Ubisoft's XDefiant system requirements are so low that even a manky old potato will run the game

Ubisoft might be acting all fashionably late to the multiplayer shooter party, but its forthcoming XDefiant looks like it will be accessible to just about every gamer out there, thanks to having some of the lowest PC system requirements I've seen in years.

Let's start with the entry point, the minimum specs Ubisoft suggests will run XDefiant. A CPU with four cores and eight threads will be good enough, as will a 4GB graphics card from eight years ago. Even 8GB of system RAM is fine and yes, it really is 2024—you haven't drifted back in time while you were sleeping.

Whether XDefiant is actually playable on such hardware is a different thing altogether and I'm not a fan of minimum hardware requirements in general. The recommended system requirements seem more realistic, to be honest, and although the CPU suggestion is the same, the graphics card is more modern, with 6 to 8GB of VRAM.

Jumping into the so-called Ultra requirements, 4K gaming will demand an eight-core, 16-thread CPU, and a GeForce RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card. That's quite a big jump in GPU performance, but one thing that isn't clear from Ubisoft's system requirements is whether that kind of graphics card is needed because of the 4K resolution, the game's detail settings, or a combination of both.

And once again, we're left to guess as to what kind of frame rates you'll get with such hardware, as there are no expected performance figures on offer. Ubisoft is really spoiling us, though, with an 'uncapped frame rate for maximum fps.' 

I promise that you really are still in 2024, honest.

It's puzzling why Ubisoft is suggesting a Core i7 9700K or a Ryzen 7 3700X. It's not that they're both old chips, it's that the 3700X isn't as good in gaming as the 9700K. When we reviewed the Ryzen 7 3700X, the gap between them could be pretty large, especially at low resolutions. And there's also the fact that if XDefiant needs an RTX 3080 to run 'Ultra' at 4K, then the outright power of the CPU isn't going