With so many choices for graphics cards out there, it’s hard to know exactly what you should buy to outfit your next VR-ready PC. To make things a little easier, Oculus recently published a list of GPUs that meets its Minimum and Recommended specs. The list helps clear up confusion regarding which older and less popular GPUs the company considers ‘equivalent’ to the company’s prior recommendations which often consisted of just one GPU from NVIDIA and one GPU from AMD.
Minimum Spec GPUs
You’ll need a powerful GPU for VR, though if you’re on a tight budget, Oculus introduced some tech (ASW) which helped lower the bar a bit more, and led to the creation of the ‘Oculus Minimum Spec’.
The company does warn that some Rift content may require a computer that “exceeds Oculus’s minimum or recommended specs,” and that you should always keep an eye on the recommended specs when browsing content in the Oculus Store. That said, here’s the current list of GPU that the company considers is powerful enough to meet the Oculus Minimum spec:
- NVIDIA GTX 960 (4GB)
- NVIDIA GTX 1050 (4GB)
- NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti
- NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti (laptop)
- NVIDIA GTX 980M
- AMD RX 470.
Recommended Spec GPUs
GPUs meeting the Oculus Recommended spec will give you smooth VR rendering without relying on ASW (which can introduce unwanted graphical artifacts). While all the cards on this list ought to render Oculus experiences smoothly, the higher-end cards will let you crank the graphical nobs up in many games, sometimes substantially increasing visual fidelity. Learn how to use supersampling to sharpen any Rift game (if your GPU can handle it).
NVIDIA* |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB, Desktop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB, Desktop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Desktop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 (Laptop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB, laptop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Laptop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Laptop) |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z |
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Black |
NIVIDA TITAN X (Pascal) |
NIVIDA TITAN Xp |
NVIDIA Quadro GP100 |
NVIDIA Quadro K6000 |
NVIDIA Quadro M5000 |
NVIDIA Quadro M5500 |
NVIDIA Quadro P4000 |
NVIDIA Quadro P5000 |
NVIDIA Quadro P6000 |
NVIDIA M5000 |
NVIDIA M5500 |
NVIDIA M6000 (12GB) |
NVIDIA M6000 (24GB) |
*not in order of performance or price
AMD* |
AMD Radeon R9 290 |
AMD Radeon R9 290X |
AMD Radeon R9 390 |
AMD Radeon R9 390X |
AMD Radeon R9 Fury |
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X |
AMD Radeon R9 Nano |
AMD FirePro W9100 |
AMD FirePro WX7100 |
AMD FirePro WX7100 (laptop) |
AMD Radeon RX 480 |
AMD Radeon RX 570 |
AMD Radeon RX 580 |
AMD Radeon RX 580 Mobile |
*not in order of performance or price
If you’re in doubt about whether other parts of your PC can handle VR, download the compatibility check tool published by Oculus to see if your computer’s guts have what it takes.