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While there’s sense in opting for the best CPU your money can buy, we also recommend checking out manufacturer requirements beforehand. Not all headsets require the same CPU requirements, with some more demanding than others. As always, we’ve steered clear of simply recommending the most powerful and pricey options and instead honed in on CPU models that suit different needs, including budget. Perusing everything the CPU market has to offer in relation to VR performance, we settled on five different CPUs, from both AMD and Intel, that, in our estimation, offer the best VR experience out there. In particular, considerations such as future-proofing, the varying requirements of the different headset manufacturers out there, and the all-important question of single-thread performance, steered our decision-making process.
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While this may be the case, VR places slightly different demands on a PC, and our method for choosing the best CPUs for VR took that into account. There’s certainly some crossover between traditional gaming and VR, which means that many of the criteria we’d assign to CPU for straight gaming factor into the equation of choosing the right CPU for your VR plans.
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