Check Your PC's VR Viability With Valve's 'SteamVR Performance Test'

[kcarbotte]

The HTC Vive finally has a concrete release date and completed design, and the price has been revealed. Now Valve has a test that reveals if your computer is ready for the Vive.

Check Your PC's VR Viability With Valve's 'SteamVR Performance Test' : Read more

 

[Math Geek]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

 

[kcarbotte]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

That's really interesting.
I have an old Q6600 with mobo and ram sitting on shelf right now. I should dust it off and set it up. It would be interesting to find out what combination of hardware will make that CPU work with VR.

 

[Joe Black]

Thank you Gaben!

You really do care. Tacky level = zero

 

[Math Geek]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

That's really interesting.
I have an old Q6600 with mobo and ram sitting on shelf right now. I should dust it off and set it up. It would be interesting to find out what combination of hardware will make that CPU work with VR.

of course it is also possible the gpu was so weak it did not even notice how bad the cpu is for vr. be interesting to drop a better gpu in and see what happens. min spec is a i5-4590 which the q6600 is far from....

 

[thor220]

I wish they'd sell the VR headset in pieces instead of a bundle. Not everyone wants to use their included earbuds or controllers.

 

[dstarr3]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

The CPU may have been powerful enough for its individual role, but may have still been a bottleneck on the GPU.

 

[falchard]

Ohh yea, My AMD system ranks as... Ready.
I think this test is not indicative of the game play experience. Valve obviously did a wonderful job optimizing it and getting it production ready. It ran flawlessly which is something I cannot say for the majority of developers.

 

[Hendel]

6950 = Not even close to being ready.
i5-2500k @ 4.6 was Green.

 

[Myrmidonas]

I will give some other point of view. This is not exactly a "Performance Test" in order to check if your PCs are viable for VR. You know that already, the specs are out there. It is more a kind of statistics collector for valve to see how many want/dream a VR system on their PCs.Even the download count matters to them.It shows interest.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Ran my first test with i5 2500k @ 4ghz and GTX 970 Stock (1253Mhz GPU and 7000Mhz Memory) and got 6.6 for a score, Ready with no frames dropped below 90FPS.
Run the test again after overclocking the 970 to 1375mhz and 7900 Mhz on the memory and it scores a 4.6 Medium score with no frame drops below 90FPS. Lol. What a stupid program.
Value = 0

 

[uglyduckling81]

Ran my first test with i5 2500k @ 4ghz and GTX 970 Stock (1253Mhz GPU and 7000Mhz Memory) and got 6.6 for a score, Ready with no frames dropped below 90FPS.
Run the test again after overclocking the 970 to 1375mhz and 7900 Mhz on the memory and it scores a 4.6 Medium score with no frame drops below 90FPS. Lol. What a stupid program.
Value = 0

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

i5 3470 - ready
R9 280x @ 1050MHz- just bellow middle yellow (capable)

 

[kcarbotte]

I wish they'd sell the VR headset in pieces instead of a bundle. Not everyone wants to use their included earbuds or controllers.

That would serve no purpose at all.
Vive games are designed exclusively for the included wand controllers. There is exactly one game announced for it that doesn't use those controllers; Elite: Dangerous, which has higher VR requirements than the recomended VR specs from Valve. You need at least a 980 (and from my experience with it, I'd say you need more graphics power than that.)

The earbuds are hardly adding to the cost of the package.

 

[HyperMatrix]

For anyone interested in comparing performance beyond the cap of "11" in the app, look at the "Frames Tested" field, which is the total count of frames generated during the entirety of the test. Since this is a DX12 app, and uses next to no CPU power, you can crank it up on the GPU portion as much as you'd like.

 

[Simon Ayres]

It sure is, my wallet on the other hand, not so much.

 

[cliffro]

It sure is, my wallet on the other hand, not so much.

My thoughts exactly. I've got a $600 GPU that I didn't mind purchasing, because it's useful in ALL of my games I currently play. But 600-800 for a VR headset that will only work with some games....and only a few that I own(if that many).....not yet Valve, not yet.

