Ideal hardware for Unity + [any HMD]?

Are there any graphics boards / configurations that work "best" when using Unity as development environment and targeting DK2 (or whatever better dev kit might become available until late summer 2015, I'm also trying to get my hands on HTC Vive)?

One thing I need this for is my own high end testing rig, the other is for a presentation / gallery. So for these cases, I completely don't care how well (or terrible) the thing runs on anybody else's machine - the only thing that matters is getting the best possible output at reasonable cost (for other projects, I have my usual dev equipment and more low-end machines).

With "reasonable cost" I mean: paying 50% more (on the whole system) to get 10% better framerate is not an option. But if paying $2000 for the whole machine instead of $1000 gives me a huge improvement in possible quality while still getting constant 90FPS (assuming I'm not messing up things with garbage collection ;-) ), I'd be happy to pay $2000. However, if going from $2000 to $3000 just gets me from 80FPS to 90FPS at same quality, I'd rather spend some time optimizing or sacrificing a little bit of quality ;-)

Those machines would really only run the standalones ... I might have Unity running for quicker dev cycles but those wouldn't be my primary dev machines.

I would assume that the best OS would be Windows ... are there experiences with different gfx-performance using different versions of Windows? If someone tells me Linux would be better and can prove it, I'd consider that, though ;-)

 

I don't know how to classify something as ideal but I have built a machine with the sole purpose of testing Unity VR software builds.

Depending on what you're developing, I think the safest best to get an i5 (or i7), SSD to boot, 8-16gb RAM, and a decent graphics card- I think a GTX 970 or GTX 980.

With my own projects, the GPU is the primary cause for poor performance. I can run my stand alone on my Sony Vaio tablet and it runs, but it runs poorly, this only has integrated Intel graphics.

My main testing system is an i7 3770k overclocked, 16gb ram, revodrive to boot, and gtx 780. (so it's slightly older than what you would build now but runs smoothly with whatever I can throw at it).

 

Thank you! That does help! So I guess I'll look into the GTX 980.

 

There were also some interesting replies to my similar posting on the Oculus forums - here's the link: https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=21693#p259379

It seems like the Titan X would be the best for performance - but at a rather intense price (about twice as much as the GTX 980).

 

I've seen people post their specs, so heres mine.

i7 hex core
Gtx980
32gb ram

Still get some judder on my own demos.

But the headroom means i do very little optimisation. Also i'm running a vr development department alone so i do get lazy.

Good luck.