New NVIDIA Program Will Tell You if Your System is VR Ready

The new era of virtual reality is almost upon us, with the imminent release of Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Sony PlayStation VR all due for consumer release this year. In preparation, NVIDIA has partnered with the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte, and Alienware to launch its GeForce GTX VR Ready program to help tag systems and graphics cards that support VR technology. Hardware that sports a “GeForce GTX VR Ready” badge is capable of meeting the VR requirements of running two separate images (one for each eye) at 90 frames-per-second.

Minimum requirements (Based on published VR requirements by headset manufacturers):

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or greater
• CPU: Intel Core i5- 4590 equivalent or greater
• Notebook: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
• Memory/RAM: 8GB+ RAM
• Outputs: 2x USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.3
• OS: Windows 7 SP1 or newer

“For customers, navigating an emerging technology like VR can be daunting,” Jason Paul, General Manager of Emerging Technologies at NVIDIA, said. “We’re working with trusted partners worldwide to simplify the buying process with a GeForce GTX VR Ready badge that will let customers quickly identify PCs or add-in cards that are capable of handling the demands of VR.”

In an interview with VentureBeat at the end of December, Paul added that NVIDIA has been preparing for the VR boon, with its Maxwell architecture built with virtual reality in mind, and its Gameworks and Designworks VR software designed to deliver the highest quality experience for users:

“Nvidia is doing three core things to solve this problem. First, we’re building fast GPUs, and we’re building them specifically architected for VR. Our Maxwell architecture has specific capabilities and features that make it very fast for VR. We have some technology that increases performance by up to 50 percent for VR applications.

Software-wise we’re making sure the out-of-box experience for customers is perfect. We want the first VR experience everyone gets when the headsets come out to be a good one – no stutter, no lag. Our GeForce Experience software and our Game Ready drivers are core to making sure that experience is delivered.

We’re working with all of the VR ecosystem through an SDK we call Gameworks VR on the consumer side and Designworks VR on the professional side. That helps headset manufacturers get lower latency and plug-and-play compatibility, and it helps developers get better performance out of their apps.”