Rift PC

[WiredEarp]

you're going to get more benefit from 16gb of 'slow' RAM than 8gb of 'fast' RAM for the same money

How do you figure that? Unless you are manipulating large amounts of data, I fail to see how 16GB will make things faster than fast 8GB. All of that extra RAM will be unused in most circumstances, unless you are into creating RAMdisks etc. For gaming, 16GB is overkill.

Agree re the SSD however.

[drifter]

For gaming, 16GB is overkill.

Yep, and again for a while. PC games using more than only 1GB are still rare. More than 2GB, i didn't see any (except some heavily modded AAA games like GTA IV, Skyrim, etc.)
That should change with the next consoles (but then even only 4GB should still be ok).

[Lookforyourhands]

Anyone who's playing 3D games on their pc now will be able to use the RIFT with it.
The drop in resolution will most likely make your pc perform better than it is now..
I'd say you want nothing less than a GTX 280 (or whatever the AMD equivalent is) for a good experience.
(At least until better and officially supported games come out)

And about the ram.. You're better off with 4 or 8gb of fast ram than 16gb of slower ram. It actually takes
longer to access the larger memory banks due to the way the bits are written to the ram.

[oculusfan]

I remember when Crysis originally came out I had a pretty decent rig and barely got 30 fps on medium settings. Lets hope we don't have a repeat of that experience.

[cybereality]

Crysis is still a dog, 5 years later. I recently upgraded my GTX 470 to SLI, and figured I'd give Crysis a go. I set it to Ultra settings but was surprised to only be getting around 45FPS average. Interestingly enough Crysis 2 performs and looks way better than the original, so I think maybe the game just wasn't as optimized as it could have been.

[TheHolyChicken]

I remember when Crysis originally came out I had a pretty decent rig and barely got 30 fps on medium settings. Lets hope we don't have a repeat of that experience.

The only real cost associated with the Rift is stereo rendering, which roughly cuts your framerate in half. Golly gosh, half the FPS! Never fear, however; if you are currently using 1920*1080 when gaming, you'll be pleased to know that the resolution of the dev kit Rift means there's almost exactly half the number of pixels to push! Basically you should achieve pretty much the same performance with the Rift as you do right now

[Randomoneh]

Minus the cost of warping.

[drifter]

Crysis 2 performs (...) way better than the original, so I think maybe the game just wasn't as optimized as it could have been.

Or maybe Crysis 2 is just a semi-corridor shooter where Crysis was open...

The only real cost associated with the Rift is stereo rendering, which roughly cuts your framerate in half.

We don't know, with 3d Vision it can range from 20-50% performance loss depending on title. Why not the same with the Rift ?
And you could have even less loss with materielDefender's driver (at the cost of more or less visible artifacts, though).

Minus the cost of warping.

Apparently the cost of warping is negligible (thank to pixel shaders).

[greenknight]

I would say if you have a way. Try to maximize the amount of ram you can stick in the system. My next computer will have a minimum of 32GB of ram. Hopefully 64GB or better. I know that sounds ridiculous with most games only using at most 3 to 4 gbyte of ram + OS. And It would be if it were not for what you can use with the left over ram. You can create a RAMDisk Drive with the left other ram to shuffle all possible game data into a RAM Disk buffer for play. And with modern RAMDisk programs Its about as difficult to use as Daemon Tools. For those who question the efficacy of ramdisk options. There are plenty of benchmarks online to consider. But from a rough estimate i would say a ramdisk might be somewhere in the area of 5x to 10x more bandwidth than SSD's. For maintaining at all costs 60fps for VR in any game caching is gonna be your worst enemy.

Ohh, you are thinking of microstuttering maybe? Would this still be helpful in preventing shorts pulses of low frame rate if in SLI/crossfire?

I think the primary problem we gamers face is the difficulty of multi-core, multithreaded programming.

[PasticheDonkey]

from what is rumoured for the next gen of consoles you'll need a 4 gig graphics card with pci 3 connection. then it's performance at direct 11 effects will determine the res and framerate you'll get for pretty much all console ports. you'll want double the performance of the equivalent console graphics chip to mitigate not programming down to the metal on PC to get the consoles performance at least. so it'll all cost a lot. and game sizes are going to go up making download times longer.

[drifter]

the most probable is that the next consoles won't be more powerful than current high-end PCs, and the games probably won't look much more detailed than the current consoles games (except we will have true 1080p @60fps), simply because AAA games have reached a peak.
http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/343973 ... ate-of-aaa
http://www.bruceongames.com/2010/02/24/ ... ness-model

[jaybug]

The only real cost associated with the Rift is stereo rendering, which roughly cuts your framerate in half. Golly gosh, half the FPS! Never fear, however; if you are currently using 1920*1080 when gaming, you'll be pleased to know that the resolution of the dev kit Rift means there's almost exactly half the number of pixels to push! Basically you should achieve pretty much the same performance with the Rift as you do right now

I am certain that's not true.
Halving the resolution does not just give you twice the framerate.

[TheHolyChicken]

The only real cost associated with the Rift is stereo rendering, which roughly cuts your framerate in half. Golly gosh, half the FPS! Never fear, however; if you are currently using 1920*1080 when gaming, you'll be pleased to know that the resolution of the dev kit Rift means there's almost exactly half the number of pixels to push! Basically you should achieve pretty much the same performance with the Rift as you do right now

I am certain that's not true.
Halving the resolution does not just give you twice the framerate.

It was merely intended as a rough (emphasis on rough) rule of thumb to reassure those worried about their system performance. Anyone playing games at good framerates now at 1920*1080 will be fine with the dev kit rift; the cost of stereo rendering is offset by the drop in resolution.

