Upscaling is the new normal according to Star Wars Outlaws system requirements

Full recommended system requirements for the PC build of Star Wars Outlaws are out and they make for interesting reading. Due out on August 30th, the new Ubisoft open world adventure has us excited despite some fairly obvious flaws. But what kind of PC will you need to run it?

Now we know and the details don't look overly horrifying. You won't absolutely need a zillion-dollar rig. There is one obvious caveat, however—Ubisoft is assuming you're running upscaling across all of its performance tiers.

Ubisoft helpfully provides multiple target tiers for gamers. Starting with "Minimum" and moving up through "Recommended", "High" and "Ultra". For each, Ubisoft provides a target resolution and quality, such as 1080p Low graphics preset and 30fps for Minimum or 1440p High graphics preset and 60fps.

Intriguingly, all of the tiers specify a upscaler set to "Quality" to achieve those frame rates. If ever you were looking for proof that upscaling is the new normal, this is surely it.

The absolute minimum requirement is pretty modest, with mere Nvidia GTX 1660 graphics getting the job done. However, that's at 1080p Low settings with a target frame rate of just 30fps. Arguably even more significantly, even you'll need to have DLSS, FSR or similar upscaling on to achieve those frame rates according to the official specs.

In other words, the game will really be running at something like 720p and then upscaled to 1080p. Indeed, as we already explained the recommended settings assume upscaling at every tier. There's no such thing as native rendering in the land of Star Wars Outlaws. Not according to Ubisoft's system recs, anyway.

While Ubisoft does include Intel GPUs in the Minimum category, it perhaps says something about Arc graphics that the don't qualify for any of the higher tiers. It's also notable that to run at 1440p and therefore upscaling from roughly 1080p, the GPU requirements are pretty hefty, landing at RTX 3080, RTX 4070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, all of which have at least 10GB of VRAM.

It's possible, in other words, that 8GB of VRAM won't get the job done for native 1080p rendering. Anyway, while it arguably makes sense for Ubisoft to make upscaling a default setting, we can't help but feel a little uneasy about that assumption. For sure, life was simpler when everything came down to plain old raster performance.

What with various upscaling technologies, frame generation and optional goodies like ray tracing, it's harder than ever to draw broad conclusions about comparative performance, exactly what hardware you need to have a good experience and what kind of resulting image quality you can expect.

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