Need help building a PC for the HTC Vive

[Pemalite]

fatslob-:O said:

snyps said:

Will I have to replace my motherboard then? It's AM3.

To break the bad news to you, yes you do need to get a new motherboard because of pin compatibility ... 

If you want to do some overclocking on Intel CPUs then you MUST get their designated "Z" series chipsets like their Z97 chipset for Haswell/Broadwell processors that are compatible with the LGA 1150 socket or the Z170 chipset to overclock the latest Skylake CPUs ... 

Don't forget to buy their CPUs with the "K" suffix either since they are the only ones with official overclocking support ...

Not true.
There are plenty of AM3 motherboards which are compatible with Socket AM3+ processors (Such as the Asus Crosshair IV), just his motherboard doesn't.

A Phenom 2 x4 970 is about half the speed of the recommended requirements for VR... But here is the kicker, Oculus state that the load placed on the CPU is very lightly threaded... Essentially where Intel shines and AMD falters.
You would want a high-clocked CPU with very strong per-core performance...

However, let's also keep in mind that games in VR *will* be rendered at a substantually higher resolution than most people are used to.
From years of dealing with eyefinity, that means the bottleneck will likely always be the GPU in the majority of scenario's, especially if you like to have all the bells and whistles turned on.
A slower CPU usually will only start to hold you back if there is allot of Physics, A.I, Particles and will usually only hit your minimum and maximum framerates... To a point.
But that will also vary from game to game.


My advice is... Wait. AMD is releasing Polaris in a few months... At the very least it could mean a sale on current GPU's, at the most you could get substantually more GPU for your dollar.
Upgrading to Intel is probably the advisable course as Zen is probably not going to drop untill late this year and who knows if it will offer acceptable performance, any modern Intel Quaddy will likely do though.

However, keep in mind that VR on the PC is *not* locked onto any particular hardware, framerates and resolution are the most important factors... As long as you can maintain native res (2160x1200 - 1080x1200 per eye.) and 90fps... It doesn't matter how slow your hardware is.

I would personally go for a Core i5 6600K and dual Radeon 390's at a minimum, vram will be more important than usual too, more the better, even if it costs a few bucks more, the GPU's are where you should invest most of your money into.