As Sea of Thieves is Rare’s first PC title, it gave us the opportunity to develop a PC game with a slightly different approach. Players have now been playing Sea of Thieves on Windows in their tens of thousands for the past 9 months as part of our Technical Alpha program, allowing us to really fine-tune the auto-detect experience so that when new players play the game for the first time on March 20th, we can give you the Rare-certified spec based on your hardware.
We know that as PC gamers, having the ability to change the field of view, unlock or lock the frame-rate, rebind keys, change video settings, resolution, and graphics options, as well as offering extra functionality like full ultra-wide support and a dedicated FPS Counter, is all part of the expectation – not least releasing the PC and Xbox Console version’s alongside each other on the same day!
It’s with great pleasure for us to announce that after all of the above, and more than a year of working with our partners at AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA, it’s time to smash a bottle of rum against our PC specifications so that you can see how your rig will fare. As part of this new approach, we felt it would be more beneficial to not follow tradition with releasing just “min”, “recommended”, and “ultra” specs, and we would instead better detail the expected experience that each spec will offer;
| System Requirements | 720P @ 30fps | 1080p @ 30 FPS | 1080P @ 60 FPS Recommended |
4K @ 30 FPS | 4K @ 60 FPS (Extreme) |
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Windows 10 Anniversary (1607*) | Windows 10 Anniversary (1607*) | Windows 10 Anniversary (1607*) | Windows 10 Anniversary (1607*) | Windows 10 Anniversary (1607*) | |||||
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| CPU | INTEL Q4950 @ 2.6GHZ OR AMD PHENOM II X6 @ 3.3 GHZ | INTEL I3 4170 @ 3.7GHZ OR AMD FX-6300 @3.5GHZ | INTEL I5 4690 @3.5GHZ OR AMD FX-8150 @ 3.6GHZ | INTEL I5 4690 @3.5GHZ OR AMD FX-8150 @ 3.6GHZ | INTEL I7 4790 @ 4GHZ or AMD RYZEN 5 1600 @3.6GHZ | ||||||
| RAM | 4GB | 8GB | 8GB | 16GB | 16GB | ||||||
| DIRECT X | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | ||||||
| VRAM | 1GB | 2GB | 4GB | 8GB | 8GB | ||||||
| GPU | Nvidia Geforce GTX 650 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 980TI | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080TI | ||||||
| MODERN GPU | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1030 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050TI | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 | Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080TI | ||||||
| HDD | 60 GB 5.2K RPM | 60GB 7.2K RPM | 60GB 7.2K RPM | 60GB SSD | 60GB SSD | ||||||
| Graphics Settings | LOW (COMMON) | MEDIUM(RARE) | MEDIUM(RARE) | ULTRA(MYTHICAL) | ULTRA(MYTHICAL) |
*SIMPLY TYPE “WINVER” INTO THE START MENU TO FIND YOUR CORRESPONDING WINDOWS 10 VERSION, WHICH NEEDS TO BE EQUAL TO OR HIGHER THAN 1607.
Our rendering team set themselves the goal early on of “how low can we go”, sometimes also referred to fondly as “getting the game running on a potato”, which is why we want to deliver a great version of the game even for those with computers below our official minimum spec. The game is perfectly playable at 540p, and one of the advantages of Xbox Play Anywhere is that if you own an Xbox Console AND a low-spec laptop you can still take full advantage of it, and we absolutely encourage it! Of course if you have a beast of a rig running at 4k/60, we’ve got you covered with the best looking #GreatWater, and everything in between!
Thanks to the community and our hardware partners in helping us reach this point, and we look forward to continuing to build out the PC feature set up to and beyond launch!
