Something to look forward to: We're just one week away from the launch of the two of this year's biggest games: Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, both of which are coming to Microsoft's PC Game Pass. With their arrival imminent, a slew of details are being released, including benchmarks, final system specs, and supported Nvidia features.
Starting with Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, GSC Game World has now finalized the system requirements, increasing the required storage and minimum RAM and CPU requirements.
The Stalker 2 system specs only arrived at the start of the month. They were pretty forgiving, considering how good the game looks, though the fact it required 150GB of storage was a disappointment for those with limited space left on their SSDs.
Now, though, GSC Game World has changed the storage requirements for Stalker 2. Sadly, players will now need 160GB, a 10GB increase.
Something else that's been increased is the minimum RAM requirement, which has now jumped from 8GB to 16GB, while the minimum Intel CPU has gone from a Core i5-7600K to a Core i7-7700K. The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X minimum CPU is unchanged.
The specs for the Unreal Engine 5-powered game now have four graphics presets with target resolutions. The High setting (1440p/60fps) is the recommended one, asking for a RTX 4070/Radeon RX 6800 XT paired with at least a Core i7-11700/Ryzen 7 5800X.
Going up to Epic (4K@over 60fps) bumps this up to at least a Core i7-13700KF/Ryzen 7 7700X paired with a RTX 4080/RX 7900 XTX. Expect Stalker 2 to become a common sight in graphics card and CPU benchmarks following its release.
Nvidia has provided some of its own benchmarks showing Stalker 2's fps with and without DLSS 3. Even the mighty RTX 4090 with an i9-14900K can't hit an average of 60fps at maxed-out 4K, though enabling DLSS 3 (Performance Mode) pushes this to 124 fps. The same setup averages 75fps at 1440p and 85.5fps at 1080p without DLSS 3, or 145fps and 165 fps with it enabled (Quality Mode). These are Nvidia's own numbers, so take them with a pinch of salt.
Nvidia didn't provide any benchmarks for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, though it did confirm support for DLSS 3 and other Nvidia features, including ray tracing, Reflex, and DLAA, from day one. Microsoft previously released the full requirements list (below) for the game.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl releases on November 20. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 arrives a day earlier, November 19.
