- Feb 2, 2008
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Surprised to see this, since it doesn't even have the full four FPU units of the 8 core FX chips.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3117782/computers/tested-this-all-amd-650-pc-proves-vr-ready-rigs-dont-have-to-be-expensive.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3117782/computers/tested-this-all-amd-650-pc-proves-vr-ready-rigs-dont-have-to-be-expensive.html
PC World said:This affordable VR PC is powered by AMD's FX-6350 and Radeon RX 480. I often hear people say you’ll need to spend about $1,000 on a PC for VR. Nothing could be further from the truth—and it’s all thanks to AMD.
FX chips aren’t even mentioned in Oculus Rift’s PC requirements, but many of them indeed power VR experiences, and for far less cost than the Intel Core i5-4590 ($195 on Amazon) Oculus recommends.
PC World said:Neither Oculus nor HTC officially support the FX-6350 and I feared I'd be transported into a juddering digital world of dropped frames that would instantly spur Exorcist-style vomiting.
I had nothing to worry about. Through it all, AMD’s DIY rig delivered a rock-solid virtual reality experience free of jarring frames drops and stuttering, no matter how quickly I whirled my head around or how hot and heavy the onscreen action became.
PC World said:If there’s a weak spot in this build, it’s that affordable but years-old FX-6350 chip. So I leaned on it. To do so I created some truly fantastic contraptions in Fantastic Contraption. The game’s indeed fantastic—wondrous, even—but more importantly for our purposes, it’s a game rife with physics-based interactions that need to be handled by the processor. To test the FX-6350’s limits, I spawned a slew of wheels and sticks and balloons and more, cobbled them together like some sort of cartoonish Frankenstein, and set the monstrosity in motion while I whipped my head around. It didn’t deliver the game’s floating jelly ball to its pink goal. But it ran flawlessly. Like I said: Experiencing virtual reality with AMD’s $650 PC feels great.
This article makes it sound like getting the 8320E + UD3P Micro Center bundle and overclocking somewhere around 4.2 to 4.4 is the way to go for a budget VR build. You get all four FP units that way.PC World said:If you find a $200 Radeon RX 480 and follow the tweaks above you could conceivably drive the final cost of the PC down to $550 or so before a Windows license. That’s almost half the cost of the $1,000 many people cite for a VR-ready PC. Hot damn.
AMD powers about a quarter of all PCs connected to Steam, and chips like the FX-6350 and FX-8350 are beloved by PC gamers on a budget. This system proves not only that VR-ready PCs can be built for significantly less than most people think, but that a horde of FX-packing PC gamers are just a $200 Radeon RX 480 graphics card upgrade away from being able to experience virtual reality. That’s eye-opening. Then again, the sky-high cost of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are just as eye-opening—but that’s a whole other article.