Let’s see what computers can run Modern Warfare 3

The latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise is due to release on November 10. With it being so close to release, it’s time to see how our hardware stacks up to Activision’s recommendations. I mean, we all know we’ll probably need to buy a new 20 TB hard drive to store it, but those only come as hard drives.

At least on the CPU and GPU side of the equation, you won’t need much to get it going. You’re looking at either an Intel Core i5-6600 or an AMD Ryzen 5 1400 CPU, Nvidia GTX 960/1650 or AMD Radeon RX 470 video card. These are products that were lower spec than my first PC I built in 2016 (Intel i7-7700 and RX 480). Match that with 8 GB of RAM and it looks like almost anybody who owns a PC can play it at this point. I imagine folks with modern AMD and Intel APUs could play without discrete GPUs.

The minimum storage actually does suggest that you’ll need an SSD with 149 GB available. However, if you already have COD HQ and Warzone installed, all you need is 78 GB.

For recommended specs, we’re going to need to double that RAM. We’ll be looking at 16 GB of RAM. This will be combined with either an Intel Core i7-6700K or the AMD Risen 5 1600X CPU. For graphics, things take a somewhat steep turn upward with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti/RTX 3060 or an AMD Radeon RX 6600XT. While the CPUs are still lower than my first PC spec, those GPUs were out of the question.

Beenox, who servers as the developer for the PC port of the game, proclaims that there are over 500 customization options to choose from. That includes 4K graphics, ultra wide support, DLSS 3 with AI frame generation which is only available on the RTX 4000-series cards. And, of course, Nvidia Reflex is included (sorry, AMD).

Here are the full specs for the game below:

Official PC System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update)†
• CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• RAM: 8 GB
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 32 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 470
• Video Memory: 2 GB
• Storage: SSD with 149GB available space (78GB if COD HQ and Warzone are already installed)

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update) or Windows 11 64 Bit (latest update)†
• CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
• RAM: 16 GB
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 32 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti / RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT
• Video Memory: 8 GB
• Storage: SSD with 149GB available space (78GB if COD HQ and Warzone are already installed)

Competitive / Ultra 4K Specifications

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit (latest update) or Windows 11 64 Bit (latest update)†
• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
• RAM: 16 GB
• Hi-Rez Assets Cache: Up to 64 GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 / RTX 4070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800XT
• Video Memory: 10 GB
• Storage: SSD with 149GB available space (78GB if COD HQ and Warzone are already installed)

Required for all specs:

• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible

Recommended Drivers for NVIDIA/AMD

• NVIDIA: 537.58
• AMD: 23.10.2

Source: Gamespot