HTC and Oculus began with the same required specs for their respective headsets: Your setup had to involve a CPU equivalent to an Intel i5-4590, a similar GPU to a NVIDIA GTX 970 and at least 8GB of RAM. Which of these Macs, with an added GPU, is 'VR-ready'? It depends who you ask. Instead of geeking out on the CPU's role in gaming, let's just remind ourselves of the machines that Apple has made over the past five years, in rough order of processing power:

We're not going to get super technical here - if you want to know more about the underlying problems when pairing strong GPUs with weak CPUs, you can read every technical analysis of Sony's PS4 Pro ever written.

It feels like many people don't quite understand what a GPU does and why adding one to an underpowered machine won't make it VR ready. Immediately after Apple's VR announcement, a colleague remarked that adding an external GPU would be 'dope if you're buying a MacBook Air or a low-powered machine' - you'd have an ultraportable that you plug into a dock for VR and high-end gaming. Couple that with NVIDIA's commitment to release graphics drivers for macOS and it's suddenly going to be a lot easier for Apple users to boost the power of their machines. What Apple's new High Sierra OS brings is full support for GPU docks in its graphics API.

That news excited a lot of people.Įxternal GPUs, for what it's worth, work right now in macOS Sierra without huge issues (Bizon has been selling external GPU enclosures for a while). Early on in yesterday's WWDC keynote, Apple announced VR support in OS X, along with an external GPU dock for Mac developers.

Virtual reality mac vs ps4