High-performance setup featuring Core 2 Quad Q9550, Oculus Quest 2, and Half-Life Alyx.
High-performance setup featuring Core 2 Quad Q9550, Oculus Quest 2, and Half-Life Alyx.
I possess a vintage machine from 2008: Core 2 Quad Q9550 at 2.8 GHz, 8GB DDR2 memory, GTX 960 2GB, and a 1TB SSD. I also have an Oculus Quest 2 headset for two months. The game requirements for Half Life Alyx are quite specific—needs a Core i5-7500 or Ryzen 5 1600, 12GB RAM, GTX 1060 or RX 580, and 6GB of memory. I’ve tried running it, but the experience was limited. I managed to install Oculus software after bypassing an SSE 4.2 check. The desktop version didn’t launch Alyx; only the sound played and a black screen appeared. However, using Virtual Desktop Streamer helped get it running. I adjusted settings in Steam and GeForce Experience—disabling overlays and tweaking video quality made a difference. Resolution was set to 80%, supersampling off, low render quality, no overlay, and world scale off. The VR graphics were low, and the frame rate hovered around 72 fps. It worked, albeit not perfectly, and it was wireless. I’m unsure if the game would handle more demanding sections later on. I’m sharing this to see if anyone else has had success with such an old system. There’s a rumor it might get better as the game progresses, but right now it’s just functional.