Recommended PC System Requirements for when Xbox Series X and PS5 launch

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It’s not always the most welcome news but at the start of every new generation of consoles, comes a new generation of graphical upgrades, which means that minimum system requirements go up and everyone has to upgrade. But in all honesty if consoles didn’t innovate with their technology then PC system requirements would start to stagnate, at least this way it gives everyone a massive push to start upgrading.

And now is the perfect time, because upgrading your rig as a new generation comes out will mean that you have a more powerful PC that will last longer. We can call back to an article we wrote in 2014, roughly a year after the PlayStation 4 was released. In it we said: “Almost all of these high requirement games are available on console and more often than not we call out “bad optimisation” and “terrible console port” to explain why the developer/publisher requests certain high requirements. But in reality we all knew that these high system requirements would come, as this hardware upturn represents a technological shift in gaming.”

I would highly recommend going back to that article since it’s absolutely relevant today with the transition to the next generation of consoles. 

So now I’d like to bring your attention to this: what hardware are you going to need in order to comfortably play the next-gen games at mid-range graphics. Theoretically these components should get you the same experience you would have on the next-gen consoles. Obviously these are just our predictions compared to the hardware currently announced for them, but nevertheless this is roughly what we’re looking at:

Next Gen Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 10 64-bit CPU: Intel Core i5-9600K 6-Core 3.7 GHz or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz RAM: 16GB System Memory GPU RAM: 8GB GDDR6 Video Memory GPU: GeForce RTX 2080 STORAGE: 1TB SSD DX: DirectX 12

It may be quite daunting looking at these specs right now. But trust us when we say that this configuration will undoubtedly keep you going until inevitably the next-next generation of consoles is announced in 6-10 years time.

Consoles bring technological leaps in gaming, and unfortunately that means splashing cash in order to upgrade your rig, but it also means outstanding achievements in graphics options. Take ray tracing for example, without the push for it on next-gen consoles we would be seeing a much slower introduction into the gaming scene. But now we have Control with ray tracing, hell we even have Minecraft and the original DOOM with ray tracing. Those kinds of things wouldn’t happen if the consoles weren’t pressured into including the capability for it, or at least, they wouldn’t happen so soon.

Currently, only Nvidia has ray tracing capable graphics cards, but AMD will inevitably have their own version soon to keep up. So we can safely say to replace the RTX 2080 with whatever equivalent AMD announces that supports ray tracing.

Obviously upgrading your rig depends on your own situation like income or budget etc. But if you are one of those lucky few who can fully upgrade your system as soon as possible, you will benefit the most in value and longevity from those upgrades. Again, what we listed above is just a guess as to the equivalent PC hardware required compared to the next-gen consoles. But PC components are always improving, Nvidia and AMD are always bringing out new stuff that’s better than the last and much pricier, which inevitably brings the price down of previous components. So wait a while or buy everything now, it’s all up to you. But in our opinion, now is absolutely the best time to upgrade as much as you possibly can.

What are your thoughts? Do you think we got the specs right? Or did we get something wrong? Will you be upgrading your rig soon? Or are you going to wait a while for prices to drop? The comments are open for discussion, and it’s a really important topic to talk about since we all care a lot about PC gaming and the relevant hardware required.

Our Favorite Comments

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“Does anyone else remember when they were overhyping the PS4/Xbox One? Because I do. This will be more of the same. I have extremely strong doubts about suggesting that an RTX 2080 and 16gb of RAM will be what you’d need to "keep up" with the next console release. In fact I’m quite certain the…”

phat71 –