Battlefield V is shaping up to be one of the prettiest games about the ugliest side of humanity. Electronic Arts (EA) has made the game's support for DirectX Raytracing, as presented by Nvidia's RTX graphics cards, one of its primary selling points. Now the company's revealed what you'll have to cram into your system to experience ray tracing for yourself (if you're not sure what experiencing ray tracing entails, read up on the new tech here), along with the recommended specs for those without Nvidia's fancy new GPUs.
Having an RTX graphics card is the first requirement, of course, though EA said you can settle for the RTX 2070 instead of springing for the RTX 2080 Ti (which could be a good thing, considering the reports about RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards failing more often than early adopters would like). An operating system offering DirectX Ray Tracing is also required, so the as-yet-unreleased Windows 10 October 2018 Update is necessary.
Battlefield V's ray tracing support also requires a stronger CPU and more RAM than the game's base graphics. The requirements aren't prohibitive, especially for someone with an RTX card, with the recommendations being an AMD Ryzen 2700 or Intel Core i7-8700 paired with 16GB of RAM. Other specs--storage, internet connections, etc.--are identical from the minimum specs up to those recommended for ray tracing.
See all of EA's recommended specs in the table below:
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Minimum Specs | Recommended Specs | Recommended Specs for DXR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating System | 64-bit Windows 7/8.1/10 | 64-bit Windows 10 | Windows 10 October 2018 Update |
| CPU | AMD FX-8350 / Intel Core i5-6600K | AMD Ryzen 3 1300X / Intel Core i7-4790 or equivalent | AMD Ryzen 7 2700 / Intel Core i7-8700 |
| RAM | 8GB | 12GB | 16GB |
| GPU | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 or GTX 660 2GB / AMD Radeon RX 560 or HD 7850 2GB | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 |
| DirectX | 11.0-compatible video card or equivalent | 11.1-compatible video card or equivalent | DirectX Raytracing-compatible video card |
| Internet Connection | 512KBPS or faster | 512KBPS or faster | 512KBPS or faster |
| Storage | 50GB | 50GB | 50GB |
Battlefield V's Rocky Launch
Battlefield V has had a bit of a rocky launch. The game was delayed from October to November so DICE could respond to feedback from its open beta. Then, EA revealed that the game's Firestorm battle royale mode--which was already garnering criticism for its apparently limited scope--wouldn't actually debut until March 2019...assuming it's unlike the base game and sticks to its release schedule.
EA is set to release Battlefield V on November 20. EA plans to add ray tracing support as part of a day-one patch, which is likely to include other improvements. For more on the game, you can check out our benchmarks from the closed alpha, as well as our look at how DICE scaled back ray tracing to improve performance and make the graphics more believable. We also have explored the game's open beta.
