Will my Core i5-2500K be enough for VR gaming on the HTC Vive?

Hi there. Great site, one of my favorites, by the way. I am getting pretty pumped regarding VR (particulary the HTC Vive) and I believe it will reVIVE my taste for Pc Gaming, a taste that as been diminuishing in the last years. I have a 2500K CPU (overclocked to 4.2Mhz) and a GTX670 GPU. Of course I will have to upgrade my GPU (will follow your advice and wait for the Pascal GPUs, lets just hope the performance increase is as good as everyone expects) but regarding my CPU, do you believe it will be enough? When I run the Oculus Rift Requirements Tools it says its not compatible but from my research the Intel i5-4590 equivalent they recommend has less performance that a 2500K overclocked, right? It´s a bit early, I know, but what do you thing?

Cheers, André Mendes.

Hey there André,

The requirements that both Oculus and HTC have put online are for the optimum VR experience, and personally, I wouldn't take them too seriously. Sure, you can't be running into buying an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive with your Pentium II 300, 4MB of RAM and a 3dfx Voodoo video card, but your Core i5-2500K would be plenty fast enough for VR games.

Then as you've said, your Core i5-2500K is overclocked to 4.2GHz which is pretty damn good - I would feel confident in your CPU. You've said that you're upgrading your NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 to a new Pascal-based video card when NVIDIA launches them this year, which is the biggest part of the VR upgrade puzzle. Your CPU will be fine, and down the track feel free to upgrade it to something faster - but for now, I don't see any VR titles being CPU bound. The Core i5-2500K you've got should be able to handle VR gaming like a boss.

Last updated: Nov 3, 2020 at 07:10 pm CST