God of War PC requirements revealed: What you'll need for top performance

Next month, we'll see what is almost certainly the biggest Sony PC release yet. After bringing Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone to PC, Sony will be bringing 2018's God of War to the platform in January. Today, Sony's Santa Monica Studio revealed the PC specifications for the game, and it looks like it will run on a rather large array of configurations.

Minimum specs and maximum performance

Sony Santa Monica shared lists for five different specifications today, starting with the minimum required specifications ranging all the way up to the hardware needed to run God of War at ultra settings. As you might imagine, there's a pretty big disparity between those two specs, with "recommended," "high," and "performance" specs in between.

The minimum required specifications will be good enough to run the game on the low graphics preset in 720p at 30fps, which isn't great. Still, we work with what we've got in the world of PC gaming, and if you have at least an NVIDIA GTX 960 (4GB)/AMD R9 290X (4GB) GPU in your rig along with an Intel Core i5-2500k/AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU and 8GB of RAM, it's good enough to run God of War.

Compare that to the ultra specification, and you'll see just how big the difference between the minimum and maximum are. In order to run God of War on the ultra graphics preset in 4K at 60fps, you'll need an RTX 3080 (10GB)/RX 6800 XT (16GB) along with an Intel Core i9-9900k/AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and 16GB of RAM. Considering how hard it is to get both the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT, we're guessing that most gamers will probably have to settle for a lower spec.

Thankfully, that's what is required to run the game at 4K60, so lower resolutions will ease up on the hardware requirements a fair amount. You can check the other specifications in the image we've embedded above, but hardware specifications aren't the only thing Sony's Santa Monica Studio revealed about the PC version of God of War today.

The studio also confirmed today that God of War will support NVIDIA DLSS in rigs with an RTX GPU, which uses supersampling to allow the game to run at higher resolutions without sacrificing framerates. The game will also support NVIDIA Reflex to cut back on system latency, though that requires at least a GTX 900-series GPU. Finally, God of War will support AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution, so Sony Santa Monica's partnership with NVIDIA doesn't mean that AMD users have to be left out in the cold.

You can see a sampling of God of War's PC features in the trailer above. Otherwise, look for God of War to land on Steam and the Epic Games Store on January 14th, 2022.

Sony's PC game port plans

In March 2020, PlayStation Worldwide Studios head Herman Hulst confirmed Sony's plan at the time to bring Horizon Zero Dawn to PC (via PS Blog). The port raised new questions about the company's plans for future major PlayStation exclusive games and whether they, too, would eventually make their way to desktop. At the time, Hurst reassured PlayStation fans that Sony is "very committed to dedicated hardware" and "very committed to quality exclusives."

With that said, Hurst also went on to note that the company was "going to be very open to experimentation," one example of which was the eventual Horizon Zero Dawn PC release. The studio's leader indicated bringing a major PS game to PC served as a way to "introduce more people to PlayStation," potentially making them aware of the kinds of games they can enjoy if they pick up a PlayStation console.

Hurst went on to state that "releasing one first-party AAA title to PC doesn't necessarily mean that every game now will come to PC." The statement left many doubtful that select other major PlayStation titles — including God of War — would make their way to PC. Fast-forward nearly two years and it's clear Sony is continuing with this plan, though if the trend holds, it looks like PC gamers can expect to wait a couple of years after a major game's release before it (potentially) makes its way to desktop systems.