As far as the consumer version is concerned, it seems a little redundant to discuss PC specs right now as it would be pure speculation, especially given the elephants in the room - the upcoming new console generation, with the potential to radically shift the goalposts. EDIT: and the fact we don't know the Rift consumer specs either!

[NikoKun]

I was on a tight budget, when I built my current computer this last fall.. Although I did upgrade my ram to a silly amount, when that suddenly dropped to a laughably low price a few months ago.

AMD FX 8120 @ 3.1ghz (8cores)
16gb DDR3 (@1333 for some stupid reason because screw my motherboard)
NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti with 1gb, EVGA I think.
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 Motherboard, which works great for everything, except I can't seem to get voltages to work right when adjusting ram, so I can't get my ram running at a good speed, it defaults to 1333 for 1600 ram. -_-

But anyway, even with it's shortfalls, it's still a great PC, runs every new game I've tried on it perfectly. Has very good FPS even in games like skyrim, on max video settings. So I don't think I'll have much problem running games for the Rift. I could always reduce the graphics settings in some areas, to improve things if need be.. Or even upgrade the graphics card, but I still don't like paying over 200 for those. lol

Anyway, hopefully the requirements wont be too bad, when game designers start optimizing things for VR better.. =/

[drifter]

I would add a little SSD to be sure to avoid micro-stuttering, as some games are loading content while you play them (GTA 4 and most of open-world games...)

[spire8989]

I was on a tight budget, when I built my current computer this last fall.. Although I did upgrade my ram to a silly amount, when that suddenly dropped to a laughably low price a few months ago.

AMD FX 8120 @ 3.1ghz (8cores)
16gb DDR3 (@1333 for some stupid reason because screw my motherboard)
NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti with 1gb, EVGA I think.
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 Motherboard, which works great for everything, except I can't seem to get voltages to work right when adjusting ram, so I can't get my ram running at a good speed, it defaults to 1333 for 1600 ram. -_-

But anyway, even with it's shortfalls, it's still a great PC, runs every new game I've tried on it perfectly. Has very good FPS even in games like skyrim, on max video settings. So I don't think I'll have much problem running games for the Rift. I could always reduce the graphics settings in some areas, to improve things if need be.. Or even upgrade the graphics card, but I still don't like paying over 200 for those. lol

Anyway, hopefully the requirements wont be too bad, when game designers start optimizing things for VR better.. =/

Have you thought about buying another 550 Ti and running them together in SLI?

[NikoKun]

Have you thought about buying another 550 Ti and running them together in SLI?

Actually yes. I might go that route, if it's more cost effective than getting better card. But I dono if two 550s is gonna be better, than 1 newer card. Still, might be the most affordable option, if I can even still get the same exact model anymore..

[spire8989]

Have you thought about buying another 550 Ti and running them together in SLI?

Actually yes. I might go that route, if it's more cost effective than getting better card. But I dono if two 550s is gonna be better, than 1 newer card. Still, might be the most affordable option, if I can even still get the same exact model anymore..

You can normally google for comparisons. "550 ti sli vs" on google will bring up a variety of things, for example. ^_^

[cybereality]

I just went SLI with my GTX 470's and I'm happy with the performance boost.

Only thing that is annoying is the my 3D driver seems to have problems with SLI in certain games. Can't win them all I guess.

[unc2k3]

I've been following these forums for some time now, and like most forums, I don't usually get personally involved in the conversations. More of a reader than anything. However, I recently purchased a gaming laptop last year and am still trying to familiarize myself with how to get the most out of my PC. I've owned every console since the Atari and I have always dreamed of the day when VR would become a reality. Now that we are almost there, I'm starting to worry that my laptop might not have enough juice to maintain 60FPS with VSync (as suggested by Palmer). Since I've spent a decent amount of time researching this, I'll probably be devastated if I have to buy a new computer just to adequately run the Rift. I figured if anyone could give me an accurate and thorough answer, it would be the members of this forum. I've posted my PC specs below and would appreciate any feedback (fingers crossed). Thanks in advance!!!

ASUS G53SX
Windows 7 64bit
Intel Quad-Core i7-2670QM 2.2GHz - (3.1GHz Turbo)– 8GB DDR3-1333 – 1TB (2x500GB 7200RPM)
Nvidia GTX 560M 2GB dedicated
Direct X11
Nvidia 3DTV Play

[STRZ]

@ unc2k3

Depends on the game and the graphic settings. But the 560m is weak, in the 60$ range if you buy a desktop card.

What else do you do with your gaming laptop other than surfing and gaming? Do you depend on it for other stuff?

If you sell your laptop you could build a way more powerful gaming PC with used parts. If you buy clever and are not restricted to windows usage you could even include a replacement for your laptop for lighter stuff buying a old thinkpad and install Linux on it.

[brantlew]

I hope that not all developers that are planning games for their dev kits are trying to push the graphical envelope. I don't think you need high graphic fidelity to produce amazing VR experiences and there is a large PC population (particularly in the laptop space) that don't have the horse power to push the frame rates that will be required for some of the most graphically intense applications. Add to this that VR may draw the interest of a lot of tech-centric people that are not necessarily hard-core gamers and don't have gaming rigs at their disposal. I think it would be a mistake for game developers to ignore this potentially large mid-power PC market for VR games and experiences. Another thing that developers should consider is forward compatibility with future Rift consumer hardware. Oculus has stated that it wants to push the resolution as soon as panel technology comes available. So game developers should probably consider how their engines and assets will scale to higher resolutions and maintain the minimum 60 fps.

[cybereality]

@unc2k3: You will probably be fine with that laptop, but you will likely have to put the game settings on medium or low to get good performance.