Chip-maker AMD has announced that it is partnering with Oculus and Dell to develop VR ready computers for consumers. The collaboration essentially comes down to Dell’s Oculus-ready PCs being equipped with AMD Radeon graphics cards.
These Dell and Alienware branded PCs are designed to be able to deliver “stunning gaming performance and enable spectacular VR experiences” straight from the box claims AMD. It says that its VR leadership, with LiquidVR and the Graphics Core Next architecture, enables such experiences.
“It’s an exciting time to be at the heart of all things Virtual Reality,” said AMD, corporate VP of alliances and content, Roy Taylor. “I’m confident that with Dell and Alienware, we can enable a wide audience of PC users with extraordinary VR capabilities powered by AMD Radeon GPUs.”
The consumer version of Oculus Rift is slated to arrive in Q1 2016 and is expected to cost more than $350. The consumer version is slightly costlier than what developers initially paid for the first two SDKs. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said that the added cost is due to the extra technology the consumer version has compared to the older DK1 and DK2 kits.
Among the Oculus Ready PCs, three companies have been listed under the manufacturers list: Asus, Alienware and Dell. Asus has the cheapest of the trio costing $949 while other two starting at $999.
“For nearly 20 years Alienware has been a leader in performance and innovation for PC gaming; virtual reality is the next frontier and we plan to innovate and lead in the same way, with the same passion,” said Alienware, co-founder and GM, Frank Azor. “Partnering with the performance of AMD graphics and the innovation of Oculus provides an incredible opportunity for Alienware to deliver something awesome for our users.”