In less than a month, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift will finally hit the stores. While some users might be able to afford the hefty price tag that comes with these highly anticipated devices, the biggest question so far is whether their PC performance can handle the high-end hardware requirements of the these virtual reality headsets.

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Valve recently released the SteamVR Performance Test, a piece of software that tests a PCs hardware specs whether it can endure the stressful job of rendering a virtual reality environment. The test takes its cue from "Portal," a popular video game, and features a non-interactive facility.

A handful of benchmarking tools are already available online in order to test the capability of a PC to handle virtual reality. One of the most popular is the Oculus benchmark tool which simply checks if the computer system's specs passes the requirements.

But Valve's tool goes a little bit further by actually giving the system a series of stress tests. One specific test will measure whether the PC can actually maintain 90 frames per second, while running virtual reality games or contents. It also provides comprehensive stats that lists all the dropped frames.

Despite its interesting features, Valve said that the tool cannot account for the exact CPU load when it comes to positional tracking as well as VR applications that are processor intensive. What it does instead is check and report whether the CPU or graphics card and "whether VR content can tune the visual fidelity to the recommended level," according to Engadget.

In terms of hardware specs, the HTC Vive requires at least an Intel i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350 or better CPU. For its graphics card, it requires at least an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or an AMD Radeon R9 290 or better cards. It also requires at least 4GB or RAM, an HDMI 1.4 or DisplayPort 1.2 video output port or better and a single USB 2.0 port or better. The PC needs to run on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

On the other hand, the Oculus Rift requires at least an Intel i5-4590 processor with 8GB of RAM. It also requires an Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290 or better graphics card. At least three USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 ports are required and the PC must run on Windows 7 SP1 64-bit or better.

TagsValve, SteamVR Performance Test, Virtual Reality, VR, SteamVR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift