Roughly a month after Starfield system requirements first arrived, AMD has released a more detailed spec breakdown for specific PC resolution targets. Rather, it briefly appeared that it did. The problem is, as a collection of numbers, this is about as useful as a receipt you found stuck to your shoe.
As some hawk-eyed enthusiasts spotted earlier today, AMD, which to the concern of some is now Starfield's "exclusive PC partner," lists three grades of performance on its promo page for the game. Those are: Heroic or 1080p, Epic or 1440p, and Legendary or 4K.
AMD has obviously only listed AMD processors here, and the whole thing reeks of marketing spectacle over information, right down to the components listed being "featured" but not necessarily minimum or even recommended. Here's how the tiers shake out according to AMD:
- 1080p - AMD Ryzen™ 5 7600 CPU, AMD Radeon™ RX 7600 GPU
- 1440p - AMD Ryzen™ 7 7700X CPU, AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 Series GPU
- 4K - AMD Ryzen™ 7 7800X3D CPU, AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XT GPU
You may have noticed that these are all quite new processors, many from AMD's latest line. They aren't bad components, but you simply do not need new processors to play PC games unless those games run like a bag of hammers going down stairs. So either AMD's implying Starfield will, as some fear, run like a bag of hammers going down stairs, or it's just bigging up its new processors on the back of its Starfield exclusivity. My point is that this should not be treated as a practical list of system requirements.
We can fill in some blanks and put this promo into context with the recommended and minimum system requirements on Steam. Those are:
Minimum
- OS: Windows 10 version 22H2 (10.0.19045)
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel Core i7 6800K
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
- DirectX: Version 12
- Network: Broadband internet connection
- Storage: 125 GB available space
- Additional notes: SSD required
Recommended
- OS: Windows 10/11 with updates
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, Intel i5 10600K
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
- DirectX: Version 12
- Network: Broadband internet connection
- Storage: 125 GB available space
- Additional notes: SSD required
A required SSD and broadband connection are notable but somewhat unsurprising caveats here, and with prices so low, you really owe it to yourself to grab the best SSD for gaming.
