Rainbow Six Siege System Requirements Announced

Ubisoft has released the full system requirement specifications for Rainbow Six: Siege, the upcoming, team-based first-person shooter that's due for release on the 1st of December. The minimum specs are actually a lot more forgiving than you may have thought.

The news went out over on the Ubisoft blog, where they rolled out the minimum and recommended requirements for the physics-based shooter. You can see what the minimum requirements are below:

Minimum Requirements:

Supported OS: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64bit versions required)

Processor: Intel Core i3 560 @ 3.3 GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 945 @ 3.0 GHz

RAM: 6GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or AMD Radeon HD 5870 (DirectX-11 compliant with 1GB of VRAM)

DVD ROM Drive: DVD-ROM Dual Layer

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card with latest drivers

Hard Drive: 30GB

Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 256kbps upstream or faster

Recommended Requirements:

Supported OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64bit versions required)

Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3 GHz or better or AMD FX-8120 @ 3.1 Ghz or better

RAM: 8GB

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (or GTX 760 / GTX 960) or AMD Radeon HD 7970 (or R9 280x [2GB VRAM] / R9 380 / Fury X)

DVD ROM Drive: DVD-ROM Dual Layer

Sound: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card 5.1 with latest drivers

Hard Drive: 47GB

Multiplayer: Broadband connection with 512kbps upstream or faster

So let's talk a little bit about the minimum system requirements for Rainbow Six: Siege first. The game requires an i3, which is surprising because I was instantly expecting an i5 at the minimum and maybe an i7 for the recommended. However, perhaps it's a testament to Ubisoft's increased attention to the PC platform that they would make Rainbow Six: Siege operate on an i3 instead of an i5.

The 6GB of RAM requirement is par the course. The Xbox One and PS4 have 3GB of their 8GB reserved for system resources, so it makes sense that for PC the minimum would be 6GB.

The video card in the minimum requirements is also a little shocking to me. A GTX 460? Now if the game actually runs at least at 30fps consistently on a GTX 460 then I would be extremely impressed with Ubisoft's ability to squeeze a game with such a heavy focus on graphical effects and procedural destruction run fine and smooth on something as old as a GTX 460.

Even on the upper end of the spectrum for the recommended requirements the game tops out with a GTX 670, or a GTX 960 if you're thinking in terms of the most recent Maxwell chipset. That's still pretty low. I mean compared to Batman: Arkham Knight that's still getting fairly unconvincing performance out of Nvidia's GTX 980 and AMD's R9 390X.

Based on the specifications, and to be considered a “next-gen” game, Rainbow Six: Siege has surprisingly low specs compared to some other games out there. Then again it is a strict, team-based FPS as opposed to something ambitious like Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 or Battlefield 4.

You can look for Rainbow Six: Siege to launch on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on December 1st next month.