Oculus Rift lowers barrier to entry with new minimum PC specs

The Oculus Rift can now bring VR to lower-specced PCs, leading the company to announce a new set of minimum required specs. The minimum specs should drastically lower the barrier to entry for VR, making the cost of getting started with Oculus Rift quite a bit lower.

Rift Minimum Specs

The minimum specs include the following:

  • NVIDIA GTX 960 or greater
  • Intel i3-6100 / AMD FX4350 or greater
  • 8GB+ RAM
  • Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
  • 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 ports
  • Windows 8 or newer

As announced on stage at the Oculus Connect developer conference, the extended support comes thanks to new tech, called asynchronous spacewarp, that allows the PC to do less work by rendering fewer frames while the Oculus software fills in the gaps. This effectively allows the PC to render at 45 frames per second while keeping the effective frame rate at 90 frames per second.

As noted by Oculus, these minimum specs will enable it to certify even more machines (including laptops) as part of its "Oculus Ready" partner program. In fact, Oculus announced that CyberPowerPC will be releasing a $499 Oculus Ready machine powered by an AMD processor.

Will these new minimum specs entice you to give the Oculus Rift a shot? Let us know in the comments!

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl