Your Dinosaur Computer Can Handle Modern Warfare III

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, due November 10, is a unique, albeit confusing, blend of new and old. It’s not a remake of 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, though it does contain all the multiplayer maps from 2009 first-person shooter Modern Warfare 2. But it’s not a sequel to 2009 MW2—it’s a sequel to the 2022 reboot Modern Warfare II. At least its minimum PC specs, which developers announced in an October 30 news post, won’t scoff at your four-years-old graphics card, though it still promises a 4K gaming experience.

“In partnership with Sledgehammer Games, Call of Duty PC lead developer Beenox has ensured players have over 500 customization options at their fingertips, with 4K graphics and Ultrawide support,” CoD’s post said, “and a massive array of options across all manner of settings.”

Pre-order Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

Modern Warfare III PC specs

To play MWIII, you should at least have an Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, GTX 1650, or AMD Radeon RX 470 GPU, and 8 GB of RAM. These minimum requirements are slightly more demanding than those for MWII, which accepted GPUs from 2015, but that’s the tradeoff necessary for hypothetically improved graphics that people are still complaining about. For just-right gaming, developers recommend an Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti, RTX 3060, or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT GPU, and the increasingly common 16 GB of RAM.

To really blow things out of the water, meet CoD’s “ultra 4K specifications”: an Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 4070, or AMD Radeon RX 6800XT. The RTX 40 series in particular, CoD notes, uses DLSS 3’ Frame Generation “to create additional high quality frames and integrates NVIDIA Reflex low-latency technology for optimal responsiveness.” NVIDIA claims DLSS 3 “can boost frame rates even when the game is bottlenecked by the CPU,” though games like Hogwarts Legacy and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum implement it to little effect, so don’t expect miracles.

Read More: Your First Look At Multiplayer In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
Pre-order Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

MWIII’s PC release is scheduled for November 10 on Battle.net and Steam, though you can preload the game for PC Early Access November 1 at 12 p.m. ET. The Early Access period commences November 2 at 1 p.m. ET.