Is VR gaming any good with bare minimums?

[RetroGamerZX0]

So, VR. Specifically, the HTC Vive.
PC Specs:

GeForce GTX 970
Intel Core i5-6500 (3.20 GHz)
8.00 GB RAM

Now I want to get the HTC Vive and I've seen on multiple games that the recomended a i7, and a gtx 980 or higher. Has anyone tried intense titles like Hover Junkers with bare minimum builds such as mine? If so, was it any good?

[RadiatingLight]

I've tried titles which list the 970 as recommended, and it was smooth as butter. I don't know how performance will be with games that recommend a 980, but if the recommended is a 970, you will run it great

[Amotthejoker]

If the game doesn't require 980 or something it should be perfect but i feel like you could upgrade your ram.

[Some random guy 23424234]

Don't forget you can always overclock your gpu for those few extra fps

 

[BrightCandle]

Have a look at hardocp.com's VR reviews. They have been testing a 1060 (which is about a 980 in performance) which will give you a good idea of how much reprojection and dropped frames. I had a 970 and it was fine for the VR specific games I was playing (lab, Space pirate trainer etc). As I moved onto Elite dangerous/Truck Simulator/Project cars it was pretty apparent that I was going to have to reduce visual quality dramatically and VR was a big driver for me to stop using 2x970's and move to a 1080.

 

There is no harm in trying it yourself but one of the key problems in VR is aliasing effects, because the pixels are really large compared to a screen. Combine that with the large amount of overrender to compensate for the lenses and you have a high resolution (twice that of the  2160x1200 you would expect) and a real need for super sampling AA, which further increases the resolution. VR games basically look best when you are rendering at 6k, SS + Overender on top of the base resolution and it is very hard to get that performing well in any game not directly designed for VR. So the amount of GPU you want really depends on what you are trying to do, if elite dangerous is your thing get something faster. Even a 1080 with a Vive isn't fast enough to make Truck simulator (a pretty basic looking game) look good enough to be "worth it" in my opinion, it was compelling but it looked awful with a lot of pixel crawl.