The game from Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) is still far from the formulaic finish line, so the system requirements for Star Citizen are still only a guideline, as they do not mention specific components.
For comparison, let’s look at the minimum system requirements from last year and this year.
2023 Star Citizen minimum system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10
Processor: quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge (2nd generation Core CPUs; e.g. i7-2600K) or AMD Bulldozer (FX-8000 series) or later
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics card: DirectX 11-compatible GPU with at least 3 GB VRAM
Free storage: 83 GB
2024 Star Citizen minimum system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10
Processor: quad-core Intel Core i7 (e.g. i7-7700) or AMD Bulldozer (FX-8000 series) or later
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics card: DirectX 11-compatible GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM
Free storage: more than 100 GB
For the Intel CPU examples, we’ve named a model, but even then it’s not very clear exactly what kind of PC CIG’s MMO requires. The same is true for the recommended system requirements:
Star Citizen 2023 recommended system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10 or 11
Processor: quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge (2nd generation Core CPUs; e.g. i7-2600K) or AMD Bulldozer (FX-8000 series) or later
Memory: 16 GB DDR4 RAM
Graphics card: DirectX 11-compatible GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM
Free storage: 83 GB
Star Citizen 2024 recommended system requirements:
Operating system: Windows 10 or 11
Processor: quad-core Intel Core i7 (e.g. i7-7700) or AMD Ryzen 5 (e.g. Ryzen 5 1500X) or later
Memory: 32 GB DDR4 RAM
Graphics card: DirectX 12-compatible GPU with at least 8 GB VRAM
Free storage: more than 100 GB
We have added examples of the processor itself. For the minimum system requirements, the developers have listed a few graphics cards (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 460, Intel Arc A380), and even these don’t seem to do much more than launch the game. There are a lot of performance complaints on Reddit, so what they’ve given as a minimum is just enough to get CIG’s game running.
The developers already strongly recommend installing the game on an SSD, which currently sits at 103 GB. This will increase as we head into an official beta for Star Citizen, which began development back in 2012. The Gen12 update brings a new graphics rendering pipeline that also supports Vulkan. This could increase performance and lead to modern graphics features.
We do not know and dare not guess the release date of Star Citizen.
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