Minecraft RTX Minimum Requirements: How Much PC Do You Need?

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Aside from an RTX card, the requirements are pretty low.

Minecraft RTX
(Image credit: Microsoft, Tom's Hardware)
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Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton
Senior Editor

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bollwerk
    Found a typo:
    " It is worth nothing that slower CPUs.."
    I'm assuming that should be "noting", not "nothing"
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    bollwerk said:
    Found a typo:
    " It is worth nothing that slower CPUs.."
    I'm assuming that should be "noting", not "nothing"
    Thanks! Muscle memory can be a harsh mistress.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    "That's nearly double the price ($1,150) for far less than double the performance. "

    $1150 is less than 60% more than the $730 of the first build. That's not really close to "nearly double the price" in comparative terms (i.e. 100% more).

    Longevity-wise, I think that Ryzen 3600 will give you more usefulness over the years vs previous-gen Ryzen 2600. Add in the ~$115 by replacing the CPU, m/b, and memory from the 1080p build with the 1440p build, and you have a decent budget PC for ~$845. (Of course, some may not consider $845 to really be a "budget" PC, so we'll just call it a decent 1080p build.)
    Reply
  • WildCard999
    Looking forward to a similar article when Crytek does a RTX version of Crysis.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    "That's nearly double the price ($1,150) for far less than double the performance. "

    $1150 is less than 60% more than the $730 of the first build. That's not really close to "nearly double the price" in comparative terms (i.e. 100% more).

    Longevity-wise, I think that Ryzen 3600 will give you more usefulness over the years vs previous-gen Ryzen 2600. Add in the ~$115 by replacing the CPU, m/b, and memory from the 1080p build with the 1440p build, and you have a decent budget PC for ~$845. (Of course, some may not consider $845 to really be a "budget" PC, so we'll just call it a decent 1080p build.)
    I think I wrote the "nearly double" before I bumped the RAM up to 16GB, storage to 500GB, and used a slightly cheaper CPU. At one point it was $620 vs. $1150, but then I decided I couldn't recommend the $620 build in good conscience, because there were way too many caveats. I'll go tweak the double bit now...
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    WildCard999 said:
    Looking forward to a similar article when Crytek does a RTX version of Crysis.
    It's supposedly already in the works, though I don't know that RTX ray tracing is confirmed. I saw something about it being "API agnostic" -- which would mean it doesn't use the hardware in RTX cards, or AMD's upcoming Big Navi, which sort of defeats the point IMO. But I guess we'll see.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    I gotta say - when I thought of a game to really highlight ray-tracing, Minecraft was not the first one I'd have considered. :)
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    It's supposedly already in the works, though I don't know that RTX ray tracing is confirmed. I saw something about it being "API agnostic" -- which would mean it doesn't use the hardware in RTX cards, or AMD's upcoming Big Navi, which sort of defeats the point IMO. But I guess we'll see.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/16/21223384/crysis-remastered-nintendo-switch-leak-website

    “Crysis Remastered will focus on the original game’s single-player campaigns and is slated to contain high-quality textures and improved art assets, an HD texture pack, temporal anti-aliasing, SSDO, SVOGI, state-of-the-art depth fields, new light settings, motion blur, and parallax occlusion mapping, particle effects will also be added where applicable,” reads the blog post. “Further additions such as volumetric fog and shafts of light, software-based ray tracing, and screen space reflections provide the game with a major visual upgrade.”



    Based on how much effort is going into reworking the graphics, it does seem like an odd choice to not use DXR.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    ...and we've been recommending them since they first launched in 2018.
    Or, you know, well before they launched. >_>

    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    Of course, some may not consider $845 to really be a "budget" PC, so we'll just call it a decent 1080p build.
    Actually, it could be considered a relatively decent "1440p build" in most other games, even without those additions, as performance will tend to be more GPU-limited at that resolution. It's probably worth adding in at least the RAM though, seeing as it only saves about $5 dropping down to DDR4-2666. $55 more for a Ryzen 3600 could be considered reasonable, but if you start adding another $55 for an X570 board, you could have instead moved up to a 2060 SUPER or 2070, if performance in Minecraft RTX is the primary concern.

    As another option, one could instead drop the CPU down to a Ryzen 1600 AF for almost no performance loss, and that would bring the total cost of the build, even with the faster RAM, down to around $700.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    cryoburner said:
    Or, you know, well before they launched. >_>
    No, that's patently incorrect. The first RTX GPUs absolutely launched in 2018. To be specific, the RTX 2080 Ti was launched on September 27, 2018, the RTX 2080 on September 20, 2018, and RTX 2070 FE on October 17, 2018. The RTX 2060 FE was January 15, 2019, and the various RTX 20xx Super cards were in July 2019 (July 9 for the 2060S and 2070S, and Just 23 for the 2080S). Public reviews I think were even allowed about a week in advance of the retail launch dates -- certainly the RTX 2070/2060 Super were on July 2, 2019.

    cryoburner said:
    Actually, it could be considered a relatively decent "1440p build" in most other games, even without those additions, as performance will tend to be more GPU-limited at that resolution. It's probably worth adding in at least the RAM though, seeing as it only saves about $5 dropping down to DDR4-2666. $55 more for a Ryzen 3600 could be considered reasonable, but if you start adding another $55 for an X570 board, you could have instead moved up to a 2060 SUPER or 2070, if performance in Minecraft RTX is the primary concern.

    As another option, one could instead drop the CPU down to a Ryzen 1600 AF for almost no performance loss, and that would bring the total cost of the build, even with the faster RAM, down to around $700.
    Long-term, though, I'd rather have an X570 board than X470, and I figure you either go 2nd gen Ryzen with a cheaper B450 board, or go for X570 and 3rd gen Ryzen is my feeling. 1600 AF is fine, though the 2600 does clock a bit higher. Either will work (along with lots of other CPUs), and with a modest (2070 or lower / RX 5700 or lower) GPU you're not likely to end up being CPU limited in games. But the from Zen+ to Zen 2, 7nm node, higher clocks, PCIe Gen4 are worth having. If you can justify a $500 GPU like a 2070 Super, I don't think there's any reason to stick with anything less than Ryzen 3000 and X570. They're not required, but then neither is a 2070 Super.
    Reply