If you’ve been waiting patiently for a Metal Gear Solid title to grace your PC again, then you’re just a few short hours away. Ground Zeroes, the prequel to next year’s fully fledged Phantom Pain sequel, is out on Steam tomorrow. That’s the good news though. The bad news is that the requirements for the game just got a little beefier.
Steam has had the PC requirements for Ground Zeroes up for a while now, and they’ve raised a few eyebrows. They’re suspiciously high, especially when it comes to the processing department. Still, the minimum and recommended requirements still rested in Core i5 territory – until yesterday at least.
Here’s what Ground Zeroes used to require on PC:
Minimum Requirements
- OS: Windows Vista 64-Bit or later
- Processor: Core i5 SandyBridge 4Core (4 Thread) 2.7GHz or above
- Memory: 4 GB RAM or above
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 650 or above
- DirectX: Version 11 or above
- HDD: N/A
Recommended Requirements
- OS: Windows Vista 64-Bit or later
- Processor: Core i5 SandyBridge 4Core (4 Thread) 2.7GHz or above
- Memory: 8 GB RAM or above
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 or above
- DirectX: Version 11 or above
- HDD: N/A
And now here’s what it actually needs for tomorrow:
Minimum Requirements
- OS: Windows Vista SP2 x64, Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64 (64-bit OS Required)
- Processor: Core i5-4460 (3.40GHz) or better *Quad-Core or better
- Memory: 4 GB RAM or above
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 650 (4GB) or better (DirectX 11 graphics card required)
- DirectX: Version 11 or above
- HDD: 4GB
Recommended Requirements
- OS: Windows Vista SP2 x64, Windows 7 x64, Windows 8 x64 (64-bit OS Required)
- Processor: Core i7-4790 (4.00GHz) or better *Quad-Core or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM or above
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 760 or above (DirectX 11 graphics card required)
- DirectX: Version 11 or above
- HDD: 4GB
Notice the inexplicable jump towards a Haswell Core i7 for the recommended specifications. That doesn’t make much sense, since it’s been proven time and time again that a Core i5 is more than enough for modern games, with most not actually benefitting from some of the i7’s fancier features. The minimum specifications are also a little more clear now, with the Core i5-4460 being specifically mentioned as the lowest processor you can hope to go.
I’m not entirely sure if Konami is preparing PC gamers for the requirements of the Phantom Pain with this change, since I don’t see Ground Zeroes actually needing this much power under the hood. Still, it’s Snake back on the desktop, and that’s probably got a lot of you jumping for joy.
Last Updated: December 17, 2014
HairyEwok
December 17, 2014 at 11:32
Psh is that all it… wai what!
Admiral Chief Octacore
December 17, 2014 at 11:33
My cores are ready!
HairyEwok
December 17, 2014 at 11:35
They never do show AMD Specs needed for gaming anymore. I remember they always said you need a intel blah blah blah and a AMD blah blah blah. Now its just Intel.
Edit: Its mostly the same on the GFX side to, it’s like AMD is being left out.
ToshZA
December 17, 2014 at 11:36
I’ve had an AMD machine before – and let me just say I’ll never, ever buy one again. The price is fantastic – but you get 0 performance. They’re honestly a waste of silicone.
At least in my experience.
Lord Chaos
December 17, 2014 at 11:48
So it’s of to console land for you then? 😛
ToshZA
December 17, 2014 at 12:18
You do realise that it’s AMD tech behind the current gen of consoles, right?
Galbedir
December 17, 2014 at 13:09
Its strange you say that, because I’ve honestly had the complete opposite experience. I once bought an intel, and it was just a mountain of issues and problems and crappy performance. Been AMD ever since and never had a single issue/bad frame issue. To each their own I guess 🙂
ToshZA
December 17, 2014 at 13:14
Well it all depends on which processor you buy. But in the end – I cannot ever justify an AMD purchase again. I felt robbed by the sheer lack of performance in everything more than running Windows.
Admiral Chief Octacore
December 17, 2014 at 11:53
Cuz ANY AMD can run it 😛
Lord Chaos
December 17, 2014 at 11:49
I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.maximumpc.com/amds_year_end_gift_gamers_catalyst_omega_special_edition_driver_2014
ToshZA
December 17, 2014 at 11:34
A lot? Some of us couldn’t care less. I’d rather listen to Justin Bieber live for a week. Non-stop.
And those PC specs will probably make a few more people feel this way.
Alien Emperor Trevor
December 17, 2014 at 11:45
This just means they’re really getting the most out of our PCs, and not papering over any deficiencies with high specs. It’s worked so well with other recent titles.
Aries
December 17, 2014 at 12:07
Or intel paying them to force people that buy i7’s
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 12:55
Nope just another badly optimized game thats all
Aries
December 17, 2014 at 13:02
Or that
Ryanza
December 17, 2014 at 11:46
Metal Gear Solid is most likely a Nvidia sponsored game. I have noticed that these Nvidia sponsored games, requirements tends to be really high. Nvidia has the capability of limiting performance on older Nvidia cards and on AMD cards, to promote sales of their new cards.
Don’t Support DRM.
oVg elfroot slayer
December 17, 2014 at 11:56
Stupid thing has a patch and its not even out yet 😛
oVg elfroot slayer
December 17, 2014 at 11:59
This is how you make an open world game at 60FPS/1080P for the PS4 🙂
http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_metal_gear_solid_v_the_phantom_pain_full_e3_demo_60_fps_-32493_en.html
Tarisma
December 17, 2014 at 12:04
Are companies not able to optomise games these days or are they just too lazy to do it? Minimum system requirements are becoming insane.
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 12:58
Multi Core gaming …….. you cry when they port games straight from the console that only utilizes 1 core now you cry when they start using all the cpu cores in games.
YEs it might be badly optimized but Multi Core games are the norm the last 4 months and its not going to go away. The i5 only have 4 threads and the i7 have 8 threads due to hyperthreading.
AMD 8320 and up will run this perfectly fine as its a 8 core cpu. The limitation is the threads on the i5 …
Every single object you see in the game is done by the CPU then the gpu draws the textures over it etc … a CPU is very important for games with allot of objects and intense AI.
Tarisma
December 17, 2014 at 13:08
It’s not the multi core gaming that bothers me its just these days to run a game at minimum you need to have a PC that’s no more than 3 years old, that’s half the life a console generation…
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 13:12
You should get a console then 🙂
You use to have to upgrade a PC every year up until 2007 to stay in front. Then consoles stagnated the market and now the market is correcting itself once again its going that direction.
Its just the nature of the beast as they can push out graphics now that makes engineering samples that’s only being released in about 5 years fall over already.
PC’s is about constantly pushing the boundaries and the limit is your wallet. If you want to play games and only buy the hardware every 5 to 10 years then consoles will serve you better.
But if we look at any Ubiturd game released this year then I would say they are really badly optimized and that no hardware on this planet can run the games properly.
I have seen Watchdogs, Farcry 4, AC Unity kill a 980 SLI system with a octacore i7. And if you look at the visuals its barely 2012 quality.
Tarisma
December 17, 2014 at 13:47
I already have 3 consoles…
Its just frustrating that developers seem to be so useless at optimizing games these days that we are quickly seeing our PC’s become irrelevant, I spent 9k 2 years ago on my PC and its already starting to show its age.
Kyle Myburgh
December 17, 2014 at 21:20
It’s clear you have a very limited understanding of the actual power of the consoles. With good optimisation an i7 would never be needed for gaming.
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 23:04
ROFL yeh sure thing go google draw calls …
Kyle Myburgh
December 18, 2014 at 08:21
rofl oh rofl yeah rofl I see rofl glad you realise you know nothing and you’re speaking out you’re ass rofl.
Ghost In The Rift
December 17, 2014 at 12:11
With these specs are only Freemasons gonna be gaming in the future:-(
*sell your soul for a i7*
Kyle Myburgh
December 17, 2014 at 12:38
This trend of requiring higher and higher pc specs to play games is BS!* Since when is an i5 4460 the min?! WTF! It’s obvious that this game, just like AC Unity, will be horribly optimised. Are they trying to kill pc gaming, because this is how you kill pc gaming! I’m pretty sure specs like these cut out a majority of the pc population.
*higher and higher I mean previously low end rigs were supported, now you need mid to high end computers to be able to play games.
ToshZA
December 17, 2014 at 13:17
That’s because in the last year new consoles were released. The console market is what stagnated the PC market’s game requirements – but remember something, PC before consoles was all about upgrading once PER YEAR.
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 13:19
+1 Very True
PS3 and Xbox360 and the Unreal Engine stagnated the market with its bad ports.
With next gen they were forced to update the engines and start using a x86 instruction set. That causes the games to run better on PC’s thats also on the x86 instruction set.
Yearly upgrades is the norm and I cant wait when the market gets there again. Because the technology that gets pushed out constantly is just mind blowing and gives any nerd a massive hardon.
Kyle Myburgh
December 17, 2014 at 14:13
Except that the new consoles are pathetically weak. We’re not looking at a massive leap between this generation and the previous generation. An i7 4790 is a monstrous CPU, it can’t even be compared to that which resides in the consoles, same goes for the i5 4460, these CPU’s are really beefy. Now the min GTX650 and recommended GTX760 are perfectly fair, but i5 as min. No way.
RustedFaith
December 17, 2014 at 12:53
Multi Core gaming thats why the cpu matters and no the i5 does not perform as well with multi core games compard to the i7.
Owner of i5-2500k @5ghz and i7-2600k @4.9GHZ
Mark_D
December 17, 2014 at 15:06
At the end of November I dropped about R5k to upgrade my PC. I upgraded from an Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz CPU, to an Intel Core i5 4430 (3.2Ghz), got myself a new motherboard so that I could upgrade my 4GB of DDR2 RAM to a stick of 8GB DDR3 gaming ram. Low and behold, 3 weeks later, I won’t make the cut for minimum requirements on this game. Oh well. I’ll buy another game then :/
MakeItLegal
December 19, 2014 at 08:16
its only a 2.9gb download on steam…FML