Atomic Heart detailed system requirements revealed

The faux-Soviet shooter Atomic Heart comes out on February 21, which means that if you want to play, you have just under two weeks to get your PC in shape to make it happen. And now you have proper targets to aim for on that front, thanks to the detailed system requirements released today by developer Mundfish.

You can apparently get away with a pretty low-spec unit, according to these numbers, as long as you don't mind putting up with what I'm sure would be a commensurately low-end experience. But even the high setting isn't killer: It doesn't offer the visual glory of 4K, but it doesn't demand a 4K-capable system either.

Game director Robert Bagratuni told WCCF Tech that the rated FPS for each specification is the minimum players will get "during fierce battles in the most crowded locations," and that in most locations it will be much higher. "For example, with the GeForce GTX 1650 graphical card, the players will get a minimum of 60FPS, while a maximum indicator in most locations will be 100FPS," Bagratuni said.

"As for memory, you can play with 8GB RAM if you disable the shaders optimization option in the settings. In that case, you might have stutters when entering a new location. But if you want to play without stutters, you need to have at least 12GB of memory to be able to precache PSO for faster runtime-shaders compilation."

So with expectations appropriately managed, here's the hardware:

Minimum (30 fps, 1080p, low settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i5 2500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• RAM: 8GB (12GB recommended)
• GPU: GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon R9 380
• Storage: 90GB HDD

Minimum (60 fps, 1080p, low settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• RAM: 8GB (12GB recommended)
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580
• Storage: 90GB HDD

Medium (60 fps, 1080p, medium settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i5 6600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 or AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT
• Storage: 90GB SSD

High (60fps, 1080p, high settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i5 7600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1080 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
• Storage: 90GB SSD

Ultra (60fps, 1080p, ultra settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K or AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: GeForce RTX 2070X or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
• Storage: 90GB SSD

Ultra 4K (60fps, 4K, ultra settings):

• CPU: Intel Core i7 8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
• RAM: 16GB
• GPU: GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
• Storage: 90GB SSD

We're still not entirely sure what to expect from Atomic Heart, but our initially high hopes were tempered somewhat by our recent preview, which found "a great aesthetic in search of a more interesting game." We'll find out soon enough whether it's able to get past that slow start and blossom into the weird, alt-80s Bioshock-alike that we were looking forward to.