Hunt: Showdown system requirements released

Update (February 22, 2018): Now that Hunt: Showdown is out in Early Access, official system requirements (still subject to change, surely) have been released. Here's what they say you'll need, though tread carefully—the min specs feel low given what we experienced during the alpha (see the original story below), though updates are coming through frequently. 

Minimum specs

• Intel i5 @ 2.7GHz (6th Generation) or AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• 8GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 TI or AMD Radeon R9370

Recommended specs

• Intel i5 @ 3.2 GHz (6th Generation) or AMD Ryzen 5 1400
• 12GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB or AMD Radeon R9 390X

Original story (February 6, 2018): The greatest challenge we faced in the Hunt: Showdown alpha—aside from the bees—was maintaining a consistent framerate. All of us who played encountered stuttering, with framerates dipping heavily, especially during scuffles with players and monsters, where freezing and hitching are deadly.

Hunt is in alpha, so problems like this are expected, but improving performance is going to be crucial if Hunt is going to be any fun for most people. In an email sent to PC Gamer this morning, Crytek laid out its working plan for optimization.

"For starters, we need to get a smooth average framerate on recommended specs," writes the Hunt team. "After that, we will look to improve the average framerate on said specs, and for the longer-term roadmap, we will be looking to optimize the game for a wide range of hardware."

The "final system requirements will likely be different," but for now, the team's 'work-in-progress' recommended specs are:

• Processor: Intel i5 – 3.0 GHz (6th Generation)
• Memory: 12 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
• OS: Windows 10 64 bit

In the alpha, we encountered problems while exceeding these specs, for example with a Core i7-6700k and GTX 980. By the time we reach Hunt's Early Access release—there's no firm release date set yet—expect some optimization improvements to have been made, though also expect Hunt to remain demanding.

"Optimization is an ongoing effort on both the game and the technology level," writes the Hunt team. "We will have basic settings and graphic options available at Hunt’s Early Access release, but more will be on the way. Since we are most likely CPU-bound on most configurations, we’re providing these options more for comfort than for performance."

We'll update this article with new recommended specs and performance information as Hunt develops. Despite our performance struggles, we enjoyed the spider hunt a good bit. Check out our impressions from the alpha for more.