Star Wars Outlaws system requirements hit GPUs with force

Ahead of its imminent launch, Ubisoft has finally released the Star Wars Outlaws system requirements. In a bid to help players better understand how the game will perform, the company has provided performance estimations alongside specs lists. Unfortunately, this gesture only raises more questions about how some graphics cards will be able to run the action-adventure romp.

The long and short of it is that you’ll want the best graphics card you have to hand to get Star Wars Outlaws running at your target frame rate and resolution. Of course, you’ll need a processor that’s capable of keeping pace with your GPU, but this shouldn’t be too difficult. Finally, before we dive into the nitty-gritty of each category, you’ll need 16GB of RAM and an SSD regardless of your performance target.

At a glance, Star Wars Outlaws minimum requirements appear quite forgiving. Ubisoft reckons you’ll only need an Arc A750, GeForce GTX 1660, or Radeon RX 5600 XT. These are all ageing entry-level pixel pushers but don’t mistake this for an easy ride. These graphics cards are only capable of driving the game at 30fps using its ‘Low’ preset. Worse still, this is at 1080p with an upscaler set to ‘Quality’. There’s no indication whether this means DLSS, FSR, or XeSS, a trend that’ll annoyingly repeat itself as we work through the list.

Moving up to the game’s recommended specs, we see graphics card requirements jump up sharply. Now we’re in mainstream territory, with GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and Radeon RX 6700 XT (sorry Arc enthusiasts). Processor demands aren’t quite as steep, with Core i5-10400 and Ryzen 5 5600X maintaining the hexacore floor we’ve seen thus far. Component combos of this calibre should be good for 60fps gameplay using the game’s ‘High’ preset. Once again, though, we see Ubisoft play fast and loose with upscalers, with the same upscaled 1080p resolution estimate.

For those hoping to play Star Wars Outlaws at an upscaled 1440p, you’ll need to target Ubisoft’s ‘High’ tier. Truth be told, it’s not that much more demanding than the previous set of specs, shifting up to GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6800 XT. Even the move to Ryzen 7 5800X and Core i5-11600K seems token, seeing as that resolution should have no bearing on processor-intensive tasks. Once again, this resolution target is a technical one, as Ubisoft says 60fps will be possible at QHD with an upscaler in quality mode.

Finally, we have ‘Ultra’ for 4K gamers. As one should expect, the requirements here are lofty. GeForce RTX 4080 stands side-by-side with AMD’s champion, Radeon RX 7900 XTX, though you can expect far better ray tracing performance from the former. You won’t need the best CPU to match these graphics cards, though, with Ubisoft touting Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Core i7-12700K as having more than enough performance. Once more with feeling, UHD/60fps will only be possible via upscaling.

Personally, I’m not averse to upscaling. I regularly use DLSS in ‘Performance’ mode on my 4K monitor. However, if Ubisoft wishes to be truly helpful to consumers, then it needs to either provide frame rate targets for native resolution or go more in-depth with its estimates. Upscalers do not perform equal to one another, and the performance of brand-agnostic ones varies across different GPU architectures. Thankfully, it shouldn’t be long before third-party benchmarks emerge that better illustrates what our expectations should be.

If you need to refresh yourself on Nvidia DLSS, give our guide a read. If you’re thinking about playing Star Wars Outlaws at 4K, then check out our GeForce RTX 4080 Super review. It’s much easier to find than the vanilla version and offers far better value too.