Thanks to the weighty specifications, there aren’t many laptops out there that support VR. Nvidia’s new line of GPUs, however, will combat this.
As if the company didn’t already have enough on its plate with the new Titan X, Quadro P6000, and its GTX 10 products, it’s now announced three new offerings for portable PCs based on its Pascal architecture. The GeForce GTX 1060, 1070, and 1080 are all designed for laptops, and small ones at that. Previous VR Ready devices have been bulky, but these cards can fit into much lighter products, such as the 18mm-thin, 4-pound $1,200 Razer Blade notebook.
Specs-wise they’re a slight step down from the main 10 series, but also comfortably surpass the previous 9 series. Even the GTX 1060, for example, beats the GTX 980 whilst being smaller.
Other companies making VR ready notebooks include Acer, Aorus, ASUS, Clevo, EVGA, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, and MSI. The latter company was one of the few to already be making VR laptops, although it’s now able to make its smaller products meet that spec too. These laptops will support Nvidia’s own VRWorks and Ansel tech too.
It’s a big step forward for the product category and could mean big things for developers just as much as it does consumers. Imagine no longer having to pack away your giant rig to take to the latest gaming expo, for example. We’d also love to see new takes on the emerging trend of backpack PCs now that much lighter products are available.
Less than a year ago VR ready PCs seemed niche and overly expensive. How quickly things can change.
Nvidia will be showcasing some of its work in VR at Gamescom this week. We’d say that this is the last GPU we’d expect to see from the company this year but every time we start to think that another one pops up out of the woodwork. In fact, with rumors that the company is powering Nintendo’s new NX hardware, we could be hearing more from it very soon.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the names of the new NVIDIA chips.
