We’ve known for some time that VR would be putting some serious stress on our home computers, but we were never quite sure just how much. Thankfully, Valve is putting out a free tool today that may just ease your fears. (Or totally confirm them! Who knows!)
The test is available for free through Steam. It renders a brief Portal 2-themed demo and then gives you the hot details on your PC’s performance. I’m VR ready! Though watching a hardware monitor while the test was running showed my GPU getting pushed to some grossly uncomfortable temperatures. Ah well. I can run VR even if it means literally melting my PC!
This test software obviously is coming alongside the announcement of the HTC Vive’s price and release date. As the first consumer-ready piece of SteamVR tech, the Vive’s got a lot to prove, especially as it launches with a price point even higher than the contentiously expensive Oculus Rift.
We’re not equipped to do full testing on a variety of GPUs here, but thankfully AMD has done some legwork for us. And in an incredible coincidence, their own Radeon cards are doing quite well in their benchmarks! Though, honestly, it seems a little suspect to brag when you don’t have a single-card solution that matches up with your competition’s, as you’re looking at a dual-card setup before you can match a 980 TI.
But hey, only you can find out if your own PC is ready! That’s assuming you care about VR in the first place, which is a problem that’s facing every consumer-level headset. But at least now we can be sure if our systems are even prepared to take the load.
