Bethesda has published up a brief bit of information about the minimum PC specs required for The Evil Within. They’re very similar to the “recommended” ones published at the end of September, aside from the quality of the graphics card.
Look, I’ll prove it to you. Here are the recommended specs:
- 64-bit Windows 7/Windows 8
- i7 with four plus cores
- 4 GBs RAM
- 50 GB of hard drive space*
- GeForce GTX 670 or equivalent with 4GBs of VRAM
And here are the newly revealed “minimum” specs:
- OS: windows 7/8.1
- CPU: i7 or an equivalent 4+ core processor
- RAM: 4 GB
- HDD: 50 GB
- GPU: GTX 460 or an equivalent 1 GB VRAM card
Other than the quality of the GPU and (crucially) the amount of VRAM said card has, they are the same. This is kind of interesting, as (for this game at least,) it implies that a quad-core processor is fundamental to running the game in any form. I’d … probably take issue with that. I’m not an internal Bethesda tester or anything, but if The Evil Within doesn’t work on, say, i3’s with two cores and hyperthreading paired with a decent GPU I’d be very surprised indeed.
The Evil Within will, after all, be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 as well as the newer consoles. Even the “minimum” PC specs listed are massively in advance of those two machines.
Once again, as with Watch Dogs and Shadow of Mordor, VRAM is proving to be an important component to have for PC ports of titles coming to PS4 and Xbox One. Bethesda is promising “full-screen anti-aliasing, full shadow quality, motion blur, tessellation, SSAO, and 1080p visuals” for those who meet the recommended specs.