NVIDIA expects virtual reality to be an expensive experience

NVIDIA’s CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, had at one point mentioned that they’ve noticed that users are shifting to high-end GPUs, which is fortuitous given what they predict we will require to run games at 1080p in VR at 60 fps.

A table they recently revealed shows what NVIDIA recommends users will require to run games at 1080p in VR, as well as including the cards they suggest for each of the prominent resolutions games run at.

Just for the sake of comparison, we’ve guesstimated AMD’s response based on how their cards run at particular resolutions and in comparison to their GeForce counterparts.

Owing to AMD’s GCN architecture and their preference for wider memory busses and, subsequently, GPUs with more bandwidth in general, they have more cards capable of offering a 4K or 1080 VR experience.

That said, NVIDIA’s far superior drivers, penchant for producing superior tech, like that of Gameworks VR, and a lot more capital to throw at the technology in general, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a fairly even playing field for either manufacturer.

That’s the good news, that your preferred manufacturer has capable VR GPUs; the bad news is the cost of achieving 60 fps at 1080p is really rather expensive.

The GPUs necessary to achieve the sorts of frame rates at the details and resolutions we’re talking about are listed below:

Radeon R9 390X – $429 / R7, 222 – R8, 704

R9 Fury X – $649 / R10, 500 – R12, 000

GTX 980 Ti – $649 / R10, 899 – R13, 593

GTX 980 – $479 / R7, 999 – R11, 435

That’s a lot of money. Remember, we’re talking triple-A VR titles, the sorts of games that liberally throw around polygons and post-processing effects – NVIDIA is concerned with the future of VR.

We imagine, however, that turning down settings like anti-aliasing, lighting and so on will allow cards like the GTX 970 to comfortably play games in VR. After all, the Oculus Rift’s minimum requirements list a GTX 970.

Thankfully, Steam’s survey suggests that a good portion of us own GTX 970s or better. Good job nerds.

Source: WCCF Tech

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