FromSoftware’s upcoming flagship RPG,Elden Ring, has now finally received an official announcement detailing the game’s PC system requirements, and for better or for worse, they seem to ask a lot of the player’s hardware. Namely, it would seem that the game won’t be nearly as hardware-agnostic as FromSoftware’s previous PC releases if the specifications are anything to go by.To be sure,Elden Ringis a major step forward compared to the studio’s previous outings, such asDark SoulsorBloodborne. Whereas these titles followed a more constrained Metroidvania-style exploration system, with tight and often small-scale levels, this is not the case at all withElden Ring, which features a massive open-world for players to explore however they see fit.RELATED:Elden Ring Producer Admits Boss Fight was Too Hard in Network TestAccording to the announcement, which seems in line withlast week’s Elden Ring PC requirements leak, players will need at least 12 GB of RAM to run the game in the first place, with 16 GB being the apparent sweet spot for everything to run flawlessly. Significantly more curious is the GPU requirement, however, as the GTX 1060 (with 3 GB of VRAM) is referenced as the minimum required to playElden Ring, while the GTX 1070 is listed as the recommended option.
While it’s not particularly odd to see the old GTX 1060 being used as a minimum baseline for the latest PC games, it is certainly weird to see a graphics card from that very same generation as the official recommended spec. As a reference, the GTX 10 series of graphics cards was released back in 2016, and both 20 and 30 series handily outperform it. The same goes for the AMD equivalents, even inthe admittedly constrained budget GPU range.
The relatively slight difference between the minimum and recommended PC graphics card requirements may indicate that the game doesn’t visually scale all that much and that any newer mid-range GPU should have no trouble running the game. Compared to, say,Dark Souls 3system requirements,Elden Ringis vastly more demanding in virtually every way, and it may rely more heavily on RAM and CPU than most modern games do.
Either way,the expectations are high forElden Ring. It’s worth remembering that PC players often sidestep official system requirements and manage to run the game at substantially weaker hardware than is actually recommended. To that end, players that don’t have the recommended hardware may wish to wait out the initial hype and see howElden Ringruns on PCs in practice, as virtually all game demos shown so far have featured console builds, instead.
Elden Ringlaunches February 25 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series consoles.
