Emerging Technologies Blog

Oculus already announced when its Rift virtual reality headset will be available to the public, which, as you know, is Q1 2016. But Oculus VR didn't tell us the specs for our computer to work well with the Rift for an ''overall virtual reality experience. It turns out you might need to upgrade your PC or just get  a new desktop computer. According to Oculus to get the full experience of the Rift VR headset, here's what you need to power it:


NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
8GB+ RAM
Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
2x USB 3.0 ports
Windows 7 SP1 or newer.

Yeah the hardware and specs to power the Rift Virtual reality headset are high and expensive. Considering the fact that NVIDIA GTX 970 cost more than $300 and Intel i5 4590 cost as much as $300, then add that price of the 8GB RAM, which is about $50. But there is a reason to shell out that amounts of money for the Rift.

''The Rift headset puts out some incredible resolution (2160×1200 at 90Hz) and consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 million shaded pixels per second. Your average flat monitor games, by way of contrast, require only 1080p resolution and consume only 124 million shaded pixels per second and require roughly a third of the graphics processing power.''

Learn more.