Horizon Forbidden West PC system requirements revealed — Nvidia touts DLSS 3 support, plus Thaumaturge game-ready driver
Sony's highly acclaimed Horizon Forbidden West is coming to PC, with the help of Nixxes, and the system requirements have been posted. Similar to Sony's previous PC ports, the new PC version comes with a plethora of PC-exclusive features, including 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide support, Nvidia DLSS 3 support, and an uncapped frame rate.
The PC version will arrive as a Complete Edition, featuring the base game and the Burning Shores add-on that includes new storylines, characters, and gameplay. The game can be pre-ordered now and officially launches on March 21, 2024 on Steam and The Epic Store.
Sony's system requirements suggest the game will run on entry-level hardware dating back to 2017 on the lowest quality preset, with either a Core i3-8100 or Ryzen 3 1300X quad-core CPU, and a GTX 1650 or RX 5500 XT 4GB. Such hardware should be sufficient for 720p gaming at 30 fps, using the lowest-quality preset.
The recommended hardware targets medium settings at 1080p and 60 fps. You'll want at least a Core i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3600 6-core CPU, and an RTX 3060 or RX 5700 graphics card. For high settings at 1440p and 60 fps, or alternatively 4K and 30 fps, Sony says you'll need a Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core CPU, and an RTX 3070 or RX 6800.
Finally, if you want to play at the highest settings possible — Very High and 4K 60 fps — Sony says you'll need at least a Core i7-11700 or Ryzen 7 5700X CPU and an RTX 4080 or RX 7900 XT. All four system specifications list 16GB of memory and 150GB of free space on a speedy SSD.
Note that on the GPU side of things, these recommendations are a bit skewed at times. The RTX 3060 leads the RX 5700 by 12% in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy at 1080p. Conversely, the RX 6800 leads the RTX 3070 by 25% at 1440p and 14% at 4K. Perhaps Sony meant to say RTX 3070 Ti, or alternatively the RX 6750 XT, which would have been much closer? At least the minimum and very high recommendations look about right.
Interestingly, Nvidia also touted the system requirements for Horizon Forbidden West, along with other driver news. Sony didn't mention upscaling of any sort in the system requirements, but Nvidia says the game will have day-one support for DLSS 3. Will it also support FSR 3 and XeSS? We can only hope. It's also worth pointing out that no mention is made of any ray tracing technology, so we can at least expect relatively high performance from the game.
Nvidia also released a new game-ready driver, version 551.76, adding support for The Thaumaturge — a brand new story-driven RPG set in the 20th century. It's a story-driven role-playing game that takes place in 20th century Warsaw, set in a world teeming with mysterious powers and strange beings called salutors. The game thrusts players into situations requiring them to make morally ambiguous choices through its reportedly unique take on turn-based combat, character development features, and investigation mechanics.
Otherwise, Nvidia's latest game-ready driver is one of the lightest updates we've seen in a while. Outside of supporting The Thaumaturge, it has three bug fixes. In The Talos Principle 2, game stability has been rectified with DLSS 3 Frame Generation enabled. Video corruption with GTX 16 series NVENC encoders has been fixed, and Steamwebhelper.exe blocking notebook display mode switch has been resolved.
