Rumor: Battlefield 4 System Specs Appear In Alpha Test Invite

[Earnest Cavalli]

Rumor: Battlefield 4 System Specs Appear In Alpha Test Invite

According to a new, seemingly legitimate notice the PC alpha test for Battlefield 4 begins on June 17.

Last night a NeoGAF user calling him or herself "RoKKeR" uploaded an image that was ostensibly an official announcement from publisher EA and developer DICE. You can find it in full of NeoGAF, but the key takeaways are that Battlefield 4 enters alpha testing on the PC today, and that we now have some idea of what kind of hardware will be necessary to run the title.

According to RoKKeR's claims, here's what the system specs for Battlefield 4 currently look like:

RECOMMENDED PC SYSTEM REQUREMENTS

OS: Vista SP2, Win7
Windows 8 not supported.
64-bit! 32-bit not supported.
DX10 or DX11 GPU with 1+ GB of RAM,
DX11 highly recommended
25GB Free HDD space required
Latest Origin version required

Note that these do not necessarily represent the requirements for the final game.

Here's where things get a bit fuzzy: Notice that the above quote reads "Recommended PC System Requirements?" Nowhere are we told what the minimum requirements are, which is generally the first burst of info included with any PC game. That quote doesn't even appear within the image RoKKeR posted, and instead was supplied by another NeoGAF user dubbed "Mathezar."

What does all of this mean? That depends on how skeptical you are. Truth is, we have no reason to doubt any of this information as it does coincide with everything we know about DICE's modus operandi for testing its multiplayer titles. Though we've been unable to find any official confirmation of this information (beyond PC Gamer reporting it as fact [http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/06/17/battlefield-4-alpha-trial-starts-today-system-specs-and-vehicle-customisation-shots-surface/]), it seems pretty safe to assume that this is all for real. Hopefully either DICE or EA will get back to us shortly with an official confirmation.

If any of you have received similar alpha test invites, we'd love to hear about it. The comments section below exists for exactly that kind of thing.

Source: NeoGAF [http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=592461]

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[DTWolfwood]

If that windows 8 thing is for real...i'm going to assume there will be some angry letters written.

I wont be affected but just saying.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

I'm totally certain that it will be Windows 8 and 32 bit compatible. This is an alpha build after all, and compatibility is something that usually gets added into and tested on the betas.

Until I get actual graphics card names, these numbers are by and large irrelevant, aside from the fact that it's a pretty freaking big game at 25 gigs.

 

[fix-the-spade]

If that windows 8 thing is for real...i'm going to assume there will be some angry letters written.

Why? Neither EA nor Dice has a commercial interest in Win 8.

It'll be there by release day, but right now it's not important.

Those specs sound about right, identical to BF3 in fact.

 

[DTWolfwood]

If that windows 8 thing is for real...i'm going to assume there will be some angry letters written.

I wont be affected but just saying.

Don't you remember E3? Not even Microsoft uses Windows 8.

Oh thats not what i mean, the fact you can't buy a new PC with a windows OS that isn't Win 8 is where i was getting at. It doesn't affect the real PC gamers of course, but those PC users that also happen to play a game or two.

 

[Wicky_42]

Until I get actual graphics card names, these numbers are by and large irrelevant, aside from the fact that it's a pretty freaking big game at 25 gigs.

Yeah, 25Gb was what I noticed too - I'm assuming it'll be a digital title... how freaking long is that gonna take to DL, and how much bandwidth are the Origin servers going to need to put out to support that?!

Would like to know the CPU and GPU requirements as I'm in the market for replacing by now unresponsive tower, but never mind...

 

[Griffolion]

If that windows 8 thing is for real...i'm going to assume there will be some angry letters written.

I wont be affected but just saying.

The Alpha testing will be focussed on the most common OS that BF4 will be running on, which will almost unanimously be Windows 7 64-Bit. If they get that nailed down, then they have their majority core nailed down.

The end product will most definitely support Windows 8, they'd be silly not to.

Why? Neither EA nor Dice has a commercial interest in Win 8, plus it's install rate within PC gamers seems to be hovering close to 0% judging by the total lack of driver support for it.

Sorry could you provide some evidence for the claim of no driver support. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, and all associated AIB partners have Windows 8 supported in their drivers. Plus Windows 8 has better built-in driver support than Windows 7 ever did.

 

[Matthi205]

I just hope it does not use PunkBuster...

EDIT* OF COURSE it will support Windows 8 people, its just that this is an Alpha version... jeez...

Oh god Punkbuster... I could write a whole book full with the errors that software has given me over the years.

Actually, I don't think it will support Win8 particularly well. DICE games tend to crash often if not used on the OS they were designed for.
And on the 32-bit issue: I don't think so, simply because 2 GB of RAM are laughably little for a game with such complex physics and general computations.
25GB aren't much if they made the scope of their game bigger and have finally started using good models and different models dependent on quality setting. Which, in BFBC2, they did not.
I am happy they're using a 64-bit executable in Alpha for once, instead of the bugged 32-bit ones we normally receive that exhibit a painful intolerance for 64-bit OS's on top of the usual bugs.

Why? Neither EA nor Dice has a commercial interest in Win 8, plus it's install rate within PC gamers seems to be hovering close to 0% judging by the total lack of driver support for it.

Sorry could you provide some evidence for the claim of no driver support. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, and all associated AIB partners have Windows 8 supported in their drivers. Plus Windows 8 has better built-in driver support than Windows 7 ever did.

Win8 drivers are neither in plentiful supply nor good. I've hear numerous complaints, expecially about the Radeon drivers for high-end cards. About the better built-in driver support: I laugh at your face. It's better only in some cases, while delivering LESS performance than the default, unoptimized Win7 drivers (talkign about GPU drivers here, others are fine in Win7 already, even with pretty exotic stuff you can still assign it the proper driver type) on quite a lot of systems I tried it on.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Sorry could you provide some evidence for the claim of no driver support. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, and all associated AIB partners have Windows 8 supported in their drivers. Plus Windows 8 has better built-in driver support than Windows 7 ever did.

12% of Steam users have windows 8 that's more than still use XP so it does have an install rate with PC gamers.

Alright, you got me I was just being glib.

However, a lot of conversations I've had about pairing Windows 8 and AMD graphics cards have ended in a single word, don't. Whilst I don't know AMD's main policy, a number of third party manufacturers (like say, HIS) aren't offering Win 8 drivers for the majority of their cards.