Earlier this yeah, Oculus came out and announced recommended system requirements for its Oculus Rift headset. It was to be the baseline from which all Oculus games were based on, and exactly what was required to provide the 'Full Oculus Rift Experience'. Hardware manufacturers even partnered with Oculus to create Rift-ready gaming PCs, tuned to the hardware you'll need for out of the box VR gaming.
Well, you can throw all that out the window, because Frontier has just announced the VR minimum specs for Elite Dangerous, which is Oculus Rift-compatible, and it blows away the recommended Rift specs. If you've been building your PC ready for VR, it might be best to start saving again...
Elite Dangerous VR Minimum System Requirements
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core 3.5GHz or AMD Athlon FX-4350 4.2GHz
- RAM: 16GB System Memory
- GPU RAM: 4GB Video Memory or greater
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 or AMD Radeon R9 390X
- HDD: 8GB Free Hard Drive Space
Oculus Rift Full Experience System Requirements
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz or AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz
- RAM: 8GB System Memory
- GPU RAM: 4GB Video Memory or greater
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290
What we can ascertain from these straight away is that Elite Dangerous VR probably has decent multi-threaded supported. It's why they've chosen to plump for the i7-3770K rather than the much more reasonably priced i5-4590. In its own way that's good news, but it's also a significantly more expensive option.
Elsewhere, the 8GB memory requirements of the Oculus Rift specs simply don't cut it for Elite Dangerous. Instead, Frontier claim you'll need a hefty 16GB of memory, VR fans. That's actually more RAM needed than the size of the game's installation.
Lastly, the value for money options that are the GeForce GTX 970 and Radeon R9 290 have been cast aside, swapped instead for the GeForce GTX 980 and the Radeon R9 390X. Bear in mind of course, that these are the Elite Dangerous minimum VR requirements. Wowser. The reason being of course that it's trying to drive a 2160 x 1200 screen at a rock solid 90 FPS, to limit latency and prevent motion sickness.
Add all that hardware up and you've got an expensive proposition on your hands. One of the biggest selling points of the Oculus Rift against the HTC Vive has been its simplicity, and the one size fits all system requirements were key to that. If developers are already treading outside these restrictions months ahead of launch, it negates the whole system.
What do you make of the minimum Elite: Dangerous VR system requirements? Are they a little steep for your tastes?
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Seems like I need a CPU upgrade..
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Intel Core i7-3770K and GeForce GTX 980 as a minimum ... --' --' :v
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BRING IT ON! It's about time I see this hardware put to good use.
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Can i run it guys
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no
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ASKS FOR 4GB OF ONBOARD VRAM
-Then recommends me a GTX 970.
Smart asses.
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WHOA! that is some beasty (and probably over inflated) requirements, I find it hard to believe that a 780 Ti or 970 won't be able to run it perfectly adequately, I hope anyway.
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They probably will I mean this is funny
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Yeah, a 970 should be fine. It can handle 1440p well. Just some tweaking for a constant 90 fps though...
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Sweet! I can run it.
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AWESOM*E RIG MAN!
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whoa! that is some heavy requirements!!!
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Can i run it :(
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Maybe, probably not though. Unless you wanna vomit from motion sickness. Sorry bro.
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Another ploy to sell high end hardware, I recommend patients as others have suggested, let them work the bugs and performance out of this technology, so will know what were getting into and what will need for certain.
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The high resolution SBS rendering used in VR has massive requirements.
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A GTX 980 is the minimum GPU required? Holy crap :|
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Ofcourse cause it is virtual reality
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Can I run Elite Dangerous with VR if I play the game at 1 pixel by 1 pixel?
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No.
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you can't run it if you play it on half pixel by half pixel.so get a supercomputer man.probably costs around $600,000.
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Well great. I meet minimum requirements. Now I just need to get a VR headset.
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No you meet recommended requirements.
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Referring to VR minimum... not oculus rift minimum...
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Minium requirement gtx 980
full Experience gtx 970
what? arn´t they supposed to be swapped? or maybe the 980 has to be a 960?
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hey why are you complaining? you have the GTX 970, not the GTX 980 haha
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One is for the general requirements for games and the 980 is the minimum specifically for elite dangerous, i didn't care much for trying vr but with specs like this it must look insane so i might just try it out.
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It doesn't look any different, VR in general just needs to compute more. The Oculus recommended should be fine for this game, I benchmarked it this morning and get more than enough FPS above 90 to account for the extra processing power.
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Nice one. Just let these poor devs play with this new tech a little bit.
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Except with those specs, I don't think they realise just how well their game runs. Max settings, disable AA, at the resolution of the Oculus Rift, and with the exact specs of the Oculus "Full experience", I easily get 120+ FPS constantly, at times going up to and beyond 300 FPS. I think you'll be fine with the Oculus specs.
In fact, since I have the exact oculus recommended specs and can run games at more or less the exact oculus resolution, I can benchmark any game for it
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(The future)
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I'll wait till 2020 and change my rig then...
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If this is the future gaming of PC i'll switch to console or win The International and buy monster pc
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We're going to Ti6, baby! Whoo! Go team BuyMeAnOculus!
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Joffy S what the ....
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Oh the Full Experience Requirements are less Demanding than the Minimum Requirements.
I guess I won't be surprised if I see Members reporting they can run it on Ultra but the Game is unplayable on Low, haha
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Looks to be an overestimate. I can run Elite Dangerous maxed out at the resolution of the Oculus Rift and get over 100 FPS constantly. You only need a constant 90 FPS for the Oculus Rift. It should be fine. That's accounting for the extra processing power as well. Also, that was with maximum Anti-Aliasing, if I disable AA I get a boost in FPS of about 20 or more.
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Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core 3.5GHz or AMD Athlon FX-4350 4.2GHz is a good one but 8GB of HDD Space & 16GB of RAM is even better.
These guys have no idea what they're talking about. Fortunately GD is here ;)
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In theory more Ram usage then HDD space is possible due to compression and the storing variables.
City skylines can use up to 5GB ram for me, while the game installation size is only 3GB.
For this game however (and looking at the bull**** CPU requirement), it's very unlikey the game needs 16GB though.
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I know but this isn't the kind of game on where that happens. Can you build settlements here and alike?