Control, the latest from Remedy Entertainment, releases tomorrow – August 27, 2019. (Though the review embargo lifts today, so keep your eyes peeled for our impressions).
Control releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. But that’s not the entire story.
With the advent of the mid-generation, increased-horsepower consoles – the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X – we’ve come to see increased performance and/or fidelity on these more powerful devices. It’s a bit of a binary system. (Control is listed as Xbox One X Enhanced on the Xbox store. We’re presuming it gets similar treatment on the PS4 Pro, though the PSN store listing doesn’t explicitly state that.)
With PC, it’s typically been more of a sliding scale. If you’ve got better hardware, you’ll get better visuals; if you’re got more basic kit, you’ll be down at the lower end. But now the PC has its own line in the sand: real-time ray tracing.
Real-time ray tracing – that’s using the path of simulated light particles for things like reflection and refraction, rather than traditional camera trips and rendering techniques – was introduced by Nvidia with its Turing series of graphics cards. These GPUs come equipped with RTX cores, specific silicon used for making real-time ray tracing calculations. (Though more recently, Nvidia has added real-time ray tracing to higher-end cards from the previous generation, though performance is not as strong as the dedicated RTX cards.)
Remedy’s Control is the latest game to feature real-time ray tracing, and it looks great. At least, based on the video footage we’ve seen. (We’re reviewing the game on PS4, so no RTX hardware is in play.)
But the question is, what hardware are you going to need for those lovely real-time lighting effects? In other words, what are the Control system requirements?
Minimum Control system requirements
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 / AMD FX 4350
- GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 780 / AMD Radeon R9 280X
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: Windows 7, 64-bit
- DirectX: DX11
Recommended Control system requirements
- CPU: Intel Core i5-7600k / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
- GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660/1060 / AMD Radeon RX 580
- RAM: 816 GB
- OS: Windows 10, 64-bit
- DirectX: DX11 / DX12
Real-time ray tracing requirements:
- As recommended, plus
- GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 or above
Keep an eye out for our review of Control, and follow us on Flipboard or Twitter for more video game reviews.
