'Gears of War 4' will require a monster machine to play in 4K
We hope you bought a high-end video card this year.
You might have been delighted to hear that Gears of War 4 will take full advantage of your PC, but you might not be quite so thrilled when you realize what it takes to run the game in its full 4K glory. On top of a 4K gameplay demo (below), Microsoft has outlined the Windows version's system requirements... and they're not exactly modest. While you can get by on mid-range 2014 hardware as a baseline, the "ideal" experience (effectively, 4K) demands both a high-end AMD FX or Intel Core i7 processor as well as one of the highest-end graphics cards in recent memory, such as a GeForce GTX 1080 or a Radeon R9 Fury X. You'd better have splurged on your system in recent months, in other words.
The steep demands aren't entirely surprising. PC hardware has only just started making 4K playable without resorting to multi-card graphics, and it's going to be a while before that kind of horsepower filters down to the mainstream. Even the latest low-cost cards, like the GeForce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 480, fall short of being fast enough for that kind of pixel count. Look at it this way, though: this could be the excuse you need to buy a long-overdue system upgrade, and you'll have a reason to revisit the game if you have to "settle" for a lower resolution on launch day.
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