) is a joke. It's also why they went all-out creating the best headset they could, instead of cutting corners to reduce cost.

I work at a company doing VR stuff and we do all our development on GTX 660s. We do have some NVIDIA Quadros, but we only use them when we need quad-buffered stereo for multi-projector 3D systems with active shutter glasses.

I upgraded my graphics card fairly recently so I think my PC would be okay, although I probably should upgrade my processor too right since I only have a i5-2500k?

@49th: Are you overclocking it? There's not much of a real world upgrade from the 2500k to the 4590 in actual applications, and OCing could probably bridge the gap, which the 2500k can handle pretty well.

So does this mean you can buy this for $901,- from Brendan Iribe?

Noone is mentioning the 3x USB3 ports!. Who will have that availible if you dont got a new deluxe $200motherboard?

On the performanceside im pretty sure whatever the consoles can render at a stable 1080p@60hz a computer with GTX980 can run properly for VR. With 970 and 960 you should expect lower graphic quality than the consoles. Its all down to the developers to optimize, they know what they need to hit if they are gonna sell anything at all.

@49th: The CPU is such a non issue in a gaming PC and the developement on the CPU side is basicly stagnant the last 5 years so i wouldnt worry.

The only reason a CPU is included in specs is so intel can sell new CPUs and motherboards which in reality improve the performance by 1-2%

I had four on the cheap Gigabyte H77-D3H motherboard I bought for my cheap build late 2012, with the correct full-spec full-compatibility chipset too. Add-in expansion cards PCI or PCIe can successfully serve as USB3 ports compliant of everything I've seen too.

I am just glad I don't have to replace my 970 yet. But since its minimum requirements, I just might have to anyway.

Rift Gen 1 is just a tech demo that doubles as a luxury item. Its sole purpose is to get good press via gaming journalists like GB creaming themselves while wearing the OR and relaying it on podcasts.

Give it 3 years.

Yea, i would basically need a new PC, and the Rift seems to pricey for me to buy as is.

I'm not really blaming Oculus for striving for such high quality requirements, it just seems weird how they always marketed to the mainstream if the mainstream isn't really ready yet.

As such i'm wondering if a less-pricey, less-demanding less-than-perfect-but-promising alternate SKU on top of thier "Premium" model would ease the growing pains of VR

What's the point? Unless it will be designed for games with shitty graphics (which is unappealing), then they should stick with the "luxury' model. As long as the gaming press cream themselves, then people will start wanting it, and will buy it when it works on integrated graphics 3-5 years down the line.

The graphics resolution virtually the same as 1440p. If you wanted to see how your GPU performa, set NVIDIA Control Panel to allow DSR up to 1440p and set that in game. This is what I assume but I don't see why it couldn't be a shorthand way to test how your GPU for Oculus.

Also, for some people asking, the 4 USB ports (3 3.0 & 1 2.0) is a theoretical requirement. 1 for headset required. 1 for Controller (2.0). 2 for each Oculus Touch. I can't imagine you'll ever be needing to use a contoller on top of the touch controllers... Unless somebody makes a local multiplayer game that works like that, which would be cool... But then you'd be rendering different screens for the rift and monitor and that would really tax a GPU. Sorry, rambling. If you're only plan on using Rift and controller for now, you're good with one 3.0 USB port and one 2.0 USB port.

@flashflood_29: So the rift itself will run on only one USB 3.0, impressive. Will it be powered only by USB aswell?

@mcfart: Games with "shitty graphics" was the benchmark a couple of years ago. Whatever games they make for VR they will look better without VR no matter how "premium"your PC is.

I'd just like to add that the Rift's resolution is a fair bit less than 1440p (2560x1440). The Rift has two 1080x1200 screens, which is 2160x1200 total resolution. This means 1440p is actually 42% more pixels than the Rift - and the Rift is 25% more than 1080p (so 90fps on the Rift would be about 113fps in 1080p all other things being equal.)

My computer isn't even close to being up to the task at the moment, and I don't think it will be for awhile. Here's hoping that the prices come down a bit

I was one of those dopes that was really hoping the price would be around the $400 mark (or lower), but the more I think about it $600 really isn't a bad deal (even though it's too high for me right now). I spent more than that for my TV, which is just a 50" thing on the wall, and the Rift is potentially so much more. One day...one day...

I wrote detailed and well cited respons elike 6 times but the system keeps telling me I can't post it, so fuck it.

The 9 series cards are mandatory for VR because they support multi resolution rendering in hardware. This reduces the resolution of the peripheral regions of the screen and stitches the completed image together. The barrel distortion would waste those pixels anyway. Even at 1:1, the ideal setting, this reduces the render resolution nearly %30. more aggressive settings will be used to squeeze better performance out of the minimum spec cards.

Oculus "recommends" a 970, but a 970 is the minimum. I'd need to look up if the 960 technically has multi-res, it may be capable of some very limited VR. Nvidia recommends the 980, and with good reason. For one, these "theater" applications are pushing DirectX rendered to a texture. The segmented memory on the 970 may become an issue in these type of applications, depending on what game + virtual "theater" or "virtual desktop" you're using. Only time will tell on that, though I suspect there could be issues with the few games that really do use 3+GB of RAM actively.

goddamitdont delete this post GB.

edit: thank you gb godz.