Oculus Reveals Minimum Specs For Rift VR Headset, Core i5-4590 And GTX 970 Recommended

Last week learned that the Oculus Rift will be delivered to paying customers starting in Q1 2016. Oculus also took the time to show us what the final version of the Rift will look like once it begins shipping. During the reveal, the company stated, “In the weeks ahead, we’ll be revealing the details around hardware, software, input, and many of our unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift.”

That time has come, and Oculus has handed down the recommended minimum specs “for the full Rift experience” on PC systems. You’ll need:

• NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
• Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
• 8GB+ RAM
• Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
• Windows 7 SP1 or newer

“The goal is for all Rift games and applications to deliver a great experience on this configuration by default,” explained Oculus Chief Architect Atman Binstock. “We believe this “it just works” experience will be fundamental to VR’s success, given that an underperforming system will fail to deliver comfortable presence.

“The recommended spec will stay constant over the lifetime of the Rift. As the equivalent-performance hardware becomes less expensive, more users will have systems capable of the full Rift experience.”

As for users looking to experience the Oculus Rift on Linux and OS X platforms, there’s a bit of bad news. Binstock added that development on these two platforms has been “paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience” on its primary launch platform: Windows. Oculus hopes to restart its Linux/OS X development at some point, but currently “[doesn’t] have a timeline.”