Surprised by system specs for Rift

[h106frp]

With the head tracking tests sparking my interest and noting tomorrow will be the big OC Rift announcement i thought i would have a quick peek at the expected specs and costs for Rift.

Bit shocked, needs a GTX 970 class GPU (£300) due to the high overhead of VR and the latest version of HDMI. So no laptops or compact PC's 
Maybe the Rift should have more of the processing built in or offered as stand alone processor.

Think i will have to wait for a more main steam option to be offered in the future 

[HornetMaX]

Well, it has two screens with separate rendering (and with decent resolution as they are very close you your eyes) so yes, it will need GPU power.

MaX.

[h106frp]

They suggest they need to render 3* the amount of pixel info/frame without frame drops so even top end (single) card solutions might seem sluggish. Could be a very pricey system by the time your finished building.

They need to get a GPU maker on-board with a custom card, apparently current architecture is not the best suited for VR displays which causes a big performance hit 

[HornetMaX]

GPU progress has been slow the past 3 years, slower than usual.
4K should push the reds and the greens a bit more. If Rift  does the same, we may go back to the rate of progress we had 5yrs ago.

MaX.

[JJS209]

i think for a decent 4k and three monitor gaming setup you will need minimum 2x 980ti or higher for e.g. witcher 3 at max.

[h106frp]

Only thing i have seen that offers a glimmer of hope are the first benchmarks for win10/DX12/Mantle, the expected uplift in performance promises to be quite stunning.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2900814/tested-directx-12s-potential-performance-leap-is-insane.html

Hopefully the new OpenGL (Vulkan) engine can do similar driven by the Steam box.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9038/next-generation-opengl-becomes-vulkan-additional-details-released

Its about time the true power of modern GPU's was available within a desktop PC environment 

[HornetMaX]

I'll wait real numbers (from trustable sources) before getting too excited about dx12/Vulkan.

And don't forget you'll need win10, a recent gpu and a game that actually uses dx12/vulkan.

MaX.