 

[brettms71]

Doesn't seem to use Optimus on a laptop. Even if I make it the default, and change the VR app to use the discrete video card.

 

[ammaross]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

That's really interesting.
I have an old Q6600 with mobo and ram sitting on shelf right now. I should dust it off and set it up. It would be interesting to find out what combination of hardware will make that CPU work with VR.

From the screenshot (and the article):

From the above image: “Please note that while your system’s rendering power isn’t limited by your CPU, this test doesn’t account for the varying CPU cost of positional tracking and processing-intense applications. Follow the recommended specs for each VR headset and piece of software.”

Run one of the games (Eliteangerous perhaps) and see how that Q6600 holds up on a R270 normally and see how often it drops below 90fps due to CPU (or GPU for that matter). The VR test doesn't put ANY load metric on the CPU. It's a pixel-pusher demo to give you feel-goods.

 

[kcarbotte]

kids ran across this today and it said their q6600 cpu was good enough but needed a better gpu than the r9-270 they have.

i woulda thought the cpu would not past the test but it did. kinda odd to me since the min specs are so high.

That's really interesting.
I have an old Q6600 with mobo and ram sitting on shelf right now. I should dust it off and set it up. It would be interesting to find out what combination of hardware will make that CPU work with VR.

From the screenshot (and the article):

From the above image: “Please note that while your system’s rendering power isn’t limited by your CPU, this test doesn’t account for the varying CPU cost of positional tracking and processing-intense applications. Follow the recommended specs for each VR headset and piece of software.”

Run one of the games (Eliteangerous perhaps) and see how that Q6600 holds up on a R270 normally and see how often it drops below 90fps due to CPU (or GPU for that matter). The VR test doesn't put ANY load metric on the CPU. It's a pixel-pusher demo to give you feel-goods.

Elite Dangerous is a bad example. It has higher requirements for VR than every onther game announced with VR support. At minimum you need a GTX 980 for that game.

I'm curious to see how well the Q6600 would hold up with a high end GPU like a 980Ti - just for curiosity sake.

 

[Achaios]

Hey guys, if a Core 2 Quad (Q6600) from 2006 can make it through this test and display VR at 90 FPS or so, then I don't see any reason why a Pentium 4 can't make it. It seems to me that buyiong the latest CPU's is a waste of money, and we should just ditch our systems and buy a P35 based motherboard, DDR2-800 and a Q6600.

 

[Math Geek]

think you're jumping the gun just a bit there!!

all i noted was that the test did not flag the cpu but rather the gpu as the reason the system did not get the nod. as others noted this is not really a vindication of the old cpu as a viable vr set-up. only that the test itself is rather limited and not really reflecting whether the system is vr capable or not. i have no interest in vr for my house nor do i have any dillusion that this old system (with a gpu upgrade) is all i'd need for vr if i chose to go there. i'm sure the min specs are founded on a lot of testing and though i'm sure an older i7 might make the cut i highly doubt my old q6600 is up to the task.

i would however be just as curious as others to see how it would hold up but i'd not put any money on it being a valid vr cpu!!

 

[falchard]

There isn't much additional CPU power required for vr. Its like doubling your monitor or using stereoscopic.

 

[kcarbotte]

There isn't much additional CPU power required for vr. Its like doubling your monitor or using stereoscopic.

I wouldn't count on that.
The CPU does all of the tracking calculations for your hands and head. There's a reason the minimum requirements are for an i5. AMD's CPUs don't have fast enough single core performance. I doubt older hardware does either.
I am willing to put it to the test though.

 

[Math Geek]

I doubt older hardware does either.
I am willing to put it to the test though.

and i am more than willing to read the test results i don't have a good enough gpu to test it with and would have to add in a new psu and such to support the better card. the old psu is tapped out with the 270 in it now. if you have a 980 ti to check it out with, that would be pretty awesome to see what happens.