Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War gets new system requirements that are slightly less demanding

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War is just a few weeks away and today Activision released a new trailer that explores many of the extra features PC players will enjoy: 4K resolution support, uncapped framerate, ray-traced shadows, DLSS, and ultrawide and multi-monitor support too. And there's also an update set of system requirements that are actually lower than those recommended for the beta, which is great if your machine is just on that line of being able to play it.

The trailer, which you can watch above, is pretty much what you'd expect from Call of Duty. There's some shooting, some screaming, and a lot of explosions, but it's cool to see that Activision is taking the PC version seriously. Though the glimpse of it is brief, the settings menu is particularly nice because it looks like you can compare settings on the fly with a preview window.

The new system requirements are equally as exciting, though. The biggest change from the beta is that the minimum specs now suggest a meager Intel Core i3 with just 8GB of RAM, while the recommended specs want at least an i5-2500K with 12GB of RAM. Here's the full list:

Minimum specs:

  • Windows 7 64-bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-bit (v.1803 or higher)
  • Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon HD 7950
  • 8 GB RAM
  • MP Only 50GB, 175GB for all game modes

Recommended specs:

  • Windows 10 64-bit (latest update)
  • Intel Core i5-2500K or AMD Ryzen R5 1600X Processor
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super or AMD Radeon R9 390 / AMD Radeon RX 580
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 175 GB available hard drive space
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.