Thief System Specs Sneak Out, Don't Induce Fear

Remember when the announcement of system requirements was this gulp-inducing deal? Would your PC be up to it? Was it going to become time to upgrade in order to play the game you were most interested in? With a new Crysis no longer being a priority, and not a single big-budget game-changer appearing in 2013, it feels almost anachronistic to even make system specs an announcement these days. And that's no less true today, with the specs released for Thief. Unless your PC is built out of twigs, there's a good change they're not going to bother you.

Windows XP users will be disappointed?

Min Specs:

OS: Windows Vista with platform update
CPU: High-performance dual core CPU or quad core CPU
RAM: 4 GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon 4800 series / Nvidia GTS 250
DirectX: DirectX 10
HDD/SSD: 20 GB

Rec Specs:

OS: Windows 7 or 8
CPU: AMD FX 8000 series or better / Intel i7 Quad Core CPU
RAM: 4+ GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD / R9 series or better / Nvidia GTX 660 series or better
DirectX: DirectX 11
HDD/SSD: 20 GB

Of course, what's far more complicated in reading these things these days is the graphics card requirements. Unless you've got a degree in Graphiscardology, what are you supposed to do with "AMD Radeon 4800" or "Nvidia GTS 250"? They're meaningless numbers, not pertaining to anything else, not even within the releases of cards from the same company. I do wish the industry would give this some thought and standardise again.

It's interesting to note what a silly set of things min and rec specs are now. Those min specs are so ambiguous: "dual core or quad core". Oh, gee, thanks. And those rec specs are just "um, modern?" rather than anything specific. More than 4GB of RAM you say? These seem to come down to, "It'll work on an older machine, but it'll work better on a newer machine." Which is perhaps expected. However, the good news here is: "it'll work on an older machine."