SteamVR Performance Test Released – No VR Headset Needed

Today Valve released the SteamVR Performance Test, which just happens to be the first VR performance test that we know of. This test allows end users a a free and simple way to find out if your system is ready for Steam VR?

The SteamVR Performance Test features high quality 2-minute sequence from the Aperture Science Robot Repair demo, designed specifically for the HTC Vive, though it can be run on any PC and does not require a headset to be connected to the system. After collecting the data it determines whether your system is capable of running VR content at 90fps and whether VR content can tune the visual fidelity up to the recommended level. For machines that are not VR Ready the tool can help determine whether capabilities are bound by Graphics Card, CPU, or both.

The test employs a technique called dynamic fidelity, which automatically adjusts image quality as required to avoid dropped frames that can break the sense of presence critical to VR experiences. CPU and GPU hardware is then assigned one of three categories (VR Recommended, VR Capable, or VR Not Ready) based on the average fidelity level attained.

We just happen to have an XFX Radeon R9 Fury 4GB video card in our gaming test machine and we ran the new StreamVR Performance Test on that setup.

We scored 8.5 on with the AMD Radeon R9 Fury 4GB video card on our particular platform and that was good enough for the ‘VR Recommended’ or ‘Ready’ designation.

AMD sent us an e-mail this afternoon letting us know that all of their Radeon R9 390 series and Fury series products, including the R9 Nano can achieve the highest attainable status:Recommended for VR. AMD also shared their internal results that they got when running the SteamVR Performance Test on this platform: Intel i7-6700K, 2x4GB DDR4-2666 RAM, Z170 motherboard, Radeon Software 16.1.1, NVIDIA driver 361.91, Win10 64-bit. Our scores were lower than what AMD got, but they ran the test yesterday on an earlier build of the test utility. To enable multi-GPU support, use -multigpu as a launch option without the quotes.

Since the app is free you can download it and try it out for yourself to see how your platform does! Were very excited about the VR coming to gaming and it looks like most high-end gaming systems will be ready!