Published in IoT

Alienware does deal with Occulus Rift

by on08 January 2016


A cheaper way to buy it

Alienware founder Frank Azor has said his outfit is going to bundle the Oculus Rift with an Alienware X51 gaming desktop at a reduced cost to consumers.

Azor said customers who ordered the bundle would receive the x51 system, valued at $1,200, plus the Rift for $1,600 total. This would give you a $200 discount on the Rift and a laptop that has the power to run it.

Gamers have been fuming as Occulus announced its price for the Rift which, at $600,  was a little hefty and some believed that it would kill the technology stone dead. 

It is not clear what the Alienware specs will be.  Azor said the bundle would be a complete turn-key solution—so you could pull the X51 out of the box and begin playing VR.

Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey and Azor defended the "recommended spec" of a GeForce GTX 970. Luckey said that while a higher performance GPU didn't hurt, he didn't believe it was a necessity. He added that developers might use a higher-performance card such as a GeForce GTX 980, 980 ti, or an equivalent.  Luckey will personally be playing all final builds of VR games on a GeForce GTX 970 GPU.

Azor said that the image quality with VR can't be judged by the same standards as on a monitor. The sorts of settings used on the latter, such as textures or filtering, don't necessarily apply.
Meanwhile Azor announced that Alienware would offer the world's first OLED gaming laptop when its new Alienware 13 comes out in April. Azor liked the  blacker blacks offered by organic LED technology, which doesn't need a separate backlight. The second is the response time, which, he said, is less than millisecond.

The 13-inch Alienware will feature a new CPU but the same GeForce GTX 960m of the current model.An early build of the laptop featuring a 2560x1440 resolution OLED panel. Dell has also announced an OLED desktop panel for $5,000,.  Azor said that the Alienware 13 will be surprisingly affordable at $1,499.

Last modified on 08 January 2016
Rate this item
(4 votes)

Read more about: