PC specs, Oculus requirements...

My new developer system plan for a Titan GTX with i7-3820, with all the major articles and sites I consulted is here:
http://tinyurl.com/c58khpw

If you leave comments while viewing the spreadsheet in Google Docs, I will do my best to answer them, otherwise, email me directly through the board.

My four-year-old system is an ATI HD 4830 x 2, Intel E7400 dual core. It runs Tuscany at 60-70 fps, but I can't see the star in the Microstar demo due to lack of DirectX 11 support. Also, it takes foreeeeevvvvver, many minutes, to load the Microstar demo, but it's soooo cool, and was worth it. It motivated me to update my system NOW. :lol:

The benefits I see of the new system is that I'll have
1. all of your demos on a 512GB SSD for about 6X load speed improvement.
2. X79 chipset benefits of lots of motherboard features
3. 32GB of RAM to play with 16GB RAM disks and caches in addition to SSD speed improvements
4. very silent and elegant case with an overall quiet system
5. lowest possible latency that I can plan for in hardware
6. possibility of 2-second Windows 8 boots with Asus PX79 LE motherboard and an updated Asus GTX Titan video BIOS.
7. should handle anything through 1080p Rift consumer release
8. probably will be good for four years, $2/day, the price of part of a Venti Caramel Machiato

When you consider the cost of the rest of the components in this LGA 2011 system, with water cooling, SSD, extra RAM and a good case, then the GTX Titan isn't that hard of a decision to make. When you consider the GTX 690 vs. the Titan, it's a hard call, since testing for latency issues like micro stuttering is very recent on the review boards.

I reluctantly chose the Titan over the 690 by prioritizing latency over frame rates. I may lose 25-50% frame rates in some cases. The most recent tests show that Titan just has the lowest latency in all cases. If you turn off one of the 690's GPUs to lessen micro stuttering, then you have a 680 card. I don't know the full effects of micro stuttering in the Rift, but I do know that screen will be very close to my eyeballs and what I wouldn't catch at two feet viewing distance may be very apparent up close. Also, many of the development community demos will not be fully optimized to run on everyone's systems.

Oh, and here's a good tool to find a Titan right now:
http://www.nowinstock.net/computers/vid ... dia/titan/

Re: ArneOdland ^^^^^^^^^

WOW! I am blown away. You sir, have done your research...in a big way!
I looked over your GoogleDoc, and it's impressive. If cost wasn't a factor for me, I would just go ahead and say, "Waiter, bring me what Arne is having" However, I am going to end up spending about half of what you are, on a system based on the GTX 680 Nvidia card, with an i7 processor. The TITAN is the bomb, and I'm sure your system is gonna run smooth like butter. Thanks for sharing your info, and I recommend everyone to take a look at your system specs, even if just for reference.

"KuraIthys" wrote:

"CURTROCK " wrote:
Thank you to everyone for posting your PC specs. I am about to purchase a PC specifically for using the Rift, and UNITY/UDK. Knowing what other people are using, is very informative in helping to decide cost VS performance. I still think it would be great if at some point, Oculus endorsed a "min requirements" & "recommended requirements" kind of thing...

Special thx to cybereality for sharing...knowing what you use at Oculus is particularly informative.

The problem with that is the requirements vary with the application.

My 6 year old laptop can run the demos for instance, but at about 20 fps.
That's not good enough to use a rift comfortably, but there's no reason why I couldn't write a program with simpler graphics to improve the framerate. (quake 3 level graphics would get me about 350 fps for instance.)

Setting minimum requirements for using a rift, when so much of it actually depends on the kind of applications people make is a bit difficult.

It's kind of like asking, "what are the minimum requirements to run games on a PC?", when you aren't clear if by games you mean something like bejeweled, (version of which could run on stuff made in 1990, in principle), or Crysis. (which even modern PC's can still struggle with.)

From what I've seen so far, this is the absolute bare minimum you need to be able to run a rift if you're willing to make programs yourself. (what the minimum is if you use stuff made by others is currently an unanswerable question.)

1. computer must have USB
2. Computer must support DVI or HDMI out
3. There must be enough spare GPU pixel shader performance (or cpu performance, hypothetically) to perform the final screen image warp.
4. Any software running has to be able to render at least 2 views at 640 by 800 each and combine them. (but the complexity of it can be almost anything), at at least 60 fps.

Anything beyond that is largely down to the people that end up making software for it.

Based on these requirements, the oldest computers that might be able to cope would be from about 2000 onwards.

Based on the SDK demos, the minimum requirements in practice seem to be closer to requiring high-end 2007 era graphics hardware at a minimum.

But... Again, some might choose to target much lower end systems. It's definitely possible to do it, as far as I can tell...

Thanks for posting this. I read it thoroughly, and you make good sense. Too many variables need to be considered to really give a concrete "Min Requirements" checklist. With the help of you and everyone else posting here, one can get an idea of general "Median" specs that others are using, and make a better informed decision based on cost/system performance.

Thanks Curtrock. I'm so glad you liked it. Great metaphor about the waiter, that is exactly what we need since I know the spreadsheet can be a bit overwhelming to most. I seriously debated building around the 680 at first. Until ATI/AMD roll out a better driver for their high end Radeon cards, I would avoid them for possibly serious latency issues.

