Ring of Elden system requirements have been briefly glimpsed over the weekendas you may have seen, before it was pulled from Steam – but it turns out the minimum spec detected was correct.
Official PC requirements have now been streamed via the game twitter, so now we have the minimum and recommended specification. Let’s take a look at these full details first, before discussing the ramifications (or should be ramifications, ahem).
minimum requirements
- ONLY: Windows 10, Windows 11
- CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
- RAM: 12 GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (4GB)
- drive space: 60 GB
recommended requirements
- ONLY: Windows 10, Windows 11
- CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
- RAM: 16 GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB) or AMD RX Vega 56 (8GB)
- drive space: 60 GB
The first point to note is the rather unusual requirement of 12GB of system RAMand remember, this is a Minimum. In other words, if you have less than 12GB of memory and there are still several people in that boat who might only have 8GB, you might forget about playing Elden Ring.
For recommended, you’re looking at 16GB of RAM, but that’s no surprise.
The minimum graphics card requirement might also leave some PC gamers out in the cold, as you can’t have less than a GTX 1060, and again, that’s not a limit everyone will hit.
The recommended specification for the video card asks for a GTX 1070, which again doesn’t seem like a big deal, as it’s a step above the bare minimum, and that’s what it takes to get robust levels of performance.
Analysis: Possible RAM and GPU concerns, but for how many players?
We’ve already chewed it up to some extent over the weekend, of course, and a few gaming PCs – at least following Steam’s hardware survey, which is as good a snapshot of the current gaming scene as you’ll get – still use 8GB. In fact, a third of PCs are 8GB or less, according to the latest Steam statistics, so that’s a sizeable chunk of the gaming population out there.
Now, it’s true that 16GB has become the default loadout for any new gaming platform, but we’re talking older PCs here – not everyone can afford to upgrade regularly, especially given how expensive some components have become today in day. And in particular, a good number of old laptops used for gaming will likely still work with 8GB (which will also most likely not be upgradable).
While we’re beating the RAM drum, it’s also true that some games have stipulated 12GB – other massive open-world efforts like Red Dead Redemption 2 to pick an obvious example – but that amount of system memory was the recommended configuration for RDR 2, no to Minimum.
In addition to potential issues around system RAM, some gamers may also be concerned about this GPU requirement. A GTX 1060 isn’t a robust graphics card by any means (nor is an RX 580), but again looking at Steam’s hardware survey, about 20% of gamers have a worse card than the 1060 (briefly checking the set of cards superiors). And of course, the nearly 10% who own a GTX 1060 or RX 580 won’t have a great experience, you would imagine, if the GPU is literally the lowest spec you can use to play Elden Ring.
The RAM requirement will have more impact than the GPU, no doubt, but both can cause headaches for some low-end gaming platforms. What we can expect is that the developer is slightly overestimating the specs; in other words, err on the side of caution in exposing everything here. Because these system requirements are certainly a little jarring compared to FromSoftware’s previous PC releases like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. We expected Elden Ring to be more demanding, of course, but not much more demanding.
