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The Witcher 3 PC system requirements have been revealed

CD Projekt Red's latest game, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, is expected to be one of the most graphically intensive games to be released this year. What sort of hardware will PC gamers need to run such a game? Let's take a look…

CD Projekt Red shared the system requirements with us on the official Witcher 3 website. In order to meet the minimum requirement, players will need an Intel Core i5 2500K CPU or an AMD Phenom II X4 940. 6GB of RAM is required and for graphics you will want an Nvidia GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD7870.

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The recommended specs kick things up quite a bit. You will need an Intel Core i7 3770 or an AMD FX-8350 paired with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 770 or AMD R9 290. The game will also require 40GB of hard drive space.

Those of you who built a high end PC some time in the last couple of years should be fine but some will inevitably have to spring for an upgrade, which probably isn't a bad idea- its not like The Witcher 3 is the only game recently announced or released to feature high system requirements.

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KitGuru Says: I think almost everyone expected The Witcher 3 to be a demanding game so these specifications aren't entirely surprising. What do you guys think of this? Are any of you worried that you won't be able to run the game? 

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23 comments

  1. yes, got the 7870, should I upgrade?

  2. I’m on the same boat. I’d imagine we would be able to run on medium?

  3. I’d say get an upgrade if you can just to ensure smoother performance.

  4. I guess GTX 770 is for 60fps gameplay(max details). For 30fps GTX 660 might be enough(max details). Also, i5 & i7 does not make any difference in games.

  5. my 8320 fx and 280x should do it

  6. The requirements aren’t unbalanced, they’re just pretty high. No 10,000GB of VRAM minimum requirements here – just 8gb of DRAM, a 770/290, and an 8350/3770 all of which any mid-high end PC would have. Personally, I’m sure I’ll be fine with my [email protected], OC’d 670, and 16GB of DDR3, and my PC is old now, and in need of an upgrade in some areas. These requirements are good news, and a wholly different thing to the console port requirements like Unity – CDProjektRed are pushing the boundaries, not just poorly optimising and inflating requirements. Mid range will be able to play it just fine, and it sucks if you’re running a low end rig but CDPR have been pushing fancy looking games out for a while, just like Crytek used to do. It’s just one of their things.

  7. I7-3770 and 280x here

  8. The game will also require 40GB of hard drive space, what were you thinking. Console fan-boys have fun installing and uninstalling your games, Max Payne 3 also requires the same mount of storage space Crazy!

    PhoneyVirus
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  9. Φίλιππος Χειλουδάκης

    amd-8350 -8gbram-r9 290x.
    bought this a while back. and optimal specs keep pushing me to the limit.. time for upgrade?

  10. You do realize that games are starting to use more than 2-4 cores now, right? So having an i7 instead of an i5 will make a difference in some titles already out and probably a lot more in the future.

  11. i will believe that when i see it…

  12. you meet the minimum requirements, althought an upgrade to a gtx970 would be recommended, you will be just fine…

  13. recommended i7 “or” fx8350??… the 8350 is compared with an i5, not an I7… or this game took more than four cores to run?.. either way… single core performance in i7 is greater than single core perf in 8350.

  14. IT’s already like that with Arma 3(and any game using the engine) & Star Citizen. So believe it or not, times are changing. Maybe not over night, but it’s happening.

  15. Why can’t they do what most games do and have a much easier to run minimum graphics option. I have a really decent gaming laptop (i5 4310m, 870m, 8gb ram) and I doubt it can run it! i5 2500k is a very solid processor and I’m shocked to see it as the minimum.

  16. Irishgamer Gamer

    Quite modest….though laptop guys and cheapo dell owners might not be happy.

  17. actually your laptop should be able to run it just fine, granted not at max details, but at least at 1920*1080 with medium detail settings

  18. I think something lower than a 2500k should run it fine. The x4 940 is no where near as good as the 2500k at thats on the list.

  19. Already purchased the game from GOG but won’t be playing until i’ve upgraded to a 970.

  20. Carlos Quiroz Mandela

    If a Radeon 7850 1GB and a FX-6300 couldnt handle The Witcher 2 at maximun settings, now Im totally f***ed…

  21. I’m sure my GTX 760 2GB will run this with an i7-4790K fine at 60 fps with GFX tweaks but I REALLY want to push this game to the max (if it’s worth the hype) at 1080p. (I game on a TV so am not really shopping for 4K or 1440p until it’s reasonable on 32 inch screens since that’s my minimum screen size now. Gotta sit back in my gaming recliner setup!)

    Since I want to do a GFX card update at some point this year I think I’m going to wait until the next big nvidia release before I play it. Hopefully new processors will come out soon. The current GTX 970/980 just doesn’t seem compelling enough to me. I think 4GB vram should be recommended for Witcher 3 to avoid any hiccups at highest settings. Even more than 4GB could be nice for some headroom.

    I kinda want to skip for 4GB entirely to not have to worry about vram at all with my current CPU though. Seems like 4GB vram is a transition amount so games can catch up to where they should be since new consoles are finally able to use more texture memory. By next year maybe no one will even want to buy 4GB vram cards. I’d rather not see a pixelated texture again in games so BRING IT ON!

  22. Yeah… I read people saying “All you need is the i5” then I remembered that I was glad I got the Core 2 Quad back in the day instead of the Duo… so I got the i7-4790k vs the i5-4690k. My q9550 was great for years. Lasted until 2014 when I just couldn’t take it anymore.

    4 cores/threads has been around for YEARS… time to step up in a new build. The q9550 is already 7 years old!

    Plus a CPU runs the entire computer so not much reason to skimp on that component. Not saying one should get a full 8 core Intel yet since they are so new and pricey and use an uncommon chipset. For me the i7 I got was only $80 more than the i5 so it was a no-brainer. 4 more threads and 2 more MB cache are worth it in the long run. Also, I’d rather have it clocked 500GHZ more stock than having to do it myself. I don’t want to overclock unless I have to… let Intel do that as much as they can first. I can run 4GHz and not worry about altering any settings with voltage and power management.

  23. I agree, although I do Overclock. I had an i5-2500k OC’d to 4.8Ghz since it came out. Kept reading everyone saying that the 2500k was still top dog when OC’d like that in gaming, so no need to upgrade. Well, I had some extra cash and the itch to upgrade anyways. My i7-4790k OC’d at 4.7Ghz runs circles around the 2500k. I game more than anything else. And I will tell you my 780ti’s were being bottlenecked by the 2500k. I get huge performance boost in every game I have now. Only things I really changed out from my 2500k build was a new motherboard, the new i7 CPU and 4 more GB of RAM. I went from 12GB to 16GB of RAM. Now I have a whole new beast that pushes everything way better than the 2500k ever did. I was skeptical I would see much improvement at first, but after I put it together and tried it out… Proof was in the pudding for me.