The price I paid for everything is way outside my usually budget comfort zone. For heavy consumer Rift adoption, the ideal system would be around $800, or even better, toward the new Sony and Microsoft console prices. I don't see why the Rift couldn't work with the newer generation of consoles. I'm very interested to see how budget we can go and still deliver a great VR experience.

If we could show that a budget PC with a Rift cost the same, or less than a new gaming console then the choice would be simple about which way to go. This would force Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo to adapt their consoles to the Rift experience. By the time the Rift goes consumer around Q3 2014, I think much better prices and features will be available to support us. I don't see why their couldn't be different versions of the Rift that support different levels of resolution. I would be interested in dual 1080p screen displays, one for each eye that could run off of two ports on a GTX 680 or a Titan.

Maybe through spreadsheets, members here could do as you suggested and point a system builder (a waiter), towards exactly what they want, part by part. Exact part numbers are important as small differences among manufacturers can make all the difference. I don't care about whether a system is a Dell Alienware or otherwise until I know the exact parts. When the parts aren't listed, always suspect that the manufacturer or system builder has possibly put in the lowest cost item in that area. This community definitely needs some suggestions for which system builders will put all the parts together for them.

I went ahead and ordered everything on the spreadsheet except the video card through Newegg Tuesday and everything showed up Wednesday for only around $15 ground shipping. Newegg has never delivered that fast before.

The Titan card is out of stock nationwide. I had to go through eBay and lucked out to find someone who didn't want their new, unopened box for $25 more than what they paid. [Peg]Asus informed me on the phone that the card is still good for their warranty since it's unused. Two sellers on eBay are price gouging Titan cards currently for $250-430 over list price. The reason I went with Asus over eVGA is that Asus is currently supporting Windows 8 Fast Boot on all of their 680s through a video card BIOS update with all of their four year old and newer UEFI BiOS motherboards. Fast Boot allows possible Windows 8 boot times of around 2 seconds.

Again, don't hesitate to message or set up a voice chat about building your new systems. I hope we can develop system builds that we approve of that are point and shoot decisions like Curtrock suggested for everyone here. We can talk on the phone, Skype, Ventrilo, or whatever works. This is just my little part of helping others here make VR happen. You guys have already done more than you know to help me.

CPU: Core i7 4770K@Stock

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 4GB (GV-N770OC-4GC)

Mobo: Asus Z87-Pro ATX LGA1150

Mem: Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2*4) DDR3-2133

O.S. Storage: Samsung 840 EVO

Game Storage: Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM

PSU: Seasonic 650W Semi-Mod. Gold ATX

****Have not yet tested the Oculus Rift on my current system, but I look forward to doing so soon.Take my money.****

Hey guys!I'm thinking of buying the Oculus Rift,but i'm afraid my laptop would give terrible graphics

Processor:Intel(R) Core i5-3230M @2,60 GHz
Ram:4,00 GB(3,11GB usable)
VGA:Geforce 610M

I tried the Unity demo,and it gives me around 30 fps when i'm looking at the house,and around 52 fps when i looked at the beach(1280x720)I just bought my laptop 2 months ago.

Please reply :)

Unfortunately most laptops (even high end gaming ones) are not enough to run every Rift experience smoothly. We would usually recommend a high-end desktop setup. You can test this yourself using FRAPS and testing some Rift demos. You should always have 60FPS or above for the best experience.

"cybereality" wrote:
Unfortunately most laptops (even high end gaming ones) are not enough to run every Rift experience smoothly. We would usually recommend a high-end desktop setup. You can test this yourself using FRAPS and testing some Rift demos. You should always have 60FPS or above for the best experience.

Like i said in another post, i have an old laptop with a nvidia gt425m, and a i3 370m, a 3-4 years old low-end laptop, and i run nicely most of the unity demos and games at 60fps, most of them at maximun settings too, i think the dk1 have fairly low requirements, 1280x800 at 60fps its not that big of a deal for most pcs, the consumer version with probably 1920x1080 at 90fps minimum on the other hand...

My laptop is not the best and I had trouble even getting 60fps w/ Tuscany Unity. It has an i5 and an Nvidia 555m. I did try a more expensive laptop (MSI I think, costing $2,000 or something) and it was just good enough. Although Tuscany and most Unity demos were playable, it fell below 60fps with more intense Dx11 or Unreal4 demos.

"cybereality" wrote:
My laptop is not the best and I had trouble even getting 60fps w/ Tuscany Unity. It has an i5 and an Nvidia 555m. I did try a more expensive laptop (MSI I think, costing $2,000 or something) and it was just good enough. Although Tuscany and most Unity demos were playable, it fell below 60fps with more intense Dx11 or Unreal4 demos.

Well, no wonders why, Tuscany its one of the worst optimized unity demos out there and one of the only ones where i had problems reaching 60fps, im talking about vanilla Tuscany, because with the sixense modded Tuscany i got 60 fps with no problems.

The other two where i didnt reach 60 fps, for the 40-50 demos or so that i tried, were Technolust and Redframe at max settings, just for the record.