Far Cry 4 System Requirements Confirm You'll Need 64-Bit OS

Far Cry 4 has something in common with Ubisoft's other fall releases The Crew and Assassin's Creed Unity: you'll need a 64-bit operating system to run it even on its lowest settings.

Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements announced by Ubisoft this afternoon:

MINIMUM

• Supported OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1 (64bit versions only)
• Processor: Intel Core i5-750 @ 2.6 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2 GHz
• Memory: 4GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD5850 (1GB VRAM)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Hard Drive 30 GB available space
• Sound Card DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

OPTIMAL

• Supported OS: MS Windows 7 SP1, MS Windows 8/8.1 (64bit versions only)
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2400S @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz or better
• Memory: 8GB
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon R9 290X or better (2GB VRAM)
• DirectX: Version 11
• Hard Drive: 30 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

The Far Cry 4 requirements aren't nearly as steep as Assassin's Creed Unity's. You can run FC4 on minimum settings with 2GB less RAM and a much older video card. Unlike Unity, FC4 was developed for PS3 and Xbox 360 as well so it's no shock that the game would play nicer with older PC's.

Creative director Alex Hutchinson revealed in June that the game's lead platform is the PC rather than consoles. He feels that the Xbox One and PS4 versions will perform up to its level, though.

“We really wanted the gameplay experience to be the same on all the platforms, obviously, so we’re leaning on bigger technical things. But if you imagine that, everything you see, whether it’s the fur on the animals, whether it’s the grass on the ground or the leaves on the trees, all these things are bumped up a huge amount in the next-gen versions.

"Previously, we developed on PC, primarily, which is actually unusual, like, Assassin’s we develop on console, so we can push the boundary of the console as hard as we can. But because we develop on PC… you’ve never really seen on console the ultra high PC version before. So even out of the box, even day one when we just stuck the code on the new consoles, we’re able to dial it all the way up, so as a console player you’re already getting by far the best version we can ship.”

Ubisoft has had a rocky relationship with PC gamers. In years past, they annoyed that section of gamers with always-on DRM and late ports. They've gotten better on both fronts but problems still remain. For example, many Watch Dogs players were unable to log in on launch day due to authentication issues. A stellar PC version of Far Cry 4 with a stable launch would go a long way toward smoothing things over.