Crysis 3 PC requirements land, get ready to upgrade
For years now, we've used the Crysis series to determine how good a PC is at a glance, with enthusiasts today still asking "But can it run Crysis?" when you bring up your PC's technical specifications. It looks like Crysis 3 will continue the series' trend of demanding a lot of power, as Electronic Arts has released the PC requirements for the incoming game. Luckily, EA has share the requirements two months before Crysis 3 launches, which is good since it sounds like some of us will have to spend some time upgrading.
Electronic Arts has shared three sets of requirements: minimum, recommended, and high-performance. We imagine a lot of users will be able to meet the minimum system requirements, but if you want to go for high-performance, you'll need the latest and greatest. You'll also need a machine running DirectX 11 regardless of your hardware, so you Windows XP users are being left out in the cold with Crysis 3, sorry to say. Here's the full list of requirements straight from EA:
Minimum system operating requirements:
• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM
• Dual core CPU
• 2GB Memory (3GB on Vista)
• Example 1 (NVIDIA/Intel): NVIDIA GTS 450, Intel Core2 Duo 2.4 Ghz (E6600)
• Example 2 (AMD): AMD Radeon HD5770, AMD Athlon64 X2 2.7 Ghz (5200+)
Recommended system operating requirements:
• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• DirectX 11 graphics card with 1GB Video RAM
• Quad core GPU
• 4GB Memory
• Example 1 (NVIDIA/Intel): NVIDIA GTX 560, Intel Core i3-530
• Example 2 (AMD): AMD Radeon HD5870, AMD Phenom II X2 565
High-performance system operation requirements:
• Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8
• Latest DirectX 11 graphics card
• Latest quad core CPU
• 8GB Memory
• Example 1 (NVIDIA/Intel): NVIDIA GTX 680, Intel Core i7-2600k
• Example 2 (AMD): AMD Radeon HD7970, AMD Bulldozer FX4150
So Crysis 3 is going to be one power hungry game, but did we really expect otherwise? The footage we've seen of the game has looked great so far, and if you've got the hardware to crank everything up to maximum settings, then you've got some beautiful visuals to look forward to. Of course, Crysis 3 requires some really expensive hardware to look its best, so beautiful visuals may not be worth it in this case.
Crysis 3 was accidentally revealed by Electronic Arts earlier this year and is built on CryEngine 3. It'll be available on Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as PC, but aside from a rather vague February 2013 window, we don't have a solid release date for the game yet. We'll let you know when a release date is announced, but in the meantime, let us know if your rig is beefy enough to run Crysis 3 at max settings.