'Call of Duty: Black Ops 3' Minimum PC Requirements Revealed

Game Rant

By Denny Connolly

Published Apr 27, 2015

'Call of Duty: Black Ops 3' doesn't arrive until this fall, but these minimum PC specs for the futuristic first-person shooter can help you start getting your rig prepared today.

Although some studios and publishers will be saving big reveals for E3 2015, when it comes to the Call of Duty franchise, it is pretty difficult to surprise the fans. A new installment arrives every fall like clockwork and once the developing studio has been announced, the community usually has a pretty good guess what kind of game will be arriving. The assumption that this year's sequel would be Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 ended up being correct and since its announcement, details have been arriving on a daily basis.

We're sure Treyarch and Activision will save some new footage for the E3 crowd, but the Black Ops 3 hype machine has already begun with a teaser, live action, and gameplay trailer all arriving in the last two weeks. With the selling-power of the Call of Duty brand, we usually expect to see this kind of game launch on as many platforms as possible in time for the holiday shopping season. According to the developers, this time around development is much more current-gen focused.

Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia explained during the Black Ops 3 reveal event that it is being developed on the PC, PS4, and Xbox One. There will be no ports, because each version is being uniquely made to fit the platform. To experience the PC version of the game, players will need to make sure that their home rigs are equipped with at least the following minimum requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7 64-Bit / Windows 8 64-Bit / Windows 8.1 64-Bit

Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-530 @ 2.93 GHz / AMD Phenom™ II X4 810 @ 2.60 GHz

Memory: 6 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 470 @ 1GB / ATI® Radeon™ HD 6970 @ 1GB

DirectX: Version 11

Network: Broadband Internet connection

Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

As far as contemporary PC requirements go, this isn't very demanding. Some gamers may still have less than 6GB of RAM, but that's a pretty cheap upgrade at this point. The most frequent pain point will probably be the DirectX version 11 requirement. Many gamers are still running with DirectX v.10, so an update will be required to boot up Black Ops 3.

Lamia explained the method behind developing the game with current-gen in mind at the reveal event:

"There are no 'ports'... The game is made on multiple platforms, it's the beginning of a new generation and we're showing it to you on all these platforms, to dispel some of the misconceptions about development... We're working on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. That's it."

Although the minimum requirements are good for giving us an idea about the game's entry point of power, the recommended specs for higher performance will give us a much better idea what the game is capable of. Those specs haven't been released yet and may not be until a few months closer to Black Ops 3's release date. Treyarch has said that the goal is to develop a game that can take full advantage of the most powerful gaming rigs, while not excluding players who have less expensive machines.

Is your PC ready to run Black Ops 3? Would you prefer to play the game on a console or a PC? Let us know in the comments.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 releases November 6, 2015